The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere

A magisterial survey of the legal structures of race in the Americas from the 1500s through the present. Deftly comparing and contrasting Brazil, Spanish America, and the United States, Cottrol examines the legal underpinnings of racial inequality in those countries, the efforts over time to combat inequality, and the continuing challenges that all the societies of the Americas face in the twenty-first century. The result is a thoroughly impressive work of synthesis and comparison.

–George Reid Andrews “author of Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000“

Cottrol’s well-written book is a brilliant explication of the comparative treatment of persons of African ancestry in the western world. This is a must-read for those interested in the larger context of the black experience in the Western Hemisphere.

–Davison M. Douglas “author of Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865-1954“

The legal history of slavery and race is a demanding subject, doubly so when pursued comparatively. Robert Cottrol rises to the challenge in this comprehensive and illuminating study of slavery, race, and law throughout the Americas, North and South. Spanning half a millennium–from the early modern era of Iberian and English colonization through the end of the twentieth century–Cottrol’s sure-footed book patiently guides the reader through a long and frequently bitter story of the Americas’ many varieties of racial exploitation, exclusion, and reform. Though always sensitive to the distinct institutional trajectories that slavery imprinted on different European colonies and their successor states and to the cultural multiplicity of race and law, Cottrol determinedly pursues answers to the ‘big’ questions–how to account for different patterns of race relations; how to relate contemporary race to bygone slavery. His book confirms the wisdom of Frank Tannenbaum’s observations, more than sixty years ago, that no matter where one encounters it, the history of slavery and race turns out to be largely a history of the laws that have structured both and that to study the histories of others is an excellent way to learn more about one’s own.

–Christopher Tomlins “Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California Irvine and author of Freedom Bound: Law, Labor and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865“

This book is an extremely important, groundbreaking work of comparative synthesis that will be a must-read for students of race in the United States as well as in Latin America. It will be the definitive book on the comparative history of race and law in the Americas.

–Ariela Gross “author of What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America“

This study is an impressively researched, cogently argued, and highly nuanced examination of the sharp divergence in socio-legal attitudes toward slavery and race across the hemisphere of the Americas. Cottrol’s impeccable sensitivity to changing time, place, circumstances, and social mores makes this a significant contribution to the growing literature on an extraordinarily complex theme. It will be welcome among serious scholars across many academic disciplines.

–Franklin W. Knight “Stulman Professor of History and Director, Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University”

From scientific racism and immigration policies to racial classifications and legal systems, [The Long, Lingering Shadow] provides a powerful account highly recommended for any racial issues or history holding.

—Midwest Book Review

ROBERT J. COTTROLL is the Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law and Professor of History and Sociology at the George Washington University. He has lectured extensively on U.S. law at universities in Argentina and Brazil. His books include The Afro-Yankees: Providence’s Black Community in the Antebellum Era and Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution (coauthored with Raymond T. Diamond and Leland B. Ware).