1961 - Petersburg and Crolina Flashcards
Was slavery important for the economy?
Slavery was a a barbaric, cruel institution that was crucial to make modern world economy.
What was the situation in America? Particularly in 1861?
4 million slaves in African states existed in southern states and America (for labour).
1861 - change was in the air, few months before the controversial candidate Lincoln won presidency .
He opposed slave on moral level but didn’t call for immediate extinction of slavery, vowed to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories.
What was the situation in Carolina?
50% were enslaved.
Carolina broke free to form confederate states of America, so it became apart of a Republic.
When was the US civil war? What happened to the south?
1861-65.
The south were sectioned (there was a break away from slaveholding confederacy).
Slavery was destroyed through the civil war.
What happened following Tsar Alex’s emancipation reform 1861?
Freed slaves from their masters (Russian serfdom).
Happened at same time of US civil war.
Russian however was not a symbol of liberalism as it was a absolutist monarchy.
What was this an age of?
An age of revolution.
Unfree labor was the norm in EU rather than the exception/ classical civilisations like Rome rested on slavery.
Idea of freedom arose, individual ’self possession’/ ‘possessive individualism’ was anew concept.
This was a radical innovation and was apart of 17th-18thc enlightenment
What did the Revival in the 18th-19thc spur? How did slaveholder justify slavery?
Evangelical protestants to reform the world, purging it of sin.
Slaveholders denied their slaves the free will to find Christ and so, they were cast as sinners.
Slaveholders retorted that the bible justifies slavery
What were Wilberforce’s, Locke’s and Wollstonecraft’s opinions n slavery.
Wilberforce had a conversion experience in 1780s, and soon led the fight against the slave trade
John Locke was ambiguous on rights/wrongs of slavery, despite liberal outlook he justified slavery as consequence of war. Played a part in the founding of the Carolina colony (a slaveholders venture in late 17thc.)
Mary Wollstonecraft’s hoped to emancipate/liberate slaves and women, inspired by french revolution
Her book - ‘vindication of the rights of women’
What happened in Lincoln’s splitting fence?
Lincoln splitting fence fails.
His republic party shared Smith’s conviction that slavery was economically inefficient/ holding back the develop of an industry, commercial economy in which white men could advance. Free labour.
Slaveholders society seemed to cultivate what?
Premodern traits of behaviour: duels, whipping beating.
What is the alternative argument? How does this apply to Rssuia and AMerica?
Slavery was a building bloc for the modern world.
Russia- vast growth in territory increased the need for a dependent labour force, to the effectual enslavement of peasants by mid 17th 1480-1725.
Russian serfdom was a product of Russian outward expansion.
Plantation economy – based on slave labour for a world market, spreads out from atlantic islands to Americas and indian ocean between 16th-19th c.
What was William’s thesis?
Capitalism and slavery were not antithetical.
Rather, profits from slavery provided the capital for the industrial revolution.Slavery therefore made the modern world.
The church and slavery?
The church prohibited the enslavement of christians, but justified heathens. There was little concept of racial difference so they were not enslaved due to their race but rather their religion. Lack of freedom then became associated with dark skin.
What did scientific racism do?
Scientific racism married enlightenment learning and slavery with tragic consequences.
In Russia, serfs were not seen as a racial other from Russian nobility.
How did many view the freedom of lib individual?
It was merely the freedom to sell your labour on the open market.
