by Freedom- The Overthrow of the Slave Empires (retail) (epub)
All that began to change, however, in the late eighteenth century. As the stark realities of slave life dawned on an increasingly literate world, and as slave defiance began to make an impact beyond the boundaries of slave societies, a new kind of awareness, a sensibility, emerged in the West. It germinated and evolved in response to the slaves’ ordeals and to their efforts to resist what was happening to them.
Slavery was a remarkably durable institution, and the people who controlled it, at sea and on the American plantations, clung to it with astonishing tenacity. They fought to ensure its survival in the teeth of persistent defiance from the slaves themselves, and despite mounting pressure from growing numbers of people who came to see slavery as an ethical and religious outrage. The ultimate achievement of this powerful slave lobby lay in its commercial success, but that success was rooted in an oppressive culture that relied on punitive threats and sanctions – and inflicted severe punishments on defiance. Most slave owners came to accept that their slaves formed an alien body: an enemy within, which they needed but which was ultimately unknowable.
Some believed they had the trust of the slaves, imagining that their slaves respected and perhaps even held them in high regard or with affection. They were invariably distraught when their slaves turned. Slave favourites, lovers, nannies, cooks, trusted retainers, men and women in responsible positions – all, and many more – turned out to be less reliable, less trustworthy, less loyal than their owners expected. At such moments, it was hard to dispute the bleakest of slave owners’ fears: that slaves could never be trusted. Give them an inch and they would take an African mile.
There are many ways of telling the history of slavery. One would be via the recurring hostility and defiance of the slaves themselves. They sought a way out but were normally able to secure little more than small, mundane improvements for themselves. In the most dire of circumstances – on frontier properties in harsh physical conditions – survival itself was as much as they could hope for. Surviving slavery was more important than securing freedom.[2] Most, however, settled into a life of resigned defiance: doing just as much as was required to get by. But there were always some (usually young African males) – angry, dangerous, headstrong – intent on something different; they were the slaves who proved the most persistently troublesome for their masters.
Everything changed, right across the Americas, after the Haitian revolt. Slaves quickly heard of that upheaval (and recalled it fondly many years later), but its most immediate and long-lasting impact was among slave owners. Haiti terrified them and stiffened their resolve in equal measure. It was the most chilling of cautionary tales. At the same time, it encouraged slaves with the awareness of what was possible. Though Haiti was an exception, wherever we look familiar patterns of slave defiance emerged, from one slave society to another: local resistance, runaways, Maroon communities, plots and rebellions, an abundance of individual recalcitrance – all formed a brew of slave discontent that created an endless challenge for the slave holders. Some slaves found personal freedom – in the bush, in the towns, even at sea – but the overthrow of slavery and the arrival of freedom for all came through more uncertain and turbulent times. It was then that slave defiance tipped the balance.
The British tide in favour of slave freedom was turned by the violence of major slave rebellions – and the even greater horrors of their suppression. The wars for independence in South America destroyed both the Spanish Empire and slavery. Slaves joined the fighting and turned the ideology of colonial freedom into an irresistible demand for freedom from slavery. Later, Cuba’s slaves similarly joined in the prolonged war against Spanish rule, and the disruption of warfare encouraged other Cuban slaves simply to walk away, in enormous numbers, from the house of bondage. Their withdrawal of their labour, vital to their owners’ ability to resist and fight, and the slaves’ flight sapped that ability and undermined the self-belief and confidence of the slave owners.
In North America, the US Civil War provided the opening for which slaves had long been waiting. In their eyes, it was their war. They fled the plantations, joined the Union armies, headed north or simply fled on what became a new, and no-longer furtive, Underground Railroad. The South’s economic ability to fight the war was fatally damaged by these slave migrations. A generation later, it was the turn of Brazil’s slaves to undermine slavery by a massive desertion of the plantations.
In all the drives for slave freedom (in the British Caribbean, the USA, in Cuba and Brazil) slaves were urged to flee by a massive base of supporters and sympathisers. These were people who had themselves turned against slavery due to what they learned about slave life and sufferings. Everywhere, public opinion was roused by a growing awareness of the raw realities of slave life. Slaves, freed slaves, Africans, all and more added testimony and eyewitness accounts of the realities of slavery – and those voices helped to swing opinion against slavery. It was an abolition sentiment that blossomed in the rich atmosphere cultivated by the evidence about slave lives and anguish.
Freedom – emancipation – came (eventually) via legislation, proclamations, constitutional change and declarations. These were usually issued from centres of political power many miles away from the centres of slave life. But none of those official changes would have come to pass exactly when and how they did without the efforts of the slaves themselves. It was slave effort, resolve and defiance that won to their side invaluable political support. Those same qualities served also to weaken their opponents, undermining the confidence and self-belief of the slave owners. Slave owners’ power was corroded and weakened, their economic strength ruined by warfare, by revolt, by the regular haemorrhage of enslaved manpower. Finally, slaves everywhere were free. Though freedom was to bring its own tribulations, for the time being, freedom seemed enough.
