Seymour Drescher

French anti-slavery : the movement for the abolition of slavery in France, 1802-1848

Preface 1. Napoleonic and restoration anti-slavery 2. The revolution of 1830 and the colonies 3. Formation of the French Abolition Society 4. Procrastinations, consultations, and interpellations 5. Abolitionist proposals and parliamentary commissions 6. Stalemate and regression 7. Crisis and further setbacks 8. Redefining abolitionism 9. Toward immediatism Conclusion Bibliography Index.

A historical guide to world slavery

Eminent scholars provide an overview of what we now know about slavery as an institution and way of life in cultures around the globe from ancient times to the present day. Drawing on the virtual explosion of empirical research and theoretical discussion of the subject over the past thirty years, many of the articles overturn conventional wisdom and illuminate little-known aspects of the subject, with essays on topics such as concubinage, eunuchs, occupational mobility.

The Ending of the Slave Trade and the Evolution of European Scientific Racism

How might a discussion of the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in relation to the development of European racism illuminate the question of who gained and who lost? The question can be approached at three levels. The first concerns the degree to which the racial attitudes of Europeans were affected by the process of termination. The second would be how the people of Europe and of Afro-America were affected by the termination itself. The third and broadest aspect would be the long-term effects of that complex process. It seems to me that the answers become more speculative as the scope of potential impact broadens, as the discussion moves from a concern with attitudes and ideology to social conditions, as the geographical scope broadens, and as the temporal dimension to be considered expands to encompass the twentieth century. The first level, the relation of the processes of abolition to racism, is the primary focus of this paper; a few brief remarks on the second and third issues are reserved for the conclusion.

The Cambridge world history of slavery

1. Dependence, servility and coerced labor in time and space David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman Part I. Slavery in Africa and Asia Minor: 2. Slavery in the Ottoman Empire in the early modern era Ehud R. Toledano 3. Slavery in Islamic Africa Rudolph T. Ware III 4. Slavery in non-Islamic West Africa, 1420-1820 G. Ugo Nwokeji 5. Slaving and resistance to slaving in west central Africa Roquinaldo Ferreira 6. White slavery in the early modern era William G. Clarence-Smith and David Eltis Part II. Slavery in Asia: 7. Slavery in Southeast Asia, 1420-1804 Kerry Ward 8. Slavery in early modern China Pamela Kyle Crossley Part III. Slavery among the Indigenous Americans: 9. Slavery in indigenous North America Leland Donald 10. Indigenous slavery in South America, 1492-1820 Neil L. Whitehead Part IV. Slavery and Serfdom in Eastern Europe: 11. Slavery and the rise of serfdom in Russia Richard Hellie 12. Manorialism and rural subjection in east central Europe, 1500-1800 Edgar Melton Part V. Slavery in the Americas: 13. Slavery in the Atlantic islands and the early modern Spanish Atlantic world William D. Phillips, Jr 14. Slavery and politics in colonial Portuguese America: the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries Joao Fragoso and Ana Rios 15. Slavery in the British Caribbean Philip D. Morgan 16. Slavery on the colonial North American mainland Lorena S. Walsh 17. Slavery in the French Caribbean, 1635-1804 Laurent Dubois 18. Slavery and the slave trade of the minor Atlantic powers Pieter Emmer Part VI. Cultural and Demographic Patterns in the Americas: 19. Demography and family structures B. W. Higman 20. The concept of creolization Richard Price 21. Black women in the early Americas Betty Wood Part VII. Legal Structures, Economics and the Movement of Coerced Peoples in the Atlantic World: 22. Involuntary migration in the early modern world, 1500-1800 David Richardson 23. Slavery, freedom and the law in the Atlantic world, 1420-1807 Sue Peabody 24. European forced labor in the early modern era Timothy Coates 25. Transatlantic slavery and economic development in the Atlantic world: West Africa, 1450-1850 Joseph E. Inikori Part VIII. Slavery and Resistance: 26. Slave worker rebellions and revolution in the Americas to 1804 Mary Turner 27. Runaways and quilombolas in the Americas Manolo Florentino and Marcia Amantino.

