A revelatory historical indictment of the long afterlife of slavery in the Atlantic world To
fully understand why the shadow of slavery haunts us today we must confront the flawed way
that it ended. We celebrate abolition - in Haiti after the revolution in the British Empire in
1833 in the United States during the Civil War. Yet in Black Ghost of Empire acclaimed
historian Kris Manjapra argues that during each of these supposed emancipations Black people
were dispossessed by the moves that were meant to free them. Emancipation in other words
simply codified the existing racial caste system - rather than obliterating it. Ranging across
the Americas Europe and Africa Manjapra unearths disturbing truths about the Age of
Emancipations 1780-1880. In Britain reparations were given to wealthy slaveowners not the
enslaved a vast debt that was only paid off in 2015 and the crucial role of Black
abolitionists and rebellions in bringing an end to slavery has been overlooked. In Jamaica
Black people were liberated only to enter into an apprenticeship period harsher than slavery
itself. In the American South the formerly enslaved were 'freed' into a system of white
supremacy and racial terror. Across Africa emancipation served as an alibi for colonization.
None of these emancipations involved atonement by the enslavers and their governments for
wrongs committed or reparative justice for the formerly enslaved-an omission that grassroots
Black organizers and activists are rightly seeking to address today. Black Ghost of Empire will
rewire readers' understanding of the world in which we live. Paradigm-shifting lucid and
courageous this book shines a light into the enigma of slavery's supposed death and its
afterlives.
