‘There’s this whole other story’: inside the fight to end slavery in the Americas

The Great Resistance, an expansive new book by author and historian Carrie Gibson, brings together often unheard narratives to tell the bigger picture of a difficult time

The Great Resistance is Carrie Gibson’s third book, and her third about the history of the Americas, plural. It follows Empire’s Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day, from 2014, and El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America, published five years later. The subtitle to the new book indicates its roots in the first two: The 400-Year Fight to End Slavery in the Americas.

“I was led by both my own curiosity and also a frustration,” Gibson said, of how she came to retell that four-century fight over 500 absorbing pages.