Enslavement (eBook)

Past and Present

Orlando Patterson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
537 Seiten
Polity Press (Verlag)
978-1-5095-6177-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Slavery is one of humanity's most ancient and persistent inequities.  It predates the rise of civilization, played a key role in the growth of Western and Islamic cultures and was an integral part of the emergence and global spread of capitalism.  Given its historical significance, it is not surprising that the problem of slavery is still passionately debated today and that modern-day trafficking and forced servitude remain key issues of public concern.
In Enslavement: Past and Present, historical sociologist Orlando Patterson casts a wide net to examine the social, political, and economic complexities of slavery across different eras and societies.  Patterson examines slavery at several levels of abstraction, from micro-level relations of domination to the macro-structures of entire societies. Building on the 'bundle of rights' perspective, he reevaluates the definition of slavery, exposing its variegated fabric of iniquities across tribal and advanced pre-modern societies as well as our modern globalized age. Patterson also examines the critical role of women in the history of slavery, the significance of manumission in the formation of Christian doctrine, and the devastating toll of genocide and undaunted revolt of slaves in Jamaican slave society. Concluding with an investigation of contemporary slavery and other forms of servitude, this book urges readers to reckon with the brutal legacies of the past and its alarming modern-day persistence.
Enslavement: Past and Present deepens our understanding of the broad spectrum of evil and human bondage throughout history, an understanding that is essential for contemporary struggles to build a more inclusive society for all.

Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books including Slavery and Social Death (1982) and Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (1991), which won the 1991 National Book Award for Non-Fiction.  His most recent publications include The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth and The Paradox of Freedom: A Biographical Dialogue (co-authored with David Scott).

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INTRODUCTION

Along with man’s inhumanity to woman, slavery is one of humanity’s most ancient and persistent inequities. It predates the rise of civilization, and its traces can be seen in archaeological findings, pre-literate legends and myths, and observations of surviving hunter-gatherer societies (Biermann and Jankowiak, 2021; Lane and MacDonald, 2011). Slavery played a foundational role in the ancient rise and growth of Western and Islamic civilizations and was significant in other cultures such as those of Africa, pre-Columbian America, Korea, and Southeast Asia. It also had a critical role in the emergence and global spread of capitalism. Given its historical significance, it is not surprising that the problem of Atlantic slavery is still passionately debated in the Anglo-American world today, more than a century and a half after its abolition in America, with modern-day trafficking and servitude being major concerns worldwide.

The ongoing debate surrounding the implications of Atlantic slavery reflects its deep-rooted social, economic, and political consequences. Echoes of the slave trade and plantation slavery continue to resonate in contentious discussions about racial inequality, systemic racism, and reparations. The 1619 Project (Hannah-Jones, 2019) an initiative by the New York Times, has brought attention to this legacy by reframing American history, highlighting the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans. Several major American universities, such as Harvard, Brown, and Georgetown, have recognized the role of slavery in their founding and development, taking steps such as removing statues, names, and objects associated with slavery, as well as providing funds for reparations and commemorations. However, these efforts have ignited controversy, with conservative critics arguing that they present a revisionist view of history, while supporters maintain that they shed light on previously neglected aspects of the American narrative. The debate has even entered mainstream American politics, leading to the censorship of many books on race and slavery in schools and libraries, as well as high school exams on Black history.

In Britain, the debate has been equally intense and increasingly acrimonious. Attempts to reassess the role of the Atlantic slave trade in British imperial and domestic economic history, including its contribution to the rise of prominent elite families such as that of former British Prime Minister David Cameron, have been condemned as attempts to belittle and tarnish British history. Several British universities, notably Glasgow, Bristol, and Oxford, have acknowledged the importance of slavery in their past and have taken steps to make amends, with Glasgow agreeing to pay £20 million as reparations for benefiting from the Atlantic slave trade. However, academic backlash has emerged, particularly at the University of Cambridge, where a researcher studying Cambridge’s connection to Atlantic slavery faced criticism in the national press from anonymous academics who labeled them a “woke activist” with an agenda (according to the Guardian newspaper).

The claim by some scholars and politicians that modern scholarship on slavery, which acknowledges its evils and enduring impact, amounts to the imposition of value judgments on historical events is epistemologically disingenuous and historiographically inaccurate. Some subjects are inherently normative, and slavery is undoubtedly one of them. The historiography of slavery indicates that the study of the subject has always been influenced by values and ideologies. A brief look at the historiographies of ancient and Atlantic slavery makes this abundantly clear.

The study of slavery in Europe is as old as post-classical Western history itself. Discussions on “the moral problem of slavery continued incessantly during the Middle Ages,” according to Malowist (1968: 161). From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, numerous major works focused on the moral aspects of ancient slavery, mainly in the form of Latin dissertations (Vogt, 1973: 1–7).