Notes
The full citations for the footnotes can be found in the Bibliography. The following notes are designed to help readers locate the relevant evidence.
Chapter 1
1 Detailed evidence for the slave trade can be found in two related sources: the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (www.slavevoy-ages.org), and the volume derived from that database: David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven and London, 2010).
2 David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas, p. xvii.
3 A. E. Lawrence, Fortified Trade Posts, Ch. 7.
4 David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas, Maps 9–10, pp. 15–17.
5 David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas, Maps 23, 26, Table 6, pp. 43, 46, 203.
6 David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas, pp. 37–8, 47.
7 David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas, Maps 32–3, 38–40, 41–2, 51, 52, pp. 57–9, 66–71, 85–6.
8 Sir John Hawkins, First Voyages (1562), in Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations (London, 1926 edition, 7 vols), vol. VII, p. 5.
9 James Walvin, Crossings, p. 77; David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas, p. 98.
10 David Richardson, Suzanne Schwarz and Anthony Tibbles (eds), Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery.
11 David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas, Table 5, p. 90.
12 John Newton, Journal, pp. 14, 72.
13 James Walvin, Crossings, p. 98.
Chapter 2
1 James Walvin, Sugar, p. 38.
2 João José Reis, ‘Slavery in Nineteenth-century Brazil’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 131.
3 James Walvin, Sugar, pp. 120–1.
4 David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage, pp. 119–20.
5 B. W. Higman, A Concise History of the Caribbean, Ch. 4.
6 James Walvin, Sugar, pp. 40–3.
7 B. W. Higman, A Concise History of the Caribbean, p. 125.
8 Pieter C. Emmer and S. L. Engerman, ‘Non-Hispanic West Indies’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, pp. 75–6.
9 B. W. Higman, A Concise History of the Caribbean, pp. 81–7.
10 B. W. Higman, A Concise History of the Caribbean, pp. 105–6.
11 Laird W. Bergad, ‘Slavery in Cuba and Puerto Rico’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, pp. 101–5.
12 Seymour Drescher, Abolition, pp. 183–5.
13 Laird W. Bergad, ‘Slavery in Cuba and Puerto Rico’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, pp. 107, 110–11.
14 David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage, Ch. 6.
15 David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage, p. 156.
16 Richard Follett, The Sugar Masters.
17 Stanley L. Engerman, ‘US Slavery and its Aftermath’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, Ch. 7.
18 James Walvin, Slavery in Small Things, Ch. 11.
Chapter 3
1 For an original and important view of this topic, see the adverts for runaway slaves in Britain, www.runaways.gla.ac.uk.
2 Michael Tadman, Speculators and Slaves, Ch. 6.
3 B. W. Higman, A Concise History of the Caribbean, pp. 142–3.
4 João José Reis, ‘Slavery in Nineteenth-century Brazil’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 149.
5 Christer Petley, White Fury, p. 58.
6 B. W. Higman, Plantation Jamaica, pp. 51–2.
7 Rhys Isaac, see Index, ‘disciplining workers’, Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom.
8 David Bron Davis, Inhuman Bondage, p. 205.
9 James Walvin, Atlas, p. 114; Eric Robert Taylor, If We Must Die, pp. 67–183.
Chapter 4
1 David Geggus, ‘Slavery and the Haitian Revolution, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, pp. 321–2.
2 David Geggus, ‘Slavery and the Haitian Revolution’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, pp. 324.
3 David Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution, Ch. 1; Jeremy D. Popkin, ‘Introduction’, Facing Racial Revolution.
4 David Geggus, The Haitian Revolution, pp. xii-xiii.
5 David Geggus, Slavery, War and Revolution, p. 25.
6 David Geggus, The Haitian Revolution, pp. 15–16.
7 David Geggus, ‘Slavery and the Haitian Revolution’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 324.
8 David Geggus, ‘Slavery and the Haitian Revolution’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 325.
9 Ogé’s address, in David Geggus, The Haitian Revolution, pp. 48–9.
10 Jeremy D. Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution, pp. 44–5.
11 David Geggus, ‘Slavery and the Haitian Revolution’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 332.
12 James Robertson, Gone is the Ancient Glory, pp. 134–5; anonymous letter, 18 November 1791, C.O. 137/89, National Archives, Kew.
13 David Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, p. 183.
14 David Geggus, ‘Slavery and the Haitian Revolution’, in David Eltis etal., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 335.
15 David Geggus, ‘Slavery and the Haitian Revolution, in David Eltis etal., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 337.
