I am a historian of slavery and emancipation in the Americas. I have published widely on the history of American slavery, notably in The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820-1860 and Slavery's Ghost: The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Emancipation (co-authored with Eric Foner and Walter Johnson). I have published extensively on plantation agriculture and in 2008 completed one of the largest--and most detailed--databases on any US or Caribbean plantation crop, see Documenting Louisiana Sugar (1844-1917). My published research also extends to Caribbean history, particularly in the field of historical demography and the history of medicine. I am editor of the Routledge quarterly Atlantic Studies. I am currently writing two books, Slave Revolts in American Memory and with Sven Beckert, Peter Coclanis, and Barbara Hahn, A Global History of Southern Commodities.

Finally, I am a research fellow at the Cunliffe Centre for the Study of the American South, based at the University of Sussex. I currently supervise doctoral students working on the history of Creole New Orleans, Identity and Language Politics in Post WWII Louisiana, The Union Party and the 1936 election, and on Slavery and Emancipation in the Frontier South-West.  I am interested in supervising graduate work on the history of the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century American South and Caribbean.

Books:

The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pbk 2007).

*Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2005.

*The Gulf South History Book Award 2005 - Gulf South Historical Association.

*Louisiana Literary Award 2005 - Louisiana Libraries Association.

*Annual Prize for Best Book in American Studies 2006 - British Association for American Studies.

*Finalist, 2006 Frederick Douglass Prize, The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University. 

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

Online Databases:

Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1845-1917 (2008)

(AHRC & SSHRC Research Project, 2003-2007)

Online Video:

"Narratives of Slavery" National History Education Clearinghouse, October 2009

Articles & Chapters:

With Trevor Burnard, "Caribbean Slavery, British Anti-Slavery, and the Cultural Politics of Venereal Disease," The Historical Journal 55 No. 2 (June 2012): 1-25.

"The Demography of Slavery," in Trevor Burnard and Gad Heuman eds., The Routledge History of Slavery (New York: Routledge, 2010), 119-137.

With Alison Bambridge, Rick Halpern, Alex Lichtenstein, "Documenting the Louisiana Sugar Economy, 1845-1917: An on-line Database Project," Journal of Peasant Studies 35 (October 2008): 801-810.

"'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.

"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.

"Slavery and Technology in Louisiana's Sugar Bowl" in Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie eds., Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 78-96.

"The Sugar Masters," Louisiana Cultural Vistas 18 (Summer 2007): 44-55.

"'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, 2007), 54-75.

"'Lives of Living Death': The Reproductive Lives of Slave Women in the Cane World of Louisiana," Slavery & Abolition 26 (August 2005): 289-304.

"'Give to the Labor of America, the Market of America': Marketing the Old South's Sugar Crop, 1800-1860," Revista de Indias (Special Issue on the 'The Sugar Industry in the Americas') LXV, 233 (January-April 2005): 117-147.

With 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.

"Heat, Sex, and Sugar: Childbearing in the Slave Quarters," Journal of Family History 28 (October 2003): 510-539.

"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

"Slavery and Plantation Capitalism in Louisiana's Sugar Country," American Nineteenth Century History 1 (Autumn 2000): 1-27.

Short Entries: "President John Tyler" and "Historical Geography" in The Reader's Guide to American History, ed. Peter J. Parish. (Chicago: Fitzroy-Dearborn, 1987), 707-705, 324-325.

EDITORIAL & REVIEW WORK:

Editor: Atlantic Studies (Routledge)

Book Reviews: Slavery and Abolition; Journal of American Studies; Textual Practice; Journal of Southern History; American Historical Review; Journal of American History.

Peer Reviews: Review article submissions for Slavery and Abolition; Nineteenth Century American History; Journal of American Studies; Textual Practice; ESRC (grant applications and reports).

Prize Committee Work: Chair of 2006 Gulf South History Book Award Prize Committee; British Association for American Studies Best Book 2007 Prize Committee.

Membership Committee Work: Membership Committee, Southern Historical Association 2007

PRESENTATIONS: 2005-11

"The Politics of Vice: Caribbean Slavery and British Abolitionsim in the Atlantic World," Atlantic Studies Plenary, Louisiana State University, October 2011.

"The Cultural Politics of Venereal Disease in Slavery and Abolition," Life and Death in the Tropics Workshop, University of Warwick, March 2011.

“Soundscapes, Creolized Identities, and the Matrix of Memory,” City University of Hong Kong, March 2011.

Commentator "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" MESEA, Pecs, Hungary, June 2010.

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

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

[Chair/Commentator] "Reimagining the African American Diaspora: Trauma, Representation and the Great American Forced Migration," BAAS Annual Meeting, Nottingham, April 2009.

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

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

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

"‘Thoroughly Done For': Mastery & the Conflict over Wage Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Country" Wiles Colloquium, Queen's University Belfast, October 2008.

