AV俱乐部

NOTE: Dr. Roberts is on leave, returning in 2025

Dr. Roberts specializes in the study of slavery in the British Empire. He has recently completed a book on the expansion of slavery across the early English empire from 1640-1720 in both the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. He has begun new projects on road building as a tool of imperialism throughout the Atlantic World and on the first Jamaican maroon war. He is also embarking on a more thorough investigation of the relationship between slavery and environmental history. He continues to research and write about the plantation complex and enslaved communities. He has published on aspects of plantation slavery in the Caribbean and in the United States from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. He has particular expertise in the history of slavery in Barbados and in the history of sugar plantations.

Books

• Fragile Empire: Slavery in the Early English Tropics, 1645-1720. New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
• Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic:听 1750-1807.听 New York:听 Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  

Articles and Book Chapters

• 鈥淭he Paradox of Abolition: Sugar Production and Slave Demography in Danish St. Croix, 1792-1804,鈥� with Philip D. Morgan and Rasmus Christensen. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 54.2 (Spring 2024), pages forthcoming.
• 鈥淧lantation Development,鈥� in The Routledge History of Jamaica, edited by Kathleen E.A. Monteith and Carla Pestana. New York: Routledge, forthcoming.听听听
• 鈥淎 Sugar Revolution? The Expansion of the Caribbean Sugar Frontier鈥� in Cambridge History of the Caribbean. Vol. 1: Indigenous Displacement and the Formation of Colonial Slave Societies, edited by Kristen Block. New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
• 鈥溾�楥orruption of the Air鈥�: Yellow Fever and Malaria in the Rise of English Caribbean Slavery.鈥� Early American Studies, 20.4 (Fall 2022): 653-672.
• "The Whip and the Hoe: Violence, Work and Productivity on Anglo-American Plantations."听Journal of Global Slavery,听6.1 (January, 2021): 108-130.
• 鈥淟'ordre de la plantation, Barbade et Jama茂que, XVIIIe si猫cle鈥� in听Histoire Mondiale de l鈥檈sclavage, edited by Claude Chevaleyre, Paulin Ismard, Benedetta Rossi and C茅cile Vidal, 239-246. Paris: Seuil, 2021.
• 鈥淥riented towards the Ocean: The Colonial South,鈥� with Noeleen McIlvenna in听Reinterpreting Southern Histories, edited by Craig Thompson Friend and Lorri Glover, 43-71. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020
• 鈥淕old Versus Life: Jobbing Gangs and British Caribbean Slavery,鈥� with Nicholas Radburn.听William and Mary Quarterly, 76.2 (April, 2019): 223-256.
• 鈥淏补谤产补诲辞蝉.鈥澨�Oxford Bibliographies Online: Atlantic History, edited by Trevor Burnard. New York: Oxford University Press, (2018, revised in 2024).
• 鈥淪ugar in the Atlantic World.鈥澨�Oxford Bibliographies Online: Atlantic History, edited by Trevor Burnard. New York: Oxford University Press (2011, revised in 2015, 2018 and 2024).
• 鈥淭he Development of Slave Systems in the British Americas,鈥� in听The World of Colonial America: An Atlantic Handbook, edited by Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, 123-149. New York: Routledge, 2017.
• 鈥淪urrendering Surinam: The Barbadian Diaspora and the Expansion of the English Sugar Frontier, 1650-1675.鈥澨�William and Mary Quarterly, 73.2 (April, 2016): 225-256.
• 鈥淩ace and the Origins of Plantation Slavery.鈥澨�Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, edited by John Butler. New York: Oxford University Press (March, 2016).
• 鈥淭he 鈥楤etter Sort鈥� and The 鈥楶oorer Sort鈥�: Wealth Inequalities, Family Formation and the Economy of Energy on British Caribbean Sugar Plantations, 1750-1800.鈥澨�Slavery & Abolition, 35.3 (September, 2014): 458-473.
• 鈥淪lavery in Danish America.鈥� Oxford Bibliographies Online: Atlantic History, edited by Trevor Burnard. New York: Oxford University Press (2013).
• 鈥淭he Application of GIS to the Reconstruction of the Slave-Plantation Economy of St. Croix, Danish West Indies.鈥� with Daniel Hopkins and Philip D. Morgan. Historical Geography 39 (2011): 85-104.
• 鈥淯ncertain Business: A Case Study of Barbadian Plantation Management, 1770-1793.鈥� Slavery & Abolition, 32.2 (June 2011): 247-268.
• 鈥淲orking Between the Lines: Labor and Agriculture on Two Barbadian Sugar Plantations, 1796-1797.鈥� William and Mary Quarterly, 63.3 (July 2006): 551-586.

Office Hours

• 听 听On sabbatical

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