Historical Origins of Human Rights

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Historical Origins of Human Rights

• Lecture 8
• Antislavery A Human Rights Movement?
• February 14, 2007
• (My Birthday)

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outline

• slavery from norm to moral wrong
• - list extension
• - anthropological extension
• the rise of new world slavery
• changing thought preconditions for antislavery
  sentiment
• methods of an international antislavery movement
• slave resistance and self-emancipation
• the continuity of unfree labor

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for or against slaverywhich norm is universal?

• striking universality of slavery across space and
  time
• but even if slavery continues today, it is close
  to a universal norm to oppose it -- yet this norm
  is radically new in history
• what accounts for this mutation in moral opinion?
• discovery or invention?

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the Good Book

• Hebrew Bible As for the male and female slaves
  you may have, it is from the nations around you
  that you may acquire male and female slaves. You
  may also acquire them from among the aliens
  residing with you, and from their families that
  are with you, who have been born in your land
  and they may be your property. You may keep them
  as a possession for your children after you, for
  them to inherit as property. (Leviticus 25
  44-47)
• New Testament Slaves, obey your earthly masters
  with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart,
  as you obey Christ not only while being watched,
  and in order to please them, but as slaves of
  Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.
  Render service with enthusiasm (Ephesians 6
  5-8)

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Greek philosophy

• Plato slavery as exemplifying a cosmic
  principle of authority and subordinationas
  having a necessary place in the structure of
  being. (David Brion Davis)
• Aristotle natural slavery

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Circa 1770

• three-fourths of world population in bondage in
  1770 Freedom, not slavery, was the peculiar
  institution (Seymour Drescher).
• Negro slavery appears, then, to be, as far as
  reason can judge, one of those indispensable and
  necessary links, in the great chain of causes and
  events, which cannot and indeed ought not to be
  broken. (Gordon Turnbull, 1786)

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anthropological extension?

• From the hour of their birth, some men are
  marked out for subjugation, others for rule.
  (Aristotle)
• Africans are brutes, whose natures seem made to
  bear it slavery and whose sufferings are not
  attended with shame or pain beyond the present
  moment (British gentlewoman, 1776)
• the Negro does not divest himself, indeed cannot
  under any condition divest himself of his natural
  rights he carries them everywhere with him, and
  he has the right to demand others allow him to
  enjoy those rights. Therefore, it is a clear
  case of inhumanity on the part of the judges in
  those free countries to which the slave is
  shipped, not to free the slave instantly by legal
  declaration, since he is their brother, having a
  soul like theirs. (Montesquieu, 1765)
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights Everyone
  is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set
  forth in this Declaration, without distinction of
  any kind, such as race

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or list extension?

• the Universal Declaration (Art. 4) No one shall
  be held in slavery or servitude slavery and the
  slave trade shall be prohibited in all their
  forms.

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slaverys history

• definitional issues
• deep origins
• intergroup (captivity)
• early modern shift
• before urban, non-racial, more intermixture
• after plantation (large-scale agriculture),
  racialized

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deep origins?

• slavery and the neolithic revolution
• slavery and animal domestication
• slaves and animals
• Aristotle Tame animals are naturally better
  than wild animals, yet for all tame animals there
  is an advantage to being under human control.
  By analogy, the same is true within mankind.
  Some people are slaves by nature, and it is
  better for them to be subject to this kind of
  control, just as it is better for the other
  creatures.
• first attested slavery 2000 B.C.E.

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older, east African trade

• see link
• at least as old as second century
• important factor in Islams expansion
• low-level

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newer, west African trade
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numbers
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new world slavery

• by mid-1500s, transatlantic system fully
  developed
• triangular trade involved whole Atlantic
• -slaves from Africa to colonies
• -staple crops to Europe (sugar, cotton, coffee,
  rice, indigo dye, tobacco)
• -food for slaves from Northern colonies
• major influx of capital to Europe from this trade
  helped finance industrial revolution

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new world slavery, contd

• plantation agriculture
• slaves transported outside their culture and not
  integrated into the new one
• absentee ownership (especially in Caribbean)
• extremely brutal and deadly high mortality rate
  no natural population growth (except in North
  America)
• racialto be black meant to be a slave and vice
  versa

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gang labor, Caribbeansugar cane plantation
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changing thought about slavery

• Stoics slavery as a regrettable, if inevitable,
  imperfection
• They are slaves, people declare. Nay, rather
  they are menthey are our fellow-slaves, if one
  reflects that Fortune has equal rights over
  slaves and free men alike. (Seneca)
• Christianity All souls are free in Christ,
  regardless of worldly state
• For he that was called in the Lord being a
  bondservant, is the Lords freeman. (1
  Corinthians 7 22)
• millenarian Christian sects (mid-1600s) we must
  strive to perfect this world to bring about the
  second coming of Christ

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changing thought, 2

• Quakers by 1760s, began to forbid slaveholding
  among church members
• These are the people who have made no agreement
  to serve us, and who have not forfeited their
  liberty that we know of. These are the souls for
  whom Christ died, and for our conduct towards
  them we must answer before Him who is no
  respecter of persons. (John Woolman, 1757)
• sentimental revolution new ideal of benevolence,
  compassion and love
• Do you never feel anothers pain? Have you no
  sympathy?No pity for the miserable? When you
  saw the flowing eyes, the heaving breasts, or the
  bleeding sides of tortured limbs of your
  fellow-creatures, was you a stone, or a brute?
  Did not one tear drop from your eye? (John
  Wesley, 1774)
• some Enlightenment thought slavery against the
  public good

