tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/abolition-of-slavery-27954/articlesAbolition of slavery – The Conversation2023-10-13T16:31:25Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134192023-10-13T16:31:25Z2023-10-13T16:31:25ZCardinal Newman: pro-slavery views of prominent 19th-century cleric raise questions about his educational legacy<p>One of the comforting stories the British told themselves in the 19th and 20th centuries was that they were implacably opposed to slavery.</p>
<p>Britons had decided “that the disgrace of slavery should not be suffered to remain part of our national system”, or so Lord Stanley, the colonial secretary at the moment of abolition, maintained. It was a claim willingly accepted by later generations. The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slavery-abolition-act-1833">1833 Act</a> that abolished slavery in Britain’s Atlantic empire reflected the undivided national will.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/439452/the-interest-by-michael-taylor/9781529110982">recent scholarship</a> casts doubt on that verdict. The West Indian planters, who held hundreds of thousands in bondage, were well-connected and influential. The freeing of their captive workers did not seem to them inevitable. Many abolitionists thought the same, despairing at the entrenched power of the slave masters. </p>
<p>When slavery went, it went because a series of political crises in Britain splintered the pro-slavery Tory coalition that had dominated politics for decades. It ended too because <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674984301">resistance by the enslaved</a> in the Caribbean convinced legislators in London that slavery was no longer sustainable. But not all commentators were persuaded that slavery had to go. </p>
<h2>Newman and the Oxford Movement</h2>
<p>One of them was <a href="https://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk/content/st-john-henry-newman">John Henry Newman</a> (1801-1890), fellow of Oriel College Oxford and the vicar of St Mary’s, Oxford’s university church. </p>
<p>Newman was one of the most significant churchmen of the age. Eventually received into the Roman Catholic church in 1845, he became the most influential English Catholic of the 19th century. He was made a cardinal in 1879, and in 2019 he was canonised. For that reason, Newman’s name is attached to dozens of Roman Catholic schools and colleges in Britain, as well as a university in the West Midlands.</p>
<p>But before his conversion, he was a leading figure in the Oxford Movement, a high church group that wanted to renew the institutional authority of Anglicanism by emphasising its rootedness in the early church. Appealing to scripture, the path favoured by Evangelical Anglicans, was dismissed as insufficient. </p>
<p>There were political consequences. Evangelicals of the time tended towards anti-slavery. The clergymen who made up the Oxford Movement did not. Indeed, notes prepared by John Henry Newman for a <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarlyeditions.com/display/10.1093/actrade/9780199200900.book.1/actrade-9780199200900-book-1">sermon at Oxford in 1835</a> reveal that he was profoundly hostile to the idea of emancipation.</p>
<h2>Preaching against emancipation</h2>
<p>Abolitionist rhetoric about human brotherhood was brushed aside. “It is a very easy thing,” Newman told his congregation, “to talk of loving all men”. But could his congregation, were they to be whisked from their cloistered lives in Oxford to the West Indies, do so in practice? Newman thought not:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is said to be one of the most difficult tasks of our Ministers to persuade white men to receive the Holy Communion with blacks. I do not say such reluctance is a light sin – it is a serious one – yet perhaps we should feel strongly tempted to it if we lived in the countries where they are to be found. I do not doubt we should.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>An aversion to communing with black people was, Newman suggested, quite understandable. It would require white people to hurdle an insurmountable racial barrier.</p>
<p>Having established, in his own mind at least, that racial repulsion was instinctual, Newman turned to the matter of slavery. As was usual with clerical defenders of slavery, Newman reached for the epistles of St Paul. Taking <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Letter-of-Paul-to-the-Corinthians">Paul’s</a> first letter to the Corinthians as his text, the vicar of St Mary’s came to this conclusion:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now we find in these words a doctrine stated, very startlingly and unpalatable to men of this day, but which is most clear and certain and contained in other parts of Scripture – viz that slavery is a condition of life ordained by God…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Contemporary abolitionists who drew upon the gospel when criticising slavery did so without warrant. They were guilty of uttering “idle and false words”. Warming to his theme, Newman went on to rail against reformers more generally. Their talk of “liberty, equality, rights, privileges, and the like” was offensive to God.</p>
<h2>Assessing Newman</h2>
<p>Historical figures, it is often said, need to be assessed by the standards of their own time. Yet John Henry Newman’s venomous sermon, coming little more than a year after the end of slavery in the British sugar islands, reminds us that the “standards of the time” were plural. </p>
