Essay 4

“The eighteenth century, especially the period from the 1760’s to the 1790s, marked the first time that the status and place of Black people in English society became a question of extensive public debate and national concern” (Lorimer 58). This era marks a significant start to the fight of abolition. More and more slaves were fleeing from their masters to become free. To many African Americans, the term “freedom” was becoming more and more clear. Angered and shocked slave-owners were outraged that Black people were resisting slavery, even appalled at the fact that freed slaves were “stealing” jobs from English workers. Those opposed to the abolition movement even offered rewards for the return of their slaves in newspapers, describing them as property. Africans such as Olaudah Equiano, were fortunate to encounter a different breed of white people. Equiano was a slave, yet his owner treated him well. In fact, he seemed to treat all his slaves like employees, not animals. He fed them well, and in turn, the slaves provided a better service to him. If one of his slaves rebelled or acted out, the punishment was abandonment. He never beat or mistreated them for going against him, simply told them to leave and fend for themselves. “This made them afraid of disobliging him; and as he treated his slaves better than any other man on the island, so he was better and more faithfully served by them in return” (Equiano, 90). A slave-owner is still a slave-owner, but in my opinion, Equiano’s master really was looking out for his slaves the best way he knew how. There were many others that felt this way, some that even took it a step farther. Granville Sharp, for example, offered legal help to abused slaves fleeing from their masters. In short, this concept of freedom during the late eighteenth century ignited several relationships between Africans and Europeans. This era started many white Europeans to take a stand against slavery, which in turn set Europeans against each other in the fight for abolition. Those Europeans that resisted abolition fought as hard as they could to regain control of their slaves in the battle that they inevitably lost.

Short Essay #3

At first glance, “There are no Slaves in France” seems a bit hypocritical. Peabody states early in the essay that people of color were restricted in France, and gives several examples. “These lawsuits in turn spurred the king’s administrators to develop new legislation that would halt the flow of blacks to the nation’s capitol” (Peabody, 7). It seems strange to me that the same people that came up with such a noble “Freedom Principal” would put such limitations on the amount of free slaves in their country. Peabody notes on the hypocrisy, and explains that these issues were just beginning to be touched on during the late eighteenth century. Throughout her essay, Peabody tells us of France’s “Freedom Principal” is based on the fact that all people should be free. It is quite controversial however, when some argue that if all people are free, they should be free to own slaves. This idea, once again hypocritical, forces the issue of who is classified as “people’. In the first section, Peabody tells us that slavery was marked by the Parliament for nations other than France. Rules and boundaries were set to regulate relations between slaves and their owners, but nothing in these rules said anything about when slaves set foot on French soil. “In France, where the financial benefits of the institution were not immediately felt, the attitude toward slavery was quite different” (Peabody, 12). In many cases, when slaves arrived in France they were either set free or returned to the colonies. This became a problem, and the king did address this issue. To uphold the tradition of freedom, once a slave reached France, he was free. The slave trader or owner was compensated by the ship’s captain, for it was his fault that he was brought there. The motives behind the French to help free the Africans are just as controversial. After reading Peabody’s essay, I feel that the motives behind France’s “Freedom Principal” were purely beneficial for France and France only. I don’t believe that they wanted to help free slaves. I feel that they were looking out for their own nation. The French freed slaves and sent them back to the colonies, and made little to no effort to help free African slaves in other nations. In my opinion, this is why they created laws restricting people of color into France.

