See also Attitudes to Slavery: Texts and Sources
EUROPEAN ATTITUDES TO SLAVERY
- Jan Hogendorn reviews David Eltis's The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas
- worker-brc-news@lists.tao.ca; on behalf of; H-Net Reviews [books@H-ET.MSU.EDU]15-08-00 H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by EH.Net (July, 2000)
David Eltis. _The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas_.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xvii + 353 pp. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-521-65231-6.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Jan Hogendorn <jshogend@colby.edu>, Department of Economics, Colby College
David Eltis of Queen's University, Canada, has produced
an ambitious explanatory survey on the emergence of African
slavery in the Americas. Why, he asks, should a slave system
have arisen in the New World under western European auspices
when the countries involved were in so many other ways
leaders in developing political and economic freedoms?
Eltis explores the issue in a lengthy, densely-written
volume that serves to highlight three decades of advance
in the study of American slavery and the Atlantic slave
trade, an intellectual progress in which he has been a major
player. A significant innovation in this book is the way
it integrates analyses of labor and commodity markets in
Africa, Europe, and the Americas with transport costs to
arrive at conclusions based broadly on demand and supply.
Any attempt to achieve such breadth is a daunting task with
the danger that the thread of the argument will be lost,
but Eltis has succeeded in making his story plausible
and coherent -- though not an easy read.
The first analytical chapter (Chapter 2) undertakes to
show the relationship between the rise of the Atlantic
slave trade and the development of a free labor market and
modern labor force in Europe. Here the focus is on how the
competing demands for labor on both sides of the Atlantic
together with improvement in the position of labor in Europe
put limits on the labor supply in the Americas, giving the
necessary opening for African slavery to emerge in that area.
In Chapter 3, "Europeans and African Slavery in the
Americas," Eltis turns to the question of why European
slaves were not an adequate substitute for Africans in
bondage. He notes that military captives and criminals were
available in quantity and reminds us (in interesting detail)
of the long tradition of galley slaves at the oars of
Mediterranean shipping. But in this case the implicit debate
on who was eligible for slavery, who an insider and who
an outsider, the balance went against the use of European
slaves -- a decision made the easier by the availability
of African slaves. He continues the analysis into issues
of gender, probing why women were far more important in the
African slave trade than they were among other migrant flows
of labor indentured and free. The position of European women
in the eyes of the Europeans themselves was a cultural norm
that kept them from plantation gang labor but such norms did
not protect African women.
These basically cultural explanations become more explicitly
economic in Chapter 5, on productivity in the slave trade.
In his treatment Eltis emphasizes the role of transport
costs. The focus is apt because as he points out the high
cost of organization, financing, shipping, handling, and
insurance together with the long delays often experienced
in trading on the African coasts raised the price of both
imports of goods to Africa and slaves exported from that
continent to about double their respective prices at the
source. The slave trade was "possibly the most international
activity of the pre-industrial era" (p. 136), with huge
transport bills for the assembly of the goods shipped from
Europe and Asia (with textiles from India a major method of
paying for slaves), for transporting these goods to Africa,
and then for the movement of slaves to the New World.
At about the halfway point of the book, the focus shifts
to Africa and the supply side. The first question of Chapter
6 is why European enterprise resulted in a movement of labor
to the Americas when the same commodities could have been
produced by Europeans in Africa itself. An interesting review
of European attempts to establish farms and plantations on
or near the African coast leads to analysis of technical and
ecological constraints but concludes that the main barriers
were political and military, with Europeans generally unable
at this stage to penetrate any significant distance inland
from their ships' guns. So with commodity production in
Africa foreclosed but possible across the Atlantic, the most
profitable alternative was to deal with African suppliers
of slaves. The establishment of these contacts and their
productivity-enhancing improvement concludes this chapter.
An absorbing thread of this discussion and that of the
following chapter, "The African Impact on the Transatlantic
Slave Trade," is how the trans-Atlantic shippers had to
confront resistance by slaves who, particularly at or near
the coast, often attempted to seize their floating prisons
and escape. Eltis concludes that in spite of the many
productivity-increasing improvements in transport, one
economic fact of life was that costs of policing this risk
were much higher than otherwise. The main impact was on
labor costs, where, he estimates, outlays were higher by
about two-thirds compared to a situation where policing
was not necessary. The effect of these higher costs was
to reduce the quantity of slaves exported by nearly ten
percent, or about half a million people, between 1700 and
1800, but as he notes, the extent of such resistance was
very different from one coastal location to another.