Starting in the late eighteenth century, there was a surge of studies on slavery that resulted from the abolitionist movement and the interest of Marxian and non-Marxian scholars in both ancient slavery and the iniquities of the contemporary institution. Studies on ancient slavery were related to the abolitionist controversy in two ways: the role of slavery in biblical and early Christian times and its role in ancient Greece and Rome. The first aspect, highly polemical in nature, sought to justify or condemn slavery based on scriptural grounds. Proponents of slavery argued that it was morally acceptable since it was sanctioned by the Old Testament, Pauline theology, and the patristic thinkers of the early Church. Antislavery writers, however, attempted to show that early Christianity, while not ideologically critical of slavery, was historically and structurally opposed to it, and there was a correlation between the institutionalization of Christianity and the decline of slavery. The antislavery thesis led to the development of a more sophisticated historiography on this aspect of ancient slavery (Davis, 1966: Chs. 10–12; Davis, 1975: Ch. 11; Patterson, 1977: 408).

Regarding ancient Greece and Rome, the early nineteenth century saw debates over the then accepted fact that classical European antiquity was based on slavery. Enlightenment scholars condemned the ancients for their reliance on slavery, while others argued that the great civilizational breakthroughs of the Greeks were made possible only by slavery. These debates continued throughout the nineteenth century, with scholars questioning the foundations of ancient Greek civilization and arguing for or against its dependence on slavery (Vogt, 1965). Over time, scholarly opinion shifted, and it is now widely accepted that ancient Greek civilization was indeed based on slavery (Finley, 1960: 53–72).

Parallel to these debates, Marxian scholars, evolutionary historians, and anthropologists also explored the role of slavery in human development. Slavery was seen as a major stage in the emergence of socialism within the cruder materialistic conception of history. Marx himself recognized the limitations of this view and developed the concept of the Asiatic mode of production specifically to address the problem of slave society. Engels, influenced by Morgan, later abandoned this qualification and developed the untenable periodization theory that all societies went through five stages, including slavery. This theory had a detrimental impact on historical scholarship in the Soviet Union and China (Patterson, 1977: 410–13).

In the United States, the study of slavery has always been a morally, ideologically, and emotionally charged subject (Elkins, 1975). From the early twentieth century, US slave studies revolved around two main themes: the economic structure, efficiency, and profitability of slavery, and the socioeconomic stability and cultural integrity of the slaveholding world and its consequences for the enslaved. The dominant school for the first half of the twentieth century, led by Ulrich Phillips (1918), argued that slavery was pre-capitalist, socially stable, morally benign, and culturally progressive for the enslaved. Black American historians, led by W. E. B. DuBois (1935: Chs. 1–4), strongly resisted this racist interpretation but faced institutional marginalization within the segregated historically Black university system (see Smith, 1980). Kenneth Stampp (1989 [1956]), influenced by the civil rights movement, challenged the dominant school, emphasizing the capitalistic and profitable nature of slavery, its social instability, and its moral perversity. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman’s cliometric school, drawing on earlier work by economic historians, argued that slavery was capitalist, profitable, socially stable, and culturally progressive for both enslaver and enslaved, generating further debate (Walton, 1975; Haskell, 1975; David and Temin, 1974). Eugene Genovese (1965) partly returned to the Phillips thesis, highlighting the pre-capitalist nature of the system while emphasizing its social stability and cultural integration (see also Genovese, 1976). Herbert Gutman (1976) and John Blassingame (1972) likewise argued for the social stability and moral integrity of the Black segment of the enslaved community, but expressed less enthusiasm for the system as a whole; indeed, they strongly suggested that it was brutal, although the two theses rest uneasily alongside each other.

This positive emphasis on Black culture, community, and agency, as well as the stability of the Black family under slavery, was in part a response to the work of the earlier tradition of liberal scholarship that emphasized the injuries of slavery and Jim Crow for Blacks (see, for example, Frazier, 1951 [1939]; Myrdal, 1944; and Kardiner and Ovesey, 1951). Stanley Elkins’s (1959) controversial study of the psychological response of American slaves was written in that tradition. The infantilized Sambo image of Southern lore, Elkins claimed, was the tragic result of the totally oppressive institution of slavery, similar to the response of many Jewish inmates of the Nazi concentration camps. In the mid-1960s, a policy brief written by a non-historian, Patrick Moynihan (Rainwater and Yancey, 1967), argued that slavery had been destructive of Black institutions, especially their marital and familial relations, which persisted in contemporary economic and social problems of the inner cities. Although this argument was largely a revision of positions held by earlier liberal scholars, noted above,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.11.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
• Schlagworte: America • Ancient Greece • Enslavement • Essays • freedom • Historical sociology • History • Jamaica • plantation • Renaissance • Servitude • slave revolts • Slavery • slave trade • Sociology • Trafficking • USA • western civilisation • Western Culture
• ISBN-10: 1-5095-6177-3 / 1509561773
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6177-3 / 9781509561773