William Dusinberre is Reader Emeritus (a senior professor/lecturer) in American History at the University of Warwick. He has written multiple texts on the Civil War and slavery in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) South. Them Dark Days, in particular, focuses on slavery in the rice swamps of South Carolina and Georgia--according to the University of Georgia Press, it is a "study of the callous, capitalistic nature of the vast rice plantations along the southeastern coast." Dusinberre revisits familiar primary sources--overseers’ letters, slave testimonies, and plantation records--and offers a new interpretation of the history.
In the text, Dusinberre focuses on three major plantations and the three respective families that owned them: the Manigaults, Butlers, and Allstons. By presenting portraits of key figures of both black and white races, Dusinberre personifies the horrors of slavery in the region and challenges contemporary accounts of slavery that "soften" the issues by focusing on the community and empowerment of slaves. He describes the "atmosphere and daily routine of the plantations," emphasizing how severely slavery was administered in the region. He also contextualizes the account by touching on issues such as "health, economics, politics, dissidence, coercion, discipline, paternalism, and privilege."
Them Dark Days contains hints of Dusinberre's anticapitalist ideology: according to some critics, Dusinberre presents slavery as a "variant of capitalism" and "slaveholders as essentially capitalists."