<p>Many Britons of the 1830s gloried in abolition, but there were many others who were content with slavery and racial subjugation. And there were some, like Newman, who were willing to say so in provocative ways.</p>
<p>Newman’s words from 1835 have been forgotten, but John Henry Newman has not. Students and educators at those institutions that bear his name might want to consider whether it should continue to be so attached.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213419/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many Catholic schools in Britain retain the name John Henry Newman, despite his opposition to abolishing slavery.Chris Evans, Professor of History, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1688942021-10-01T13:19:34Z2021-10-01T13:19:34ZRemembering the Black abolitionists of slavery in Yorkshire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424196/original/file-20211001-16-1hfxkgs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1234%2C766&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Henry 'Box' Brown's arrival in Philadelphia. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Box_Brown#/media/File:Resurrection_of_Henry_Box_Brown.png">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Cunning better than strong” is a Jamaican proverb; a message of survival and resistance that urges us to use our brain rather than our brawn to overcome oppressors. It’s a proverb that is encapsulated by the Jamaican trickster folk hero Anansi. </p>
<p>Anansi is of West African origin and became central to the oral tradition of the enslaved in the Caribbean. When caught in a terrible situation, Anansi would find his way out through intelligence, disguise, subterfuge and wit.</p>
<p>These tactics of survival and resistance were used by Black abolitionists Ellen and William Craft and Henry “Box” Brown. Disguise and performance were central to their escape from enslavement, political activism and appeal to white audiences. Black abolitionists shared their experiences of enslavement to change the hearts and minds of everyday people on both sides of the Atlantic. However, their work is often obscured in the national narrative of Britain’s role in slavery. </p>
<p>Since the abolition of the slave trade on March 25 1807, the historical narrative has focussed on Britain’s role in abolition – rather than on the depth of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade and plantation slavery. The work of famous white abolitionists has long been applauded and highlighted, in particular that of social reformer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Wilberforce">William Wilberforce</a>.</p>
<p>Yorkshire was at the heart of the abolitionist movement in the UK, but this focus on Wilberforce and his white peers has also meant that many prominent Black abolitionists that visited the county, lecturing and staging anti-slavery performances, have been long overlooked. </p>
<h2>Ellen and William Craft’s cunning plan</h2>
<p>Ellen and William Craft were born into slavery in Georgia in the south of the US. They married and, fearing that they would be separated from one another and their future children would be sold into slavery, planned a daring escape in 1848. </p>
<p>As a result of the rape of her mother by a white slave master, Ellen was light-skinned and able to “pass” for white. Their plan involved Ellen posing as a man and William acting as her faithful “manservant”. Ellen would cut her hair and wear men’s clothes and, in this disguise, they would head north to the free states via steamboat and train. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt=" Illustrations of Ellen and William Craft." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424192/original/file-20211001-15-1p6acbq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424192/original/file-20211001-15-1p6acbq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424192/original/file-20211001-15-1p6acbq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424192/original/file-20211001-15-1p6acbq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424192/original/file-20211001-15-1p6acbq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424192/original/file-20211001-15-1p6acbq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424192/original/file-20211001-15-1p6acbq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Crafts helped further the Abolitionist cause by telling the story of their daring escape from slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_and_William_Craft#/media/File:Ellen_and_William_Craft.png">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ellen couldn’t write, as slaves weren’t taught to, so she bandaged her hand to avoid being asked to sign her name. They knew if they were caught, they would be tortured and separated. The plan worked, with Ellen sitting in the “whites only” carriage of a train, undetected.</p>
<p>The Crafts settled in Boston until the passing of the 1850 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Fugitive-Slave-Acts">Fugitive Slave Act</a>, which gave slave owners the power to travel from the south and recapture slaves who had escaped north. American abolitionists helped the Crafts to raise enough money to flee to the relative safety of the UK. There, they created a stage performance to shine a spotlight on the terrors of enslavement.</p>