"The Meaning of Freedom for Emancipation-Era African-Americans," Chasing Freedom Conference, Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, Oct 2007.

"Database Design and Southern Plantation Economies," Agricultural History Society Annual Meeting, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, June 2007.

"Freedom and Unfree Labor: Black Americans under Slavery and Emancipation, 1840-1900," Peking University, Beijing, China, May 2007.

"Race and the Making of the Atlantic World, " Nanjing University, China, May 2007.

"Sport, Modernity, and National Identity" Nanjing University, China, May 2007.

"Football and the Politics of Brazilian Cultural Identity," National University of Ireland, Galway, April 2007.

"Documenting Louisiana Sugar: A Database Workshop," Gulf South Historical Association Annual Meeting, Pensacola, October 2006.

"Race, Labor, and Tradition, and Change--Louisiana's Sugar Industry," Agricultural History Society Annual Meeting, MIT, Cambridge, Mass., June 2006.

Respondent--"Political Activism and Resurgence of Ethnicity" 5th Biennial MESEA Conference, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, May 2006.

"Unfree Labour after emancipation: anomaly or. necessity? The case of Louisiana's Sugar Workers," Institute of Historical Research, University of London, March 2006.

"Race, Labor, and Technology in the Cane Fields: Documenting the Louisiana Sugar Harvest, 1844-1917," Second International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society, Hyderabad, India, December 2005.

"Tradition and Modernity: Louisiana's Antebellum Sugar Elite," Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, November 2005.

Wed 9-11

Burnard, Trevor and Follett, Richard (2012) Caribbean slavery, British abolition and the cultural politics of venereal disease in the Atlantic world. The Historical Journal, 55 (2). pp. 427-451. ISSN 0018-246X

Follett, Richard, Foner, Eric and Johnson, Walter (2011) Slavery's Ghost: The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Emancipation. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9781421402369

Follett, Richard (2010) The Demography of Slavery. In: The Routledge History of Slavery. The Routledge Histories . Routledge, pp. 119-137. ISBN 9780415466899

Follett, Richard, Halpern, Rick, Lichtenstein, Alex and Bambridge, Alison (2008) Documenting the Louisiana Sugar Economy, 1845-1917: An on-line Database Project. Journal of Peasant Studies, 35 (4). pp. 801-810. ISSN 0306-6150

Follett, Richard (2008) Slavery and technology in Louisiana's sugar bowl. In: Technology, innovation, and Southern industrialization: from the antebellum era to the computer age. University of Missouri Press, pp. 68-96. ISBN 9780826217950

Follett, Richard (2008) The Spirit of Brazil: Football and the Politics of Afro-Brazilian Cultural Identity. In: Recharting the black Atlantic : modern cultures, local communitities, global connections. Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies . Routledge, pp. 71-92. ISBN 9780415961110

Follett, Richard and Halpern, Rick (2008) Documenting the American Sugar Economy 1845-1914. [Dataset]

Follett, Richard (2007) Gloomy Melancholy: Sexual Reproduction among Louisiana Slave Women, 1840-1860. In: Women and Slavery, Vol. 2: The Modern Atlantic. Ohio University Press, pp. 54-75. ISBN 9780821417263

Follett, Richard (2007) Slavery and plantation capitalism in Louisiana's sugar country. In: The Old South: New Studies of Society and Culture. Rewriting Histories . Routledge. ISBN 9780415957281

Follett, Richard (2005) 'Lives of living death': The reproductive lives of slave women in the cane world of Louisiana. Slavery and Abolition, 26 (2). pp. 289-304. ISSN 0144-039X

Follett, Richard (2005) The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World 1820 - 1860. Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 9780807130384

Follett, Richard (2005) 'Give to the Labor of America, the Market of America': Marketing the Old South's Sugar Crop, 1800-1860. Revista de Indias, 65 (233). pp. 117-146. ISSN 0034-8341

Follett, Richard and Halpern, Rick (2004) From Slavery to Freedom in Louisiana's Sugar Country: Changing Labour Systems and Workers' Power. In: Symposium on Sugarcane and Society, Univ Toronto, New Coll, Toronto, CANADA.

Follett, Richard (2003) Heat, sex, and sugar: pregnancy and childbearing in the slave quarters. Journal of Family History, 28 (4). pp. 510-539. ISSN 0363-1990

Follett, Richard (2001) On the edge of modernity: Louisiana's landed elites in the nineteenth nentury sugar country. In: The American South and Italian Mezzogiorno: essays in comparative history. Palgrave, pp. 73-94. ISBN 9780333739716

Follett, Richard (2000) Slavery and Plantation Capitalism in Louisiana's Sugar Country. American Nineteenth Century History, 1 (3). pp. 1-27. ISSN 1466-4658