Carl N Degler Review

            Neither Black nor White by Carl N Degler (The MacMillan Company, New York: 1971) is a comparative analysis of the developments of slavery, with an emphasis on miscegenation between the United States and Brazil during the Colonial period. This work is an attempt to understand the nature of black and white relations in the United States by seeing such relations in a different national and social context. Mr. Degler's original aim was to compare all of Latin American slavery to that of the United States, but after realizing the tremendous scope of such a task, chose to limit his analysis to a single Latin American nation. Brazil was selected because it rivaled the United States in size and because slavery played a major role in its history. Mr. Degler originally began exploring this topic with the intention of writing a scholarly essay to be published in a scholarly journal, but soon became fascinated with the topic and decided to turn the essay into a book. Mr. Degler engaged in writing this book with two questions in mind; Did slavery in Brazil differ substantially from that of the United States? And What accounted for the different development of race miscegenation in Brazil and the United States? Initially, Degler ascribed to the theory laid out by previous historians, that Slavery in South America was more humane, because of the sympathy of the Catholic Church towards slavery, and Portuguese Laws, which recognized the human rights of slaves. Believed to be in direct contrast with American slavery, which held that slaves were chattel property and possessed no rights the law was required to recognize. The Historians credited with advancing this position were; Frank Tannenbaum in his book Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (Alfred A. Knopf, New York: 1946) and Stanley M. Elkins in his book Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago University Press: 1959).