<h2>Activism through performance</h2>
<p>As researcher Hannah-Rose Murray explains in the excellent <a href="https://www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/william-craft.html">Africans in Yorkshire</a> project, Ellen Craft became a celebrity at anti-slavery meetings because of her pale skin and because both she and William carefully constructed their performances for the British stage: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ellen would remain silent on stage, as Black women were not expected to speak in public, and William would describe their escape and the brutality of enslavement.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>British audiences were fascinated by Ellen’s pale skin and aghast that she could have once been a slave. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Illustration of Ellen Craft dressed in men's clothing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424195/original/file-20211001-22-12phc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424195/original/file-20211001-22-12phc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424195/original/file-20211001-22-12phc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424195/original/file-20211001-22-12phc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424195/original/file-20211001-22-12phc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1225&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424195/original/file-20211001-22-12phc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1225&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424195/original/file-20211001-22-12phc2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1225&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ellen Craft dressed as a white man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_and_William_Craft#/media/File:Ellen_Craft_escaped_slave.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Crafts learned to read and write, spent over two decades educating the public about slavery and published their <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/craft/craft.html.">autobiography</a>. They returned to America in 1868 and opened a school for Black children in Georgia.</p>
<p>Their story is being told today by Leeds-based performer and historian <a href="https://heritagecornerleeds.com">Joe Williams</a> in his play, Meet the Crafts. Ellen and William Craft, he explains, were recorded in the 1851 Leeds Census and registered as staying in the house of abolitionist <a href="https://jeffreygreen.co.uk/150-wilson-armistead-of-leeds-1819-1868/">Wilson Armistead</a>. In the section for “occupation”, they are registered as “fugitives from slavery in America”.</p>
<h2>Master of subterfuge</h2>
<p>Another incredible story of escape through disguise and subterfuge is that of <a href="https://www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/henry-box-brown.html">Henry “Box” Brown</a>, who was born a slave in Richmond, Virginia, in 1816.</p>
<p>He returned from work one day in 1849 to find that his wife and children had been sold. He decided to orchestrate an unbelievably risky escape, a year after the Crafts carried out their own. </p>
<p>Brown paid for a box to be made, measuring 1m by 1m and 0.6m wide. He squeezed himself in and posted himself from Virginia in the south to Philadelphia in the free north. Holes were made in the box so he could breathe, he had some water and biscuits for the journey and was transported via wagon, boat and train. The journey took 72 hours and abolitionists in Philadelphia describe how when they opened the box, “Brown clambered out and sung a freedom hymn: he was finally free.” </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="An illustration of Henry 'Box' Brown." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424193/original/file-20211001-21-14c0y4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424193/original/file-20211001-21-14c0y4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=681&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424193/original/file-20211001-21-14c0y4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=681&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424193/original/file-20211001-21-14c0y4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=681&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424193/original/file-20211001-21-14c0y4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424193/original/file-20211001-21-14c0y4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424193/original/file-20211001-21-14c0y4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry ‘Box’ Brown posted himself to freedom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Box_Brown#/media/File:Henry_Box_Brown_(cropped).jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, like the Crafts, the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act forced Brown to leave for the UK. In England, Brown toured the country, performing his escape, as well as drawing from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) to create a panorama of enslavement on stage. Brown toured Yorkshire and performed in the Music Hall in Hull. </p>
<h2>Changing the narrative</h2>
<p>Brown was a born showman. A central part of his act was emerging from the original box in which he had travelled to freedom. He was also known to walk the streets of English towns dressed in traditional African clothing, styling himself as an African prince.</p>
