Photo of Richard FollettRichard Follett
Professor Of American History

Research

Richard Follett is currently completing White Fright: Slave Revolts in American Memory, a history of slave rebellions in the 18th and 19th centuries. His latest book, Plantation Kingdom: The American South and its Global Commodities, co-authored with Sven Beckert, Peter Coclanis, and Barbara Hahn was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in March 2016. He recently held a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship, a Gilder-Lehrman Fellowship, and the BAAS/University College London Research Fellowship.

Follett's earlier work focused on sugar and slavery. It centered on Louisiana, the last of the New World sugar colonies where nineteenth century slavery reached its most modern, advanced form. The principal outputs included a major, publicly accessible digital resource on the American sugar economy (2008, AHRC Project Grant), multi-award-winning The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820-1860 (2005), Slavery's Ghost: The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Emancipation (2011) co-authored with Eric Foner and Walter Johnson, and a range of articles on slave and post-emancipation societies. These include published essays on slavery & emancipation, plantation societies, demography & public health, and the history of Brazilian football. Video film clips on Twelve Years a Slave are also available. Follett co-founded the Routledge quarterly Atlantic Studies and edited it from 2003-2013. He serves on the editorial board of Agricultural History who recently conducted an interview with him, a copy of which is available here.

His recent PhD students have worked on slavery and emancipation in Louisiana, the history of Creole New Orleans, Language and Politics in twentieth century Louisiana. He is interested in supervising graduate work on the history of the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century American South and Caribbean. Links to all available publications are included below.

Publications:

Books & Digital Resources:

Richard Follett, Sven Beckert, Peter Coclanis, Barbara Hahn, Plantation Kingdom: The American South and its Global Commodities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016).

Richard Follett, Eric Foner, and Walter Johnson, Slavery's Ghost: The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).

Richard Follett, Race and Labour in the Cane Fields: Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1845-1917 (2008) (AHRC & SSHRC Research Project, 2003-2008; assessed “outstanding” by AHRC, October 2009).

Richard Follett, The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World, 1820-1860. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005; paperback, 2007) * Gulf South History Book Award 2006; * Louisiana Literary Award 2006; * British Association for American Studies Book Prize 2006; * Finalist, 2006 Frederick Douglass Prize * Choice Outstanding Academic Title.

Articles & Book Chapters:

  1. Richard Follett, “Old South, New South: The Strange Career of Pierre Champomier” in The Enigmatic South: Toward Civil War and Its Legacies., ed. Samuel C. Hyde, foreword James M. McPherson, afterword Gaines M. Foster (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014).
  2. “Agricultural History talks with Richard Follett,” Agricultural History 88 (Spring 2014): 300-306.
  3. Trevor Burnard and Richard Follett, “Caribbean Slavery, British Abolition and the Cultural Politics of Venereal Disease in the Atlantic World,” The Historical Journal 55 No. 2 (June 2012): 427-451. Reprinted in Slavery: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, ed. Gad Heuman and Trevor Burnard (New York; Routledge, 2014).
  4. Richard Follett, "The Demography of Slavery," in Trevor Burnard and Gad Heuman eds., The Routledge History of Slavery (New York: Routledge, 2010), 119-137.
  5. Richard Follett, "Slavery and Technology in Louisiana's Sugar Bowl" in Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie eds., Technology, Innovation and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 68-96.
  6. Richard Follett, Rick Halpern, Alison Bambridge, Alex Lichtenstein, "Documenting the Louisiana Sugar Economy, 1845-1917: An on-line Database Project," Journal of Peasant Studies 35 (October 2008): 801-810.
  7. Richard Follett, "Slavery and Plantation Capitalism in Louisiana's Sugar Country," in J. William Harris ed., The Old South: New Studies of Society and Culture (New York: Routledge, 2008), 37-57.
  8. Richard Follett, "'The Spirit of Brazil': Football and the Politics of Afro-Brazilian Cultural Identity," in Annalisa Oboe and Anna Scacchi eds., Recharting the Black Atlantic: Modern Cultures, Local Communities, Global Connections (New York: Routledge, 2008), 71-92.
  9. Richard Follett, "'Gloomy Melancholy': Sexual Reproduction among Louisiana Slave Women, 1840-1860," in Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, Joseph C. Miller eds., Women in Slavery Vol.II - The Americas (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), 54-75.
  10. Richard Follett, "The Sugar Masters," Louisiana Cultural Vistas 18 (Summer 2007): 44-55.
  11. Richard Follett, "'Lives of Living Death': The Reproductive Lives of Slave Women in the Cane World of Louisiana," Slavery & Abolition 26 (August 2005): 289-304.
  12. Richard Follett, "'Give to the Labor of America, the Market of America': Marketing the Old South's Sugar Crop, 1800-1860," Revista de Indias (Special Issue: 'The Sugar Industry in the Americas') LXV, 233 (January-April 2005): 117-147.
  13. Richard Follett and Rick Halpern, "From Slavery to Freedom in Louisiana's Sugar Country: Changing Labour Systems and Workers' Power," in Bernard Moitt, ed., Sugar, Slavery, and Society (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2004), 135-156.
  14. Richard Follett, "Heat, Sex, and Sugar: Childbearing in the Slave Quarters," Journal of Family History 28 (October 2003): 510-539. Reprinted in Slavery: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, ed. Gad Heuman and Trevor Burnard (New York; Routledge, 2014).
  15. Richard Follett, "On the Edge of Modernity: Louisiana's Landed Elites in the Nineteenth Century Sugar Country," in Enrico Dal Lago and Rick Halpern eds., The American South and Italian Mezzogiorno: Essays in Comparative History (London: Palgrave, 2002), 73-94.
  16. Richard Follett, "Slavery and Plantation Capitalism in Louisiana's Sugar Country," American Nineteenth Century History 1 (Autumn 2000): 1-27.

