A200 Block 4 Unit 14 Flashcards
Guyanese Marxist Rodney proffers that slavery
Thornton opposes opinion
Stultified labour saving technology - easier to use slaves
Blocked capitalist development as no wage labour needed
Fostering political fragmentation in Africa and institutionalised slavery
Thornton - grew out of and rationalised by African Societies and controlled the trade to the loading point, it was deep seated in legal and institutional African Societies pre European contact
Slave Trade Composition
Africans less susceptible to disease and militarily able to keep Europeans on coasts who recognised sovereignty and paid rent
African slaves used in Muslim countries (traders known as slatees) and supplied to Europe, African leaders seduced by external demand into increasing their wealth and power turning dependants e.g. Those taken in war - into commodities - coffles of slaves - becomes a vicious and avaricious cycle leading to raids and war
Other Causes
Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson ‘efficacy of Regulation of Abolition’ 1789 horror stories from slave ship seamen
John Matthews naval lieutenant - slavery endemic in Africa due to ‘incessant wars between ‘a prodigious number of small independent states’ if Europeans hadn’t bought them they would have starved or been put to death
Countries abolishing slavery
France Diderot and D’Alembert ‘All men by nature having and equal freedom…’ Slavary abolished in France in 1794
America not until after the Civil War in 1865
Slave Leaders
Toussaint Louverture 1804 military leader realises the black governed state of Hati in1804
Sam Sharp’s uprising in 1831 crushed by plantation owners and military and evaporation of political will in Britain
Revolts mirror modernity of social revolutions in Europe
Monetary effects
Shipping, expanded British trade fleet, insurance, ( though shipping utilisation was a part not the whole as industrialisation, production of consumer products and trade figured highly)
Finance - The Colonial Debts Act 1732, gives British planters access to more working capital by ensuring creditors were not over exposed I.e. Unlike foreign creditors they could take the land on non-payment of debt
Insurance market for ships, cargos and slaves
Factory system pre-cursor?
Centralised labour gangs for harvesting, crushing and boiling the sugar cane down, packing and shipping task systems soon to be emulated in England
Planters like Edward Long believed the slaves to have better lives than factory workers in England
Anti Slavery campaign
Raises political awareness among the lower classes in Britain
Printing presses used in pamphleting campaigns
Ordinary men now became used to petitioning (once the reserve of the aristocracy) to demand the freeing of black slaves
Lord Castlereagh thwarted in attempt to allow France recommence slave trade at Congress of Vienna in 1814, 800 petitions with 750,000 names gathered (Waites and Goodrich)
Another petition in 1832 1.5 million signatures resulting in the Emancipation Bill 1833 legalised slavery ends in 1833 (also English Reform Act of 1832)
