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Colleagues, a query:
In 2002 I published a work ("Brothers and Strangers")at Duke in which I
posited that there was an "Old Dixie Narrative" that molded North American
views of slavery:
"This view of history says: Slavery was confined to Dixie and slaves grew
cotton. Nowhere else in the history of humanity has slavery existed and
nowhere else were human beings chattel. Africans, in this version of history,
were selected slaves because they were black. Racism, not economic interest,
drove the slave trade and slavery, which existed as the ultimate form of
psychosexual torture. The numbers immolated in the holocaust of the “Middle
Passage” and in the cotton fields ran into the hundreds of millions. At the
popular level, the Old Dixie Narrative floats in the American collective
consciousness...."
My query is that, avoiding postmodern discussions of metanarratives, what
constitutes a historical "master narrative"? Any good and cogent sources (books
or articles) would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Ibrahim K. Sundiata
Samuel and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and Afro-American
Studies
Brandeis University
Member, Council on Foreign Relations
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
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