Slavery Poll

[Razgovory]

Marty is very persuasive. 

I love it when he uses the word "cretin".  It makes him sound like some kind of 19th century bumpkin.

[Caliga]

You should be choosing real love over Cherry 2000. 

I was more thinking of the robot chick from Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.

[Tonitrus]

You should be choosing real love over Cherry 2000. 

I was more thinking of the robot chick from Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.

But....what about Molly Ringwald? 

[Caliga]

Is she a robot? 

[Eddie Teach]

The "zeitgeist" you spoke of has nothing to do with industrialization but rather the religious and philosophical ideas that opposed slavery in the last few centuries.

Ideas don't exist in a vacuum. The notion that slavery is wrong had been kicking around for millennia. It flourished in the late 18th century in the North and in England because there was little pushback.

It's not so much that capitalism was the direct cause of abolition, but that it enabled it.

[Razgovory]

The "zeitgeist" you spoke of has nothing to do with industrialization but rather the religious and philosophical ideas that opposed slavery in the last few centuries.

Ideas don't exist in a vacuum. The notion that slavery is wrong had been kicking around for millennia. It flourished in the late 18th century in the North and in England because there was little pushback.

It's not so much that capitalism was the direct cause of abolition, but that it enabled it.

You haven't really made your case.  Slavery died out in a large part because the British found it repulsive and they were powerful enough to pressure other states into stopping the slave trade and eventually slavery itself.

[Eddie Teach]

The British weren't especially moral compared to anyone else. However, their wealth was in trade and skilled labor production, hence they didn't feel the need to rationalize continued acceptance of slavery.

[Sheilbh]

Government fiat is generally used more pragmatically than idealistically. Slavery was abolished in the northern US and the UK after it ceased being something the elites depended upon for their income(and the economy as a whole). This was due to industrial capitalism.

Interesting fact:  slavery was never abolished in the UK.  It was held in a court ruling to never have existed.  "The air of England is too free for a slave to breathe."

I could be wrong but I believe that case was decided in the Tudor period as well. Which is pre-industrial by anyone's standards.

The British weren't especially moral compared to anyone else. However, their wealth was in trade and skilled labor production, hence they didn't feel the need to rationalize continued acceptance of slavery.

That was the source of some of the British Empire's wealth. We also did very well out of the sugar plantations when abolitionism won I believe the West Indies was still at that point the big cash cow of Empire. The West India lobby was fiercely against it and against later abolition of the slave trade. It wasn't an economic move necessarily, I think it was above all a moral campaign and one of the early political campaigns in this country that mobilised ordinary people to a large extent. Of course there is a difference in that the economic benefits of slavery were not felt directly by many people in Britain who were the only people that needed to be mobilised to change the law.

Similarly France abolished slavery after the revolution despite it continuing to be of economic use in the richest colony of the French empire. Again that was a moral judgement. Napoleon, a supreme pragmatist, re-introduced it.

That's not to say either the British or the French were more moral than anyone else but I think the reasoning for their abolitionist movements and their support were moral not material.

[Eddie Teach]

That's not to say either the British or the French were more moral than anyone else but I think the reasoning for their abolitionist movements and their support were moral not material.

I agree with that statement. The reason for the relative weakness of the opposition was material.

[Sheilbh]

I agree with that statement. The reason for the relative weakness of the opposition was material.

Yes and no. Perhaps at the time, but even then, as I say, the West Indies lobby was not weak and there were many MPs and Lords with personal interests in the plantations.

And during the American Civil War the workers of the cotton mills famously voted their support of the blockade on the Confederacy and their support of the Union. There was even some organisations of workers that refused to work with cotton from the Confederacy because it was slave-picked. There was economic suffering that was not sufficient to overthrow morality among those workers. Hence Lincoln's letter to the people of Manchester which is carved onto the base of his statue in Lincoln Square.

Again there were mill-owners and ship-owners who weighed the economic effects more than working people did. As ever minimal economic suffering is required to overthrow the morality of the already rich - we still see that today.

[Ed Anger]

Marty is very persuasive. 

I love it when he uses the word "cretin".  It makes him sound like some kind of 19th century bumpkin.

Clutching a half eaten potato.

[Eddie Teach]

And during the American Civil War the workers of the cotton mills famously voted their support of the blockade on the Confederacy and their support of the Union.

I'd like to point out that these were people who had grown up with slavery being illegal in Britain.

As for the West Indies lobby, that was a small part of a large empire. They could cajole, but not dictate.

[Kleves]

No one would prefer black slaves over white slaves? That seems racist. 

[grumbler]

I could be wrong but I believe that case was decided in the Tudor period as well. Which is pre-industrial by anyone's standards.

The original case was the mansfield case in, as you note, the Tudor period.  Shanley v. Harvey in 1761 determined that a slave was free upon arriving in England, but this was not considered a precedent,  The Somerset case in 1771, however, was.  These were still pretty much pre-industrial.

That was the source of some of the British Empire's wealth. We also did very well out of the sugar plantations when abolitionism won I believe the West Indies was still at that point the big cash cow of Empire. The West India lobby was fiercely against it and against later abolition of the slave trade. It wasn't an economic move necessarily, I think it was above all a moral campaign and one of the early political campaigns in this country that mobilised ordinary people to a large extent. Of course there is a difference in that the economic benefits of slavery were not felt directly by many people in Britain who were the only people that needed to be mobilised to change the law.

Similarly France abolished slavery after the revolution despite it continuing to be of economic use in the richest colony of the French empire. Again that was a moral judgement. Napoleon, a supreme pragmatist, re-introduced it.

That's not to say either the British or the French were more moral than anyone else but I think the reasoning for their abolitionist movements and their support were moral not material.

I agree with all of this, and would argue that it was the development of a wealthy class not deriving wealth from the land that eventually allowed the anti-slavery movement to succeed.  Money is power, and so long as the power remained in the landed class, abolition remained an uphill struggle.

[viper37]

The "zeitgeist" you spoke of has nothing to do with industrialization but rather the religious and philosophical ideas that opposed slavery in the last few centuries.

Ideas don't exist in a vacuum. The notion that slavery is wrong had been kicking around for millennia. It flourished in the late 18th century in the North and in England because there was little pushback.

It's not so much that capitalism was the direct cause of abolition, but that it enabled it.

You haven't really made your case.  Slavery died out in a large part because the British found it repulsive and they were powerful enough to pressure other states into stopping the slave trade and eventually slavery itself.

the only place the British needed slaves was in some colonies.  Had the British held on to the US, they might not have been so inclined to abolish slavery.

First, they abolished the trade, than slavery in the british empire, but not in colonies where they were needed, and finally they paid compensation to slave owners.  It was a gradual process, as slaves were less&less necessary.