Short Essay #2

“The British were the pioneers of the campaign; first against the slave trade, then against slavery in their own colonies and finally against slavery worldwide” (Walvin, 158). During the 18th century, the strong abolition force of Britain started with the Anglicans and Quakers. Traditionally ‘right wing’, this group was socially conservative and saw slavery as religious hypocrisy. They fought for freedom, and viewed slavery as hypocritical of everything that freedom stood for. Anglicans took a religious and moral stand against slavery, but faced a strong opposition. According to Hudson, “slave-trading communities were separated politically, religiously, and culturally” (Hudson, 562). Many in Britain were enjoying slavery itself, and the slave-produced goods and they were not about to give these comforts up without a fight. “From small beginnings it rose to substantial levels in 1725-40, contracted and stabilized during the following 35 years, and finally, following a partial revival after American Independence, almost completely ended in the decade before British abolition in 1807” (Richardson, 37). ‘Left wing’ politics suggest ideas such as socially progressiveness, social liberalism, and among other things, support radical reform. “Should it surprise us that these socially conservative Anglicans, not radicals or dissenters, first led the charge against slavery” (Hudson, 560)? According to Nicholas Hudson, those opposed to slavery during this time were leaning more right than left. Even though it was a clear win for the ‘right wing’ groups fighting against slavery, terms generally used to describe ‘left wing’ politics, such as ‘reform’, ‘social revolution’, ’radical’, and ‘antiestablishment’ are used to describe the abolitionists. There were major changes for the British economy, and most areas were affected by the slave industry. ”Dozens of ports sustained the slave-trade, vast rural and urban hinterlands filled the ships with foodstuffs and manufactured goods, and most British consumers bad become addicted to the fruits of slave labours, most notably sugar” (Walvin, 162). Richardson tells us just how profitable the slave empire could be, and is directly linked to Bristol’s “golden age” in the 18th century. Almost half of their income came from the slave industry, and became the “metropolis of the west. Many profited from slavery even after its demise. Even though the abolition movement was a triumphant win for its ‘right wing’ supporters, many others profited largely from it. Merchants and big investors sat in comfort while the industry made them quite wealthy, and continued to do so until slavery’s end in Britain.

Module 1

“The Black Atlantic” was an event that occurred during the eighteenth century. Many historians, including Lovejoy, Inikori, and Eltis, cannot seem to agree on just how many Africans were stolen from their land and shipped across the seas. What they do seem to agree on, however, is the magnitude of such an event. Joseph Inikori, for example, describes the slave trade as an event that “shames the world” (Inikori, 37).

According to Walvin and his essay, “Questioning Slavery”, Africa provided European settlers with a much needed work force. They had an abundance of land, natural resources, and access of European capital. “What they also needed, however, was labour to unlock the potential of the region” (Walvin, 3). Because Africans had for some time been shipped and enslaved for the benefit of white settlers, Europeans continued to use them for labor. “By, say. The mid-eighteenth century, when the European appetite for African slaves seemed insatiable, Africa seemed the natural place to recruit labour for the Americas” (Walvin, 1). According to Walvin, Indians and other indigenous people were not able to contribute with their economic plans. Whole communities of Indians fell to the diseases that white men introduced, and indentured Europeans were too few in numbers for the back-breaking work for frontier life. African slaves became highly valued, and a more profitable investment than Indians. It would seem that the European settlers did not feel what they were doing was wrong by any means. “English settlers’ categorized the Negroes and Indians who worked for them as heathen brutes and very quickly treated them as chattels” (Walvin, 9). Africans were easily replaced by the next shipment if they were worked to death or became ill. People of color were viewed as animals, dirty and inferior, while whites viewed themselves as pure and superior.

“Movement in the early black Atlantic took multiple forms: it was intra- as well as international, transoceanic and coastal as well as inland, female as well as male” (Gezina, 42). Gezina describes the Black Atlantic as “acts of forced migration” in her essay, “Mobility in Chains: Freedom of Movement in the Early Black Atlantic”. During the eighteenth century alone, over six million slaves were taken from Africa, and hundreds of them were crossing the seas at any given time throughout the century. According to Gezina, “The concept of ‘home’ is a crucial one to the travel narrative, for what colonial discourse called ‘home’ or ‘England’ was seem as the domestic space of the English nation” (Gezina, 44). Many black writers that were slaves in this era considered the journey on the ocean a “safer domestic space” (ibid), giving them a sense of temporary freedom. African American mobility is connected with their desire of opportunity and aspiration to find a home. The Black Atlantic was both racial and religious. “Race was itself often the reason for the travel, even as that travel may have been motivated by the nearly impossible search for a deracinated space” (Gezina, 42). In many of the writings of Africans, the ocean was also a symbol of religious conversion. Equiano, for example, had his epiphany at sea, “Where it pleased God to pour out on me the spirit of prayer and the grace of supplication, so that in loud acclamations I was enabled to praise and glorify his most holy name” (Guzina, 43).

Although there seems to be some argument over just how many slaves were brought over from Africa, the end result is still the same. Slave trading changed not only the lives of the Africans stolen from their land and sealed their fate of back breaking labor or disease, it changed the course of history from that point on. Our world is what it is today because of the events that took place back then.