Brazilian Abolition in Comparative Perspective (1988)

On the eve of the age of abolition, even intellectuals who were morally opposed to slavery were far more impressed by its power and durability than by its weaknesses. Adam Smith reminded his students that only a small portion of the earth was being worked by free labor, and that it was unlikely that slavery would ever be totally abandoned. Across the channel, the Abbe Raynal could envision the end of New World slavery only through a fortuitous conjuncture of philosopher-kings in Europe or the appearance of a heroic Spartacus in the Americas. No historical trend toward general emancipation could be assumed.1

The Decline Thesis of British Slavery since Econocide

Appearing in 1944, Capitalism and Slavery was a comprehensive attempt to explain the rise and fall of British colonial slavery in relation to the evolution of European world-capitalism.1 In dealing with the final stages of slavery, Eric Williams developed a two-pronged argument linking its demise to changes in the British imperial economy. The first prong related to changes in the structure of economic relationships between the metropolis and the colonies. Down to the American Revolutionary War, concluded Williams, British slavery, including the Atlantic slave trade, was a growing and complementary element of the imperial economy. The slave system provided an ever-increasing amount of tropical staples, a protected market for British manufactures, and a source of British metropolitan capital. In a number of ways, the slave economy thus helped to fuel the industrial revolution. Williams’ second prong related to political economy, to an economic ideology designated as mercantilism. It sustained the multiple linkages of the system by assuming the need for a protected imperial zone in which British manufactures, trade and maritime skills could develop.

The long goodbye: Dutch capitalism and antislavery in comparative perspective

‘If the world were to come to an end, I would go to Holland, where everything happens fifty years later.’ Pieter Emmer opens his discussion of Dutch abolition with this apocryphal aphorism (ascribed to Heinrich Heine). Of all the northern European imperial powers, the Dutch were the last to legislate colonial slave emancipation, thirty years after their British counterparts across the North Sea.1 They perfunctorily abolished slavery in 1863, after their Swedish, Danish, and French neighbors. Historians of slavery seem to have repeated the procrastination. They have been equally slow to view the Dutch case as a valuable opportunity for comparative analysis.

British Way, French Way: Opinion Building and Revolution in the Second French Slave Emancipation

After a generation of enormous scholarly fecundity, interest in the history of the Atlantic slave system shows no signs of subsiding. It now constitutes one of the liveliest fields of comparative and interdisciplinary history. A recent flurry of centennial activities marking the history of abolition will probably continue unabated into bicentennial commemorations in 1991 of the St Domingue slave uprising and the quincentenary in 1992 of Columbus’s voyage.1 This luxuriant centennialization is grounded in a distinctive set of historical benchmarks. Little more than two centuries ago, personal bondage was the prevailing form of labor in most of the world. Personal freedom, not slavery, was the peculiar institution. In 1772, Arthur Young estimated that only 33 million of the world’s 775 million inhabitants could be called free. Adam Smith offered a similarly somber ratio to his students and prophesied that slavery was unlikely to disappear for ages, if ever.2

The Shocking Birth of British Abolitionism

The emergence of the British abolitionist movement has often been conceived as a direct response to the trauma of the American Revolutionary War. There is little evidence that the British public embraced abolitionism as a response to such a loss – either politically, culturally or psychologically. On the contrary, British anti-slavery mobilisation against the slave trade emerged and flourished in moments of national optimism and confidence. It is therefore as important to understand the contextual pressures that operated in accounting for the emergence of this powerful political movement as it is to understand the motives and methods of its entrepreneurs.

Eric Williams: British Capitalism and British Slavery (1987)

Just over forty years ago the University of North Carolina Press published Capitalism and Slavery.1 Its author was a young Trinidadian, Eric E. Williams, then teaching at Howard University in Washington, DC. If one criterion of a classic is its ability to reorient our most basic way of viewing an object or a concept, Eric Williams’ study supremely passes that test.