# Robin Blackburn

robin blackburn (born 1940) is a British historian, a former editor of New Left Review (1981–1999), an author of essays on the collapse of Soviet Communism, on the "credit crunch" of 2008, and of books on the history of slavery and on social policy. His most celebrated works, American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights (2011), The Making of New World Slavery: from the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (1997) and The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (1988), offer an account of the rise and fall of colonial slavery in the Americas, contributing to the emerging field of "Atlantic history". He has also published histories of Social Security, and critiques of the "financialisation of everyday life" and of the privatisation of pension provision.