Chapter 5
1 David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, pp. 169–73.
2 Christopher Brown, Moral Capital, p. 38.
3 Christopher Brown, Moral Capital, pp. 41–4.
4 Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank (eds), Quakers and Abolition, p. 2.
5 Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, pp. 106–10.
6 Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, p. 115.
7 Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, p. 117.
8 Christopher Brown, Moral Capital, p. 409.
9 Ryan Hanley, Beyond Slavery and Abolition.
10 James Walvin, Slavery in Small Things, p. 157.
11 James Walvin, The Zong, pp. 166, 179.
12 Vincent Carretta, Equiano.
13 Vincent Carretta, Equiano.
14 James Walvin, The Zong, p. 192.
15 Seymour Drescher, ‘European Antislavery’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 375.
16 James Walvin, The Zong, p. 197.
Chapter 6
1 B. W. Higman, Slave Populations, Ch. 2.
2 Michael Craton, Testing the Chains, p. 246.
3 Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, Ch. 10.
4 Claire Midgley, Women Against Slavery; Moira Ferguson, Subject to Others; John Oldfield, Popular Politics.
5 Michael Craton, Testing the Chains, Ch. 22.
6 Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and the British Empire, p. 190.
7 Nicholas Draper, ‘Conclusion’, The Price of Freedom.
Chapter 7
1 Stanley L. Engerman, ‘US Slavery and Its Aftermath’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 155.
2 Stanley L. Engerman, ‘US Slavery and Its Aftermath’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 157; Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, Table 3, p. 254.
3 Both letters, and thousands more, can be found at www.informationwanted.org.
4 Sven Berkert, Empire of Cotton; Stanley L. Engerman, ‘US Slavery and Its Aftermath’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, pp. 152–9; Robert W. Fogel, Without Consent, p. 87.
5 Robert W. Fogel, Without Consent, p. 258.
6 Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross.
7 Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, pp. 180–2.
8 Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, pp. 344–5.
9 Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, p. 58.
10 Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, p. 196.
11 Michael Craton, Testing the Chains, Ch. 22.
12 Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, pp. 406–14.
13 Johannes Postma, Slave Revolts, pp. 83–4.
14 Johannes Postma, Slave Revolts, pp. 85–6.
15 Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, p. 157.
16 Richard Blackett, The Captive’s Quest for Freedom. The book was published too late to be a major reference for this work.
17 Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom, pp. 152–5.
18 Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom, p. 4; Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, p. 382.
19 Robert W. Fogel, Without Consent, pp. 254–6: Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, p. 256.
20 Robert W. Fogel, Without Consent, p. 256.
21 James B. Stewart, ‘Antislavery and Abolitionism in the US’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 406: Robert W. Fogel, Without Consent, p. 269.
22 David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage, p. 259.
23 David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage, pp. 262, 280.
24 David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage, pp. 265–6.
25 James Walvin, Slavery in Small Things, Ch. 9.
26 David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage, p. 289.
27 David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage, p. 302.
28 Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty, Appendix A. 24.
Chapter 8
1 Peter Bakewell, A History of Latin America, p. 152.
2 K. R. Lohse, ‘Mexico and Central America’, in R. L. Paquette and M. M. Smith (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Slavery, pp. 61–3; Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, ‘The Transition from Slavery’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, pp. 468–9.
3 Peter Blanchard, ‘Spanish South American Mainland’, in R. L. Paquette and M. M. Smith (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Slavery, pp. 68–75.
4 Peter Blanchard, ‘Spanish South American Mainland’, in R. L. Paquette and M. M. Smith (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Slavery, pp. 79–82.
5 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition, pp. 90–6.
6 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, ‘Transition from Slavery’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 468.
7 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition, p. 109.
8 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition, pp. 111–12.
9 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, ‘Transition from Slavery’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 469.
10 Peter Blanchard, ‘Spanish South American Mainland’, in R. L. Paquette and M. M. Smith (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Slavery, pp. 81–4.
11 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition, pp. 114–15.
12 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition, pp. 37, 42, 123–32.
13 Laird W. Bergad, ‘Slavery in Cuba’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, Ch. 5.
14 David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas, p. 202.
15 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition, pp. 130–2.
16 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition, pp. 136–7.
17 M. D. Childs and M. Barcia, ‘Cuba’, in R. L. Paquette and M. M. Smith (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Slavery, p. 100.
18 M. D. Childs and M. Barcia, ‘Cuba’, in R. L. Paquette and M. M. Smith (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Slavery, pp. 100–2.
19 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition, p. 144.
20 M. D. Childs and M. Barcia, ‘Cuba’, in R. L. Paquette and M. M. Smith (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Slavery, pp. 103–5.
21 Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, ‘Transition from Slavery’, in David Eltis et al., Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 4, p. 471.