The decrepit Russian system based on serfdom showed its weakness in the country’s humiliation in the Crimean War in the mid-1850s. For pro-slavery and abolitionist observers in America, the new reforms of Tsar Alexander II attracted attention as Russia was the first to move to abolition (in the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861).

The talk will be led by Amanda Bellows

Location: Draught 55 (245 East 55th Street, NYC)

And finally, on to our first meeting of this new season! Pictured here is Dr. Amanda Bellows, a US Historian in Comparative and Transnational Perspective. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently a Lecturer at The New School and Hunter College. 

Her book, American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination, 

which will be the topic of her presentation, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Global Slavery, in the academic journal Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Talking Points Memo, Public Seminar, and the books New York Times Disunion: A History of the Civil War and Disunion: Modern Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln's Election to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Her talk covers the abolition of Russian serfdom in 1861 and American slavery in 1865, events which significantly transformed both nations, with Russian peasants and African Americans both gaining new rights as subjects and citizens in their respective nations. It is a reminder that the Civil War provided us with so much more than just generals, strategies and battlefields. For some clarity that I would not have otherwise been able to distill from what I've read, I'll offer you this brief summary from the Library Company of Philadelphia, regarding the material in Dr. Bellows'  book as well as further information on her background: https://librarycompany.org/2021/05/10/fireside-chat-american-slavery-and-russian-serfdom/.