A "Consuming" Oppression: Sugar, Cannibalism and John Woolman's 1770 Slave Dream

A "Consuming" Oppression: Sugar, Cannibalism and John Woolman's 1770 Slave Dream Andrew White* "Consumption is the sole end and purpose ofall production" —Adam Smith, Wealth ofNations (New York, 1937: 625). "[A]n insatiable desire ofgain hath become the principal and moving cause of the most abominable and dreadful scene, that was perhaps ever actedupon the face of the earth." —Anthony Benezet, A Caution to Great Britain and Her Colonies (20) In his influential antislavery tract, A Caution to Great Britain and Her Colonies (1767), Quaker Anthony Benezet (1713-1784) details a "horrid execution," a "scene" that is both "abominable and dreadful" in its effect. While recountingthe appalling conditions ofBarbadian slavery, he includes an anonymous account ofa hunger strike which occurred onboard a slaver bound for the island. Because the slaves refused to eat, the captain . . . obliged all the negroes to come upon deck, where they persisting in their resolution of not taking food, he caused his sailors to lay hold upon one of the most obstinate, and chopt the poor creature into small pieces, forcing some of the others to eat a part of the mangled body; withal swearing to the survivors that he woulduse them all, one afterthe other, ifthey did not consent to eat. (26) Benezet, a pacifist, is particularly concerned to convey the inherent violence ofthe slave trade and depths ofbarbarism to which its purveyors could fall. For Benezet the root cause ofthis cannibalism is "love ofwealth," which entails a process of consumption, ingestion, appropriation and assimilation. The account serves as a striking metaphor of the violence of sugar production—the monoculture mainstay of Barbados—in which the labor and body of the slave are consumed in order to feed the increasing demand for the sweet commodity. The gruesome imagery of Benezet's narrative had an impact on the developing antislavery of the Society of Friends' most influential and outspoken antislavery activist, John Woolman (1720-1772), who cites his fellow Quaker's tract in hisjournal. This influence is particularly evident in Woolman's account ofa dream, which, like Benezet' s cannibalism account, * Andrew White received his PhD in English from Washington State University in 2003 and currently teaches at the American University in Bulgaria. In addition to his work on race relations in colonial America, he is exploring connections between Balkan and Anglophone literary traditions. He thanks Albert J. von Frank and Mike Heller for their feedback on this article. 2 Quaker History portrays sugar consumption as an analog for the destruction of the Caribbean slave body. In his 1770 dream Woolman imagines the grotesque consumption ofa slave's body by a creature representing pleasure. The tone ofthis dream—which reads more like a nightmare—stands in stark contrast to James Grainger's georgic, The Sugar Cane, which praises the "pleasing task" of sugar cane production (IV: 204).' As a participant in the dream, Woolman is unable to speak because ofthe horror and barbarism ofwhat he witnesses. Considerable critical attention has been given to Woolman's critique of slavery in its North American context and its role in shaping eighteenthcentury Quaker abolitionism.2 Relatively little discussion, however, has addressed his opposition to Caribbean slavery, epitomized by his "scruple" with sugar and other tropical commodities produced by slave labor. If the topic is mentioned at all, it is usually as a footnote in the larger narrative of his protest against the evils of slavery.3 This scholarly neglect may be attributed in part to the fact that Woolman had no intimate contact with Caribbean slavery, as he did with the institution in the middle colonies and in the South. Woolman's protest of sugar-colonialism developed gradually —itbegan with abusiness decision notto sell slave-produced commodities , "the fruit ofthe labor ofslaves," such as rum, sugar and molasses, in his dry goods store (Journal 157).4 As his antislavery thinking evolved and he educated himselfabout the conditions ofslavery in the British West Indies, Woolman, developing "a care to live in the spirit ofpeace . . . declined to gratify [his] palate with those sugars" (Journal 157). This personal boycott ofcane sugar, in consistencywith his general policyto avoid any implication or connection with the "fruits ofthe labor ofslaves" (157), demonstrates his insightful...