Critique
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The world in books
Can we take a dispassionate look at slavery? In a fascinating and very well documented essay, the journalist Vincent Hugeux revisits received ideas in the light of recent advances in historiography. Of course, the scope of the subject does not allow for exhaustiveness. The essayist then chooses to tell in successive touches the “reasoned” history of this “domestic school of cruelty”, in the words of the Irish historian Peter Brown, from Antiquity to contemporary servitudes, including revolts and demands for reparations, and leaves ample room for the radical novelty of the slave trade.
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