Antislavery, Humanity, and the Notion of Rights: Social Developments in Response to The Atlantic Slave Trade.

    In his essay, “Spain in the Antilles and the Antilles in Spain,” Christopher Schmidt Nowara references the 1944 work of Eric Williams in establishing the validity of the argument that it was Britain’s need for the development of a new economical system, to replace the fledgling slave system, that lead to the abolitionist movement. In his essay Williams breaks from the traditional portrayal of the abolitionists as ‘Saints’ concerned with humanitarian work in order to argue that it was, “a desire for free trade and more productive forms of labor within the emerging capitalist world system moved Britain to abolish slavery and the slave trade.” Further referencing the work of Williams, Schmidt tells us that, “the drive of the British capitalist classes toward worldwide capitalist social relations and free trade impelled British abolitionism…Economic, not humanitarian, concerns were the primary causal factors in British antislavery.” Schmidt also provides us with examples from the religious sector, as late as 1830, that show a social classification of slavery as immoral. This movement had its roots in Britain, and Schmidt tells us that,

   As for the religious base, popular sects like Methodism were crucial sources of anti-slavery sentiment and activism. In fact, the importance of religious organizations was, according to Drescher, one of the elements that made British anti-slavery so powerful and distinctive: religious associations in Britain, especially nonconformist sects, served as essential mediating bodies linking different classes and regions.  

   But this textual evidence, which would lead one to think that it was in Europe where the movement began, is then firmly contradicted by Schmidt as he describes the developments of the Spanish holdings in the Antilles, and how it was also there that the movement for abolishment of the slave trade began.

    Spain and the Spanish Antilles, which differed from England in the historical implementation of domestic slavery and the slave laws of its colonies, saw the development of the abolitionist movement through a different lens that would impact the move for abolition just as much as those reasons in Europe. According to Schmidt, “not only did Spanish colonial retrenchment facilitate the growth of Antillean slavery, it also paradoxically created new sites for antislavery and anti-colonial incentives.”  Even the studies by Rebecca Scott, which Schmidt also references, provide the argument that it was those developments in the Spanish Antilles, and the presence of the colonial powers that provided the right collection of ideas and the social mechanism to move for abolition. She discusses colonialism, “not only as a series of representative mechanisms, but also as an enabling political framework, one that permitted not only the growth of slavery but also certain kinds of mobilization against slavery and the political status quo.”

   Schmidt also explains to us that, “the rise of antislavery sentiment in Puerto Rico was fundamental to the founding of the Abolitionist Society in Spain.” 

    Though there is textual evidence that supports the notion that it was in Europe that the movement for abolition began, textual evidence also leads us to the Spanish Antilles as the place where the abolitionist movement could have possibly begun. The extent to which the texts support the notion that the movement began in Europe is therefore limited, and we are left to consider that it was, in fact, a co-existence of both situations, at the same time, that lead to the abolitionist movement. To further fault the texts, yearly accounts aren’t provided, which would have allowed for a comparison, and a definitive answer as to where the movement against the slave-trade began.

     As for the participation of Africans and African Americans in abolishing the slave trade, the texts are also limited in their support. Though the texts do point to certain events that helped change the mindset towards slavery, it was the fear of revolts and conflicts, not direct African participation that paved the way for changes in the mindset towards the slave trade. Schmidt tells us of how this fear permeated the social constructions of race relations.

      Fear of racial conflict decisively shaped elite attitudes toward slavery and colonialism. If the second slavery was powerful and flexible, it was also vulnerable on innumerable political and ideological fronts in an increasingly abolitionist age. The Haitian Revolution and emancipation of British colonies gave Antillean planters an opportunity to fill the vacuum in the world sugar production. Yet these events also filled them with the dread and a sense of permanent crisis and conflict.

     If we were to consider the fear posed by the Africans as participation, it would be an important yet inactive importance and the role of the African would then be important in the anti-slave trade movement. I argue here that it was the fear of another Haiti or Cuba that lead to abolition discourse. Author Mimi Sheller explains to us that the, “slashing and burning away the debris of Eurocentric history, it places the foundational moment of emancipation not in European enlightenment, but in slave rebellion, of which the Haitian Revolution is exemplary.” 

   Though it would be unfair to ever discount the work of Africans and African Americans in the movement towards abolishing this practice, the texts provided only give us a glimpse into the abolitionist movement through the eyes of the Europeans, and limited support of the African and African American experience. The fault of the texts in this regard is the continuous use of only the slave rebellion, and the one of Haiti, as the focal point of that argument.  