<p>He published the first edition of his <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brownbox/brownbox.html">autobiography</a> in 1849. After marrying an English woman, he returned to America in 1875 and continued performing until his death in 1897.</p>
<p>The stories of the Crafts and Henry “Box” Brown are examples of people using their intelligence and creativity, as the Caribbean slave trickster hero Anansi would, to survive the most appalling circumstances.</p>
<p>They are key to our understanding of the history of enslavement. Slaves were not passive victims – they were integral to the political processes of abolition in the UK and put their intellectual, creative and artistic weight behind the movement.</p>
<p>In Yorkshire, performers and artists like Joe Williams are carrying that legacy forward through their work. And in doing so they are making a much-needed intervention into our well-worn, Wilberforce-centric abolitionist narratives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168894/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Zobel Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Abolition in the UK tends to focus on the work of Yorkshireman William Wilberforce but there were many Black abolitionists whose tireless work has been forgotten.Emily Zobel Marshall, Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature , Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1535442021-01-25T14:59:41Z2021-01-25T14:59:41ZWhy the West is morally bound to offer reparations for slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380201/original/file-20210122-15-jlotmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C40%2C6639%2C4184&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kwame Akoto-Bamfo's sculpture dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade on display in Montgomery, Alabama. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Raymond Boyd/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 20th anniversary of the UN World Conference on Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, will be celebrated <a href="https://www.un.org/WCAR/durban.pdf">this August</a>. There was much discussion at the conference about reparations to Africa for the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/atlantic-slave-trade">trans-Atlantic slave trade</a>, in which millions of Africans were captured to provide free labour in North and South America and the Caribbean for <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Transformations_in_Slavery.html?id=iWUXNEM-62QC&redir_esc=y">over four and a half centuries</a>. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the conference was overshadowed by the <a href="https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/66286904-0e0b-4b5f-8e91-5212ee941d6c/september-11th/">9/11 attacks</a> on the US several days after it ended. The question of whether reparations should be paid to the continent of Africa for the trans-Atlantic slave trade is <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1915182/what-reparations-are-owed-to-africa/">still being debated</a>.</p>
<p>It is unlikely that former Western slave-trading countries will engage in reparative measures in the near future. The turn toward authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that even well-intentioned governments <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B082ZNF9JY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">will propose reparations to Africa</a>.</p>
<p>But, despite these political changes in slave-trading nations, there remains a strong case for why the fight for reparations shouldn’t be abandoned.</p>
<h2>Apology for the slave trade</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/remedyandreparation.aspx">2005 United Nations document</a> discusses different aspects of reparations, including apologies for past harms, the right to know the truth, and financial compensation. </p>
<p>Over the past 15 years (following the 2005 UN report) there has been no progress on these issues, not even over the issuing of an apology. </p>
<p>At the 2001 conference a Dutch representative spoke of his government’s <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2001/rd942.doc.htm">“deep remorse”</a> for the slave trade and enslavement. In 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement expressing “sorrow” for the slave trade, <a href="https://www.business-humanrights.org/fr/derni%C3%A8res-actualit%C3%A9s/blair-sorrow-over-slave-trade-uk/">but not apologising</a>.</p>
<p>None of these amounted to an apology. Nor has the US issued one. President Bill Clinton acknowledged the horrors of the slave trade in 1998 during a visit to Uganda. <a href="https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/Africa/19980324-3374.html">But he didn’t apologise</a>. On a visit to Senegal in 2003, President George W. Bush said that the trans-Atlantic slave trade had been <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030708-1.html">one of the greatest crimes in history</a>. Again, there was no apology.</p>
<p>Some people might object to their government apologising for the slave trade on the grounds that neither they nor their ancestors were <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-923X.2008.00928.x">involved</a>. But as the late Kenyan-American scholar Ali Mazrui <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Black_Reparations_in_the_Era_of_Globaliz.html?id=GkCCqchCegIC&redir_esc=y">argued</a>, if you are a citizen of a country, you must take on <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14448.html">its responsibilities as well as its benefits</a>.</p>