Another feature of the chapter on the "African Impact"
is the description of the complicated task facing European
shippers of wares that had to be tailored to the variegated
demand patterns along the coast. The differences in demand
were striking, certainly not indicative of homogenized tastes.
For example, in 1662-1703 according to Royal African Company
records, imports of textiles to the Bight of Biafra were 1
percent of all RAC shipments compared to 77 percent along
the Gold Coast; while for the same two areas metals were
respectively 80 percent and 6 percent of total shipments.
Almost all of the RAC's cowries went to the Slave Coast,
with few arriving at any other destination. By commodity,
rarely did the average percentage share for the coast as a
whole reflect the percentage for any single one of the five
regions shown in the data.
The volume concludes with chapters providing a comparative
perspective on the English plantations in America, on
ethnicity in the trade, on the ultimate impact of the trade
on Europe, and with three appendices (on age and sex of the
Africans shipped to American bondage, on slave prices, and
on the merchandise imports to West Africa that served to
purchase slaves).
Overall, Eltis's impressive book does good work in two
different arenas. Specialists in research on the Atlantic
slave trade and slavery in Africa and the Americas will see
better than before the integration among markets and regions
that characterized this trade. Economists and historians who
are not specialists will see this as well, but they will
also find the book a proficient and well-sourced overview
of a massive subject.
Copyright (c) 2000 by EH.NET. All rights reserved.
This work may be copied for non-profit educational uses
if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For
other permission, please contact the EH.NET Administrator
(administrator@eh.net; Telephone: 513-529-2850; Fax:
513-529-3308).
- Tom Paine on AFRICAN SLAVERY IN AMERICA
- TO AMERICANS
(Editor's Note: Though Paine was not the first, as some have said, to advocate the abolition of slavery in America, he was certainly one of the earliest and most influential. The essay was written in 1774 and publishes March 8, 1775 when it appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser. Just a few weeks later on April 14, 1775 the first anti-slavery society in America was formed in Philadelphia. Paine was a member).
That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave
men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But
that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be
concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though
it ha been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, of every
principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of
eminent men, and several late publications. Our Traders in MEN ( an
unnatural commodity!) must know the wickedness of the SLAVE-TRADE, if they
attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own hearts: and such as shun
and stiffle all these, wilfully sacrifice Conscience, and the character of
integrity to that golden Idol.
The Managers the Trade themselves, and others testify, that many of
these African nations inhabit fertile countries, are industrious farmers,
enjoy plenty, and lived quietly, averse to war, before the Europeans
debauched them with liquors, and bribing them against one another; and that
these inoffensive people are brought into slavery, by stealing them,
tempting Kings to sell subjects, which they can have to right to do, and
hiring one tribe to war against another, in order to catch prisoners. By
such wicked and inhuman ways the English are said to enslave towards one
hundred thousand yearly; of which thirty thousand are supposed to die by
barbarous treatment in the first year; besides all that are slain in the
unnatural ways excited to take them. So much innocent blood have the
Managers and Supports of this inhuman Trade to answer for to the common Lord
of all!
Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage
conquerors, as some plead: and they who were such prisoners, the English,
who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being
so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe nothing to the
redeemer but what he paid for them.
They should as little Reason as Conscience who put the matter by with
saying - Men, in some cases, are lawfully made Slaves, and why not these? So
men, in some cases, are lawfully put to death, deprived of their goods,
without their consent; may any man, therefore, be treated so, without any
conviction of desert? Nor is this plea mended by adding- They are set forth
to us as slaves, and we buy them without farther inquiry, let the sellers
see to it. Such man may as well join with a known band of robbers, buy their
ill-got goods, and help on the trade; ignorance is no more pleadable in one
case than the other; the sellers plainly own how they obtain them. But none
can lawfully buy without evidence that they are not concurring with
Men-Stealers; and as the true owner has a right to reclaim his goods that
were stolen, and sold; so the slave, who is proper owner of his freedom, has
a right to reclaim it, however often sold.