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origins of abolitionism

• origins as a movement to abolish (rather than
  local and selfless acts of manumission)
• originally, slavery too important for British
  empire for abolitionism to take off
• How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for
  liberty among the drivers of negroes? (Samuel
  Johnson)
• American Revolution
• moral empire

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methods ofantislavery international

• established methods still used by activists today
• correspondence between national groups
• newsletters/fundraising
• speaking tours
• political pressure and lobbying
• boycott
• investigative journalism/exposés
• terrorism (Benjamin Lay and John Brown)
• imagery (visual and literary)

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Am I not a man and a brother?Am I not a woman
and a sister?
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The Brookes DiagramIt is that book pointing to
Brookes diagram which has made me more sick than
the sea. (Tsar Alexander)
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Slaves on a French Ship
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The Abolition of the Slave Trade, Or the
inhumanity of dealers in human flesh exemplified
in Captn. Kimber's treatment of a young Negro
girl of 15 for her virjen sic modesty
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The Black Mans Lament or, How to Make Sugar,
Amelia Opie
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Barbarities of the West Indies
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a flood of images
George Bourne, A Picture of Slavery
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connecting distant strangers

• Robert Southey on drinkers of tea, the
  blood-sweetened beverageas he sweetens his tea,
  let him say, as he truly may, this lump cost the
  poor slave a groan, and this a bloody stroke with
  the cartwhip.
• I own I am shocked at the purchase of slaves.
• And fear those who buy them and sell them are
  knaves
• What I hear of their hardships, their tortures
  and groans,
• Is almost enough to draw pity from stones.
• I pity them greatly, but I must be mum,
• For how could we do without sugar and rum?
• Especially sugar, so needful we see,
• What? Give up our desserts, our coffee and tea!
• William Cowper

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a movements success

• 1804 most northern states in US had abolished
  slavery
• 1807 British Parliament and US Congress abolish
  the slave trade.
• 1833-34 slavery abolished in British Empire
• 1847 slavery abolished in French Empire
• 1860-65 US Civil War results in the abolition of
  slavery
• 1888 with emancipation of Brazilian slaves,
  slavery has been abolished in all of Western
  Hemisphere

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varieties of antislavery

• opposition to slave trade so that plantation
  conditions would improve (slavery reform)
• advocacy of end of Atlantic slave trade to profit
  from an internal slave trade (especially in the
  United States)
• opposition to slavery because of racist animosity
  toward living with in a racially mixed
  societyvision of a pure white America
• fear that slave ownership degraded whites
• fear of slave rebellion
• religious fear of persecution from an angry God
• response to political pressure
• gradualism London Society for Mitigating and
  Gradually Abolishing the State of Slavery
  Throughout the British Dominions
• immediate abolitionists (Elizabeth Heyrick,
  William Lloyd Garrison) immediatism

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what did emancipation look like?
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another view of emancipation
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slave revolts in the age of the antislavery
movement

• major revolt in Jamaica led by "Tackey"
• major revolt of enslaved Africans in Dutch
  Surinam
• revolt by enslaved Africans in Honduras
• discovery of revolt plot on St. Kitts
• enslaved Jamaicans in major revolt
• some 500,000 enslaved Africans successfully
  revolt in Haiti
• enslaved Africans revolt in St. Lucia
• Gabriel Prosser and 1,000 fellow Africans plot
  Virginia revolt
• revolt of enslaved Africans in Guadeloupe
• revolt of enslaved Africans in St. John's Parish,
  Louisiana

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slave revolts, contd

• attempted revolt in Fredericksburg, Virginia
• attempted revolt in Augusta, Georgia
• revolt plot in South Carolina by Denmark Vesey
  and 5,000 enslaved Africans
• major slave revolt in Guyana
• 1828-1837 revolt of enslaved Africans in Brazil
• revolt of enslaved Africans in Antigua
• major revolt in Jamaica, led by Samuel Sharpe
• major revolt under Nat Turner in Virginia
• revolt of enslaved Africans in Cuba
• revolt of enslaved Africans in the Virgin Islands

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from slave resistanceto self-emancipation

• from individual resistance
• -participating in information networks
• -refusing to work
• -running away
• murdering masters/overseers
• to organized rebellion and self-emancipation
• -adopting language of natural rights and/or
  Christian justice
• -taking sides in colonial war and exploiting
  political divides
• -training and leading armies
• -liberation and independence (Haiti)

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Toussaint LOuverture
"In overthrowing me, you have cut only the trunk
of the tree of liberty. It will spring again
from the roots for they are numerous and deep."
(1802)
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insurrection and rights

• At the end of the eighteenth century, the
  actions of slaves-turned-citizens in the
  Caribbean transformed Europe and the Americas.
  During the early 1790s, slave insurgents gave
  new content to the abstract universality of the
  language of rights, expanding the scope of
  political culture as they demanded Republican
  citizenship and racial equality. (Laurent
  Dubois)

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antislavery against revolution

• Abolitionists, both contemporary and in later
  decades, vacillated between a policy of ignoring
  the explosive subject of Haiti and warning that
  insurrections and racial war would be inevitable
  unless the slaves were peacefully emancipated and
  converted into grateful free peasants (David
  Brion Davis).

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whats left?

• international movement (transnational activism)
• still directed at national legal change
• alternative pathways not simply through external
  moral critique, but sometimes violence
• antislavery not initially directed at
  international law as source of meaning and
  authority

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continuity of slavery and abolitionism

• persistence of slavery from pre-history to today
• last government to legally officially abolish
  slavery was Mauritania in 1980
• chattel slavery in Mauritania, Mali, Sudan
• other forms of slavery debt bondage, human
  trafficking
• Anti-Slavery International estimate 27 million
  people held in bondage today
• abolitionists still connected in international
  movement using same techniques developed in first
  abolition movement