Editorial, Peer and Scholarly Review.

Editor: Atlantic Studies (Routledge) Founding Editor (2003-2013)

Editorial Board: Agricultural History (2012-2015); Atlantic Studies (2014-2017)

Book Reviews in Journal of American History; American Historical Review; Slavery and Abolition; Journal of Southern History; Journal of American Studies; Textual Practice; Times Higher Education.

Latest  Reviews: Scott P. Marler, The Merchant's Capital: New Orleans and the Political Economy of the Nineteenth Century South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) in Journal of Southern History; Christopher Hager, Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013) in Times Higher Education Review (London); Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) in Journal of American History; L. Diane Barnes et al., The Old South’s Modern Worlds: Slavery, Region, and Race in the Age of Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) in American Historical Review.

Principal Grants:

2014: University College London, Institute of the Americas & British Association for American Studies Research Fellowship for for White Fright: Slave Revolts in American Memory

2013-14: British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship for White Fright: Slave Revolts in American Memory

2013-14: Fellow Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

2012-14: British Academy/Leverhulme Research Grant: White Fright: Slave Revolts in American Memory.

2003-2008: Arts and Humanities Research Council. Project Grant: Race and Labour in the Cane Fields: Louisiana Sugar, 1845-1917.

2003-2006: Social Science and History Research Council of Canada. Project Grant: Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1845-1917.

Recent Presentations (2009-16):



“Enslaved Worlds: New Perspectives on the Slave South--White Fright: An Explanation," Society for the History of the Early Republic Meeting, Raleigh NC, July 2015.


"“Bandits and Brigands: The Enduring Power of Haiti in American Slave Revolts,” Eric Foner Symposium--Queen Mary College, University of London, July 2015.

White Fright: Slave Revolts in American Memory," British Association for American Studies Annual Conference, Newcastle, April 2015.

"White Fright: Slave Revolts in American Memory," Memphis Cotton Museum Public History Lecture, November 2014.



"White Fright: Slave Revolts in American Memory," Institute for Southern Culture Lecture, University of Mississippi, November 2014.



"White Fright: Slave Revolts in American Memory," University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, November 2014.



“Slavery’s Ghost: Legacies of Enslavement in the Era of Emancipation,” University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, November 2014.

Roundtable: "The Political Economy of the South," Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, St Louis, October 2013.

“Slavery and Freedom in Louisiana’s Cane World,” Public History Keynote Lecture, Edward Gay Symposium, Baton Rouge, March 2013.

“Slavery and Venereal Disease in the Tropics,” Department of Primary Care, University of Sussex and Brighton Primary Health Care Trust Seminars, March 2012.

 “The Politics of Vice: Jamaican Slavery in the British Atlantic World,” Atlantic Studies Plenary Lecture, Louisiana State University, October 2011.

"Creolization and Caribbean Discourse," City University of Hong Kong, April 2011.

"Venereal Disease in Jamaica, 1750-1790," Life and Death in the Tropics, University of Warwick, March 2011.

Comment: "Gendered Economies of Slavery and Freedom: Women as Agents in the Perpetuation and Demise of the Peculiar Institution," American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Boston, January 2011.

"The State of Atlantic Studies," Plenary Roundtable: MESEA, Pecs, Hungary, July 2010.

"The Persistence of Paternalism-Planter Ideologies in the Era of Reconstruction," Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Louisville, November 2009.

"Legacies of Enslavement: Plantation Identities and the Question of Freedom," Marcus Cunliffe Lecture, University of Sussex, May 2009.

“Plantation Economies in the American South: Database Design and Southern Agricultural History,” Guest Lecture: British Agricultural History Society, Northampton, April 2009.

“Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1845-1917: An On-Line Database Project,” Louisiana Historical Association Annual Meeting, Monroe, March 2009.

Comment: "Re-imagining the African American Diaspora: Trauma, Representation and the Great American Forced Migration," BAAS Annual Meeting, Nottingham, April 2009.

"The Sound of Silence: Slavery and its Soundscape," American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New York, January 2009.