<p>Western slave-trading countries have a moral, if not a legal, obligation to apologise. </p>
<h2>A truth commission on the slave trade</h2>
<p>One way to identify the responsibilities of former slave-trading Western states might be through a truth commission on the slave trade.</p>
<p>Critics might argue that such a truth commission should discuss all actors in African enslavement. About 14 million people were taken from Africa in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but another 10 million were taken <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Transformations_in_Slavery.html?id=iWUXNEM-62QC&redir_esc=y">in the Arab trade</a>.</p>
<p>Africans also participated in the trans-Atlantic trade and held their own slaves. The Nigerian writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani was shocked to learn that her great-grandfather was a slave trader, selling slaves to Cuba and Brazil after the trade was abolished by the US and Great Britain. When her great-grandfather died, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-great-grandfather-the-nigerian-slave-trader">six slaves were buried alive with him</a>.</p>
<p>Acknowledging both Arab and African participation in enslavement, a truth commission on the slave trade could explain that internal African slavery was generally much more benign than American slavery. Enslaved people within Africa were frequently incorporated into the families of their owners. Similarly, Arab slave-owners were more likely to free enslaved children <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674986909">than were Western enslavers</a>.</p>
<p>This type of information would counter arguments that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was no worse than internal African slavery or Arab slavery. </p>
<p>In any event, the fact that other entities committed similar wrongs is not an excuse for a perpetrator state not to apologise.</p>
<h2>Financial reparations</h2>
<p>One problem in the discussion of financial reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade is which former slave trading and slave-holding nations might owe financial reparations to Africa. About a quarter million enslaved Africans disembarked in the US between 1626 and 1875, whereas 5.1 million disembarked in Brazil <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates">between 1401 and 1875</a>. Does Brazil owe reparations to Africa? Or does Portugal, a slave-trading nation, owe reparations to Brazil, which was then its <a href="https://www.brazil.org.za/portuguese-colonisation-of-brazil.html">colony</a>?</p>
<p>Similarly, do Arab countries and African slave-traders owe reparations for their part in the slave trade? The case of philosopher Anthony Appiah is instructive. He is of mixed Ashanti (Ghanaian) and British ancestry. Both his British and Ashanti ancestors <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/PS8VM45VbjnCB7dVP5BN62/episode-transcript-episode-86-akan-drum#:%7E:text=Anthony%20Appiah%2C%20who%20teaches%20at,trade%2C%20or%20some%">traded in slaves</a>. Do the Ashanti owe reparations to other ethnic groups within Ghana from whom they took slaves? </p>
<p>As with apologies, however, these questions don’t absolve Western slave-trading powers of their particular responsibilities. The US, the UK, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal still bear collective ethical responsibility for the wrongs their societies committed in the past.</p>
<p>Yet even if these countries are responsible to pay financial reparations, critics might ask who should be the recipients of reparations. Yet it is now possible through genetic research and research on slave-trading ships for Western slave-trading countries to determine where the bulk of their captives originated (for example Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal or Angola). Western states could then compensate those countries.</p>
<p>Western critics might still ask why they should pay reparations to Africa. The trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in the mid-19th century. </p>
<p>In reply, some scholars and activists argue that, without the slave trade, Africa would be <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Europe-Underdeveloped-Africa-Walter-Rodney/dp/0882580965">much more developed today</a>. Moreover, the West could not have developed <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Capitalism-Slavery-Eric-Williams/dp/0807844888">without the trans-Atlantic trade</a>. According to this argument, Western slave-trading states should compensate African states because the West developed while Africa was actively underdeveloped.</p>
<p>Western countries willing to pay reparations could finance specific projects connected to the slave trade. They could donate funds to maintain African museums and historic sites of the trade. They could also fund educational programmes to study the trans-Atlantic trade, or fund a truth commission on the slave trade.</p>
<p>The small amounts dedicated to this type of reparation would not satisfy advocates who argue for reparations in the billions, <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/4543">even trillions, of dollars</a>. But they would at least be a material acknowledgement of the harms the slