Slavery, Emancipation, and Progress

July/August 2007 Historically Speaking 13 British Abolitionism: A Forum THIS YEAR GREATBRTTAIN HAS BEEN COMMEMORAHNG the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade. In April, the HistoricalSociety , withgenerousfunding by theJohn Templeton Foundation, hosteda twoday conference in London to explore a series of questions historians usually avoid: Can analysis of movements like British abolitionismyield information that could lead to human betterment today? Is there moralprogress in history? What are the truly Big Questions in history? Historically Speaking willpublish abridged versions of selected conferencepapers in the next two issues. The conference opened with apublic lecture atLondon's CentralHall Westminsterby the distinguished Yale University historian DavidBrion Davis. A shortenedversion of his lecture begins ourforum. Wefollow with essays by DavidHempton exploringhowBritishMethodists came to embrace abolitionism; Lamin Sanneh assessingthe relationship between slavery andIslam; andEricArnesen comparingpopufaraccounts with schokrly treatments of British abolitionism. We conclude theforum with Donald Yerxa's interview of Davis, based on the body of his work andinparticular his htest book, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford University Press, 2006). Thisforum was supported by agrantfrom theJohn Templeton Foundation. Slavery, Emancipation, and Progress David Brion Davis For those of us who still think of history as a kind of moral philosophy teaching by example , it is precisely the multiple character of truth—the varied angles of vision that are also the subject of imaginative literature—that one must seek to capture. If such inquiry has any "therapeutic" value, it arises from the discovery that the most comforting and reassuring conclusions are not the only dimensions of historical experience. Despite the beliefs of many contemporary Americans, there is no hidden force with respect to the future that enables all good things, such as democracy, moral behavior, justice, and economic and technological progress, to go together. That said, while there is little evidence that human nature has changed for the better over the past two millennia, a few historical events, like Britain's abolition of its extremely profitable slave trade, suggest that human history has also been something more than an endless contest of greed and power. The idea of progress implies that a particular course of change leads toward that which is beneficial and desirable for humanity as a whole. Today we unequivocally view the abolition of the slave trade and the end of slavery itself as signs of progress. But this is a marked departure from the previously widespread notion that slavery actually fueled progress. Indeed, the idea of slavery as an agent of progress played a significant role in Western thought from classical antiquity until well into the 19th century . And it is not hard to see why, particularly when we consider slavery's contribution to the growth of European power and wealth in the New World. The entire New World enterprise depended on the enormous and expandable flow of slave labor from Africa. By 1820 over 9 million slaves had departed from Africa for the New World, as opposed to only 2.6 million whites, many of them convicts or indentured servants, who had left Europe. Thus by 1820 African slaves constituted about 77% of the The London conference program designed by Randall J. Stephens enormous population that had sailed toward the Americas. From 1660 to 1820 this emigrating flow included over five African slaves for every European. From 1820 to 1880 the African slave trade, most of it now illegal, continued to ship off from Africa nearly 2.3 million more slaves, mainly to Brazil and Cuba. In other words, there can be no doubt that black slave labor was essential in creating and developing the "original" New World that began by the 1 840s to attract so many millions of European immigrants . For our purposes, the really crucial point is the fact that from 1660 to 1807 Britain was by far the major carrier of these African slaves, which means that the world's most prosperous and powerful nation, the model at that time of cultural and industrial progress, could not have been more deeply involved with slave trading and wealthy slave colonies.' By the early 1700s most English merchants and political leaders agreed with the eminent economist Malachy Posdethwayt...