Title: Natal alienation
Review: Patterson's book is groundbreaking for many reasons. That is, unlike other scholars of slavery, Patterson does not solely restrict himself to describing slaves and the institutions of slavery by juridical terms (eg Moses Finley). What is crucial to understanding the station of slaves in all societies, African: the various tribal slave systems, European: Roman,Greek,French,Dutch and English;Asian: Jewish, Islam,Indian, Korean etc is that the slave is defined by the absence of power. The slave is compelled to forgo his or her rights and concede to the domination of the owner. The slave is powerless before his or her master.This absence of power on the part of the slave was common to all slave societies, least of all the American slave society who had embraced the Aristotlean notions of slavery and discarded the Romans' who saw slavery as an outcome of fate.
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