Moving forward in comparative slavery: Orlando Patterson’s critique of “slave society”, “slave systems”, and the “second slavery”

Orlando Patterson’s critique of the concept of “slave society” in his recent book Enslavement: Past and Present offers us an occasion to reflect upon the use of this term by scholars engaging in studies of comparative slavery in the ancient and modern worlds. It is possible to relate Patterson’s critique of “slave society” to a discussion of the cognate concept of “slave system”, taking inspirations from important recent studies by historians of ancient slavery in comparative perspective. At the same time, it is equally important to keep into account the important comparative work done by an innovative group of scholars on the “second slavery” in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Patterson’s concept of dependence as the main feature that defined slavery can help us moving forward in comparative slavery studies by providing guidelines for a comparison of “slave systems”, including the ones that characterized the “second slavery”.