     We now move to understanding the extent to which the slave experience of the Africans in the Americas contributed to another phase in the historical development of humanity and rights in this part of the world. It is clear that in this part of the world the definition of a humanity, at least during this time period, came from direct relation to racial ideologies, and the rights allotted to those who were human derived from those very same racial ideologies. The important thing to note about the conceptual development of humanity is that the definition would not be exclusive to the 19th century, instead it would transcend the boundaries of time and move deep into the 20th century. The role that Africans played in creating the definition of humanity goes back to our previous course of study and how Joyce Salisbury argued that we as humans define ourselves as what we are not. As we use this idea to understand the African place in the creation of the concept of humanity we see that they, in the 19th century, are the quintessential example of the Other, and it is through them that humanity, and subsequently, the rights given to those who are human, will be defined. In looking at this definition of humanity we must look at, arguably, the two most important legal cases of the 19th century, which further helped define the notion of humanity. First, we can look to the case of the slaves on the “Amistad,” and then the case of former slave, Dread Scott. Both of these cases, though defined by different legal results, helped define what a human was. There are four ways in which we can look at humanity being defined during this period.

   In reading the David Northrup essay we can see some of the ways in which the African presence helped create the notion of humanity. Firstly, in conjunction to Salisbury’s assertion, Northrup tells us how

  Embedded in the concept of blackness was its direct opposite-whiteness. No other colors so clearly implied opposition, “beinge coloures utterlye contrary”; no others were so frequently used to denote polarization…White and black connoted purity and filthiness, virginity and sin, virtue and baseness, beauty and ugliness, benefice and evil, God and the devil.   

   Secondly, the Africans were given a value, like an animal would be, as the Spanish came to discover, the Negro was worth four Indians.  Slaves weren’t even recognized by the legal system. “Slaves had no legal personality and were firmly classed as things.” They were things, possessions of their masters who had paid for them. Even the way they were chosen, touched, and examined, proved that they had a ‘sub-human’ value. Thirdly, the Africans were viewed as animals, bestial, even cannibal-like. In an account that Winthrop J. Jordan gives us, we can see the perception of the African.

 It would be a mistake, however, to slight the importance of the Negro’s savagery, since it fascinated Englishmen from the very first…The hideous torture, the cannibalism, the rapacious warfare, the revolting diet, seemed somehow to place the Negro among the beasts. …Slave traders in Africa handled the Negroes the same way men in England handled beasts, herding and examining and buying. 

      The characteristics that the Europeans bestowed upon the Africans, as a justification of slavery or as an actual understanding of them, would inevitably lead to a societal understanding of the Africans as; no-human, therefore viewing themselves in contrast to that; as humans. Finally, the humanity of the Africans, or lack there of, was constructed through the religion. Unlike the Muslim doctrine that didn’t allow for Muslims to enslave other Muslims, Christians didn’t believe this, and even if one converted to Christianity, unlike in Islam, it didn’t entail humanity, or even freedom. To be Muslim or to convert to Islam would imply a level of humanity, but these acts were mutually exclusive to the Europeans. “On manumission of act 1690, section 2, states that becoming a Christian did not make a free slave.”

     The case of the Amistad further cements the idea of the Africans being property. This was the defense of the Spaniards, who asked for the slaves to be returned on the basis that they were lost cargo, in essence, relegating them to property, or as not human. In years to come the case of Dread Scott would come to exemplify the definition of the African in America as non-human, but more than that, not a citizen of the U.S. States, so therefore he wasn’t allowed to enjoy his due rights. Though the slaves of the Amistad were allowed to return to Africa, and Dread Scott was initially returned to slavery, these cases had immense impacts on the definition of humanity, but as the Dread Scott case would show, they also impacted the definition of who was able to enjoy the rights of a human. In the aftermath of slavery those who were be bestowed “rights” were only those who would be considered human, whether by law or by another man. This period in time proved to us that to be human didn’t exactly mean you had rights. The African experience then becomes a phase in the understanding humanity and rights. Unfortunately, this phase would last until a new phase was ushered in with the signing of the Universal Human Rights Declaration.

     The effects of the African slave trade still haunt our society. The abolition of the slave trade, the eventual abolition of slavery, and the movement to try to close the gaps formed by the slavery, in my opinion, are processes that will ever come to a complete end. Kevin Bales tells us of modern slavery and disposable people, May OO discusses for us the troubles of the sex trade in Asia, and we wear clothes that, for the most part, were all crafted in sweat shops, for little to no pay, and we believe that slavery was abolished a century or more ago. Slavery as a visible system has not gone away, it is just hidden, but the social scars of slavery, the racial dichotomies, the definition or humanity, the fight for rights, and various layered concepts are still being deconstructed within all societies around the world.