Most shocking of all is alleging the Sacred Scriptures to favour this
wicked practice. One would have thought none but infidel cavillers would
endeavour to make them appear contrary to the plain dictates of natural
light, and the Conscience, in a matter of common Justice and Humanity; which
they cannot be. Such worthy men, as referred to before, judged otherways;
Mr. BAXTER declared, the Slave-Traders should be called Devils, rather than
Christian; and that it is a heinous crime to buy them. But some say, the
practice was permitted to the Jews. To which may be replied,
1. The example of the Jews, in many things, may not be imitated by us;
they had not only orders to cut off several nations altogether, but if they
were obliged to war with others, and conquered them, to cut off every male;
they were suffered to use polygamy and divorces, and other things utterly
unlawful to us under clearer light.
2. The plea is, in a great measure, false; they had no permission to
catch and enslave people who never injured them.
3. Such arguments ill become us, since the time of reformation came,
under Gospel light. All distinctions of nations and privileges of one above
others, are ceased; Christians are taught to account all men their
neighbours; and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as
they would be done by; to do good to all men; and Man-stealing is ranked
with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving out inoffensive neighbours,
and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, reconcilable with the
Divine precepts! Is this doing to them as we would desire they should do to
us? If they could carry off and enslave some thousands of us, would we think
it just? One would almost wish they could for once; it might convince more
than Reason, or the Bible.
As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for
examples of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners
they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have
no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch
inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an height of outrage
against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be
practised by pretended Christian. How shameful are all attempt to colour and
excuse it!
As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have
still a natural, perfect right to it; and the Governments whenever they come
should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.
So monstrous in the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted from
the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice;
as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each
other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for
adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the
guilty Masters must answer to the final Judge.
If the slavery of the parents be unjust, much more is their
children's; if the parents were justly slaves, yet the children are born
free; this is the natural, perfect right of all mankind; they are nothing
but a just recompense to those who bring them up: And as much less is
commonly spent on them than others, they have a right, in justice, to be
proportionably sooner free.
Certainly, one may, with as much reason and decency, plead for murder,
robbery, lewdness and barbarity, as for this practice: They are not more
contrary to the natural dictates of Conscience, and feeling of Humanity;
nay, they are all comprehended in it.
But the chief design of this paper is not to disprove it, which many
have sufficiently done; but to entreat Americans to consider:
1. With what consistency, or decency they complain so loudly of attempts
to enslave the, while they hold so many hundred thousands in slavery; and
annually enslave many thousands more, without an pretence of authority, or
claim upon them?
2. How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which
Providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent
blood in doing it; and now are threatened with the same. And while other
evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this especially, and publicity;
than which no other vice, if all others, has brought so much guilt on the
land?
3. Whether, then, all ought not immediately to discontinue and renounce
it, with grief and abhorrence? Should not every society bear testimony
against it, and account obstinate persisters in it bad men, enemies to their
country, and exclude them from fellowship; as they often do for much lesser
faults?
4. The great Question may be p; What should be done with those who are
enslaved already? To turn the old and infirm free, would be injustice and
cruelty; they who enjoyed the labours of the their better days should keep,
and treat them humanely. As to the rest, let prudent men, with the
assistance of legislatures, determine what is practicable for masters, and
and best for them. Perhaps some could give them lands upon reasonable rent,
some, employing them in their labour still, might give them some reasonable
allowances for it; so as all may have some property, and fruits of their
labours at the own disposal, and be encouraged to industry; the family may
live together, and enjoy the natural satisfaction of exercising relative
affections and duties, with civil protection, and other advantages, like
fellow men. Perhaps they might sometime form useful barrier settlements on
the frontiers. Thus they may become interested in the public welfare, and
assist in promoting it; instead of being dangerous, as now they are, should
any enemy promise them a better condition.
5. The past treatment of Africans must naturally fill them with
abhorrence of Christians; lead them to think our religion would make them
more inhuman savages, if they embraced it; thus the gain of that trade has
been pursued in oppositions of the redeemer's cause, and the happiness of
men: Are we not, therefore, bound in duty to him and to them to repair these
injuries, as far as possible, by taking some proper measure to instruct, not
only the slaves here, but the Africans in their own countries? Primitive
Christians, laboured always to spread the Divine Religion; and this is
equally our duty while there is an Heather nation: But what singular
obligations are we under to these injured people!
These are the sentiments of JUSTICE AND HUMANITY.
OTHER REFERENCES
Hippisley, John, Three 18c essays of African trade