Slavery HW Reading.pdf

On the Enlightenment and Slavery Since most Enlightenment thinkers opposed slavery, what was their excuse against immediate freedom for slaves? Slavery, like the oppression of women, had existed for thousands of years. Should the philosophes have “known better?” The Atlantic slave trade reached it...

On the Enlightenment and Slavery Since most Enlightenment thinkers opposed slavery, what was their excuse against immediate freedom for slaves? Slavery, like the oppression of women, had existed for thousands of years. Should the philosophes have “known better?” The Atlantic slave trade reached its peak in the 18th century when European traders sent at least 6 million Africans into New World slavery. On this topic, even radical Enlightenment thinkers hesitated and their hesitations are revealing about the tensions in Enlightenment thought. Enlightenment thinking began with the premise that individuals could reason and govern themselves. Slavery defied natural law and natural freedom. Nearly all Enlightenment thinkers condemned slavery in the symbolic sense. But many skirted the actual enslavement and slave labor of Africans. Voltaire wondered if Europe would look away if Europeans – rather than Africans – were enslaved. Voltaire, however, believed that Africans were inferior peoples. Montesquieu believed that slavery made both slave and master into brutes. But like many Enlightenment thinkers, Montesquieu defended property rights, including those of slaveholders. In Diderot’s Encyclopedia, the slave trade was condemned in the clearest possible terms, as a violation of self-government. Anti-slavery movements emerged, making the same arguments, but few were ready to make the step toward actually freeing slaves. In the end, Enlightenment thinkers’ belief that environment and education shaped character provided a common way to postpone the issue. Since slavery corrupted its victims, destroyed their natural virtue, and crushed their natural love of liberty, it stood to reason that enslaved peoples were not ready for freedom. Only a very few advocated abolishing slavery and they insisted that emancipation be gradual. Judith Coffin, Western Civilizations A. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, (1789) – On Slavery’s Effects Olaudah Equiano (c.1745-1797) was born in Nigeria. Kidnapped and sold into slavery in childhood, he was taken as a slave to the New World. He eventually earned the price of his own freedom by careful trading and saving. As a seaman, he traveled the world, including the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Atlantic and the Arctic. Coming to London, he became involved in the movement to abolish the slave trade. Such a tendency has the slave trade to corrupt men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men. No; such is the fate of this mistaken avarice (greed), that it corrupts the milk of human kindness. And, had the work of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious, and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence (disease), and taints what it touches! Which violates those first natural rights of mankind – equality and independence, and gives one man an authority over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! When you make men slaves, you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them, by your own conduct, an example of fraud and cruelty, and compel (force) them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You bet them and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance. And yet you assert (claim) that they are incapable of learning. An assertion at once impious (sinful) and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame, to see your nature reduced so low? But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent, and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness would attend you. B. William Pitt on the abolition of the slave trade (1792) In this address before Parliament in 1792, British Prime Minister William Pitt argued for Britain to ban the slave trade. In this excerpt, he reminds his listeners that Britain in ancient times was the source of thousands of slaves for the markets in Rome. The slave trade was not finally abolished in the British Empire until 1807. Slavery itself was not abolished until 1833. Why ought the slave trade to be abolished? Because it is incurable injustice. How much stronger, then, is the argument for immediate than gradual abolition? If on the ground of injustice it ought to be abolished at last, why ought it not now? Why is injustice to be suffered to remain for a single hour? I know of no evil that ever has existed, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the tearing of seventy or eighty thousand persons annually from their native land under the sanction of the laws of that nation which calls herself the most free and the most happy of them all. We give them [Africans] just enough of European improvements to enable them to turn Africa into a ravaged wilderness. Instead of giving to them, from this highly favored land, any means of improvement, you carry with you that poisonous plant by which everything is withered, under whose shade nothing that is useful or profitable to Africa will ever flourish or take root. If, knowing the miseries we have caused, we refuse even now to put a stop to them, how greatly aggravated will be the guilt of Great Britain! And what a blot will the history of these transactions forever be in the history of this country! [Some say] that Africa labors under a natural incapacity for civilization; that it is fanaticism to think that she can ever enjoy the knowledge and the morals of Europe; that Providence never intended her to rise above a state of barbarism… I should be glad to know why it might not also have been applied to ancient and uncivilized Britain. I would peculiarly observe that the very practice of the slave trade once existed among us. Great numbers of slaves were exported like cattle, from the British coast, and were to be seen exposed for sale in the Roman market. Why might not some Roman senator, reasoning on the same principles of some honorable gentlemen, and pointing to British barbarians, have predicted with equal boldness, "There is a people that will never rise to civilization—there is a people destined never to be free.” Might not this have been said, according to the principles which we now hear stated, in all respects as fairly and as truly of Britain herself, at that period of her history, as it can now be said by us of the inhabitants of Africa? C. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, (1789) – Reasons for Abolition I hope to have the satisfaction of seeing the renewal of liberty and justice. Then shall those persons particularly be named with praise and honor, who generously proposed and stood forth in the cause of humanity, liberty, and good policy; and brought to the ear of the legislature plans worthy of adoption. May Heaven make the British senators the dispersers of light, liberty and science, to the uttermost parts of the earth: then will be glory to God on the highest, on earth peace, and good-will to men. As to the inhuman traffic of slavery, if a system of commerce was established in Africa, the demand for manufactures would most rapidly increase, as the native inhabitants would adopt the British fashions, manners, customs, &c. In proportion to the civilization, so will be the consumption of British manufactures. Trade with Africa opens an inexhaustible source of wealth to the manufacturing interests of Great Britain, and to all which the slave-trade is an objection. The manufacturers of this country must and will, in the nature and reason of things, have a full and constant employ, by supplying the African markets. The manufacturing interest and the general interests are the same. The abolition of slavery would be in reality a universal good. I hope the slave-trade will be abolished. I pray it may be an event at hand. The great body of manufacturers, uniting in the cause, will considerably speed it; and, as I have already stated, it is most substantially in their interest and advantage, and as such the nation’s at large. In a short time one sentiment alone will prevail, from motives of interest as well as justice and humanity. If the blacks were permitted to remain in their own country, they would double themselves every fifteen years. In proportion to such increase will be the demand for manufactures. Cotton and indigo grow in most parts of Africa; a consideration this of no small consequence to the manufacturing towns of Great Britain. It opens a most immense, glorious, and happy prospect - the clothing, &c. of a continent ten thousand miles in circumference, and immensely rich in raw products in return for manufactures. Questions: 1. How was Equiano influenced by the principles of the Enlightenment? 2. According to Equiano, how did slavery violate the principles of the Enlightenment? 3. How does Pitt try to appeal to the Parliament members’ sense of patriotism and humanity? 4. Why does Pitt compare Africa with “ancient and uncivilized” Britain? 5. What reasons does Equiano give for the abolition of slavery? 6. Why does Equiano discuss the economy of Africa? Why does he appeal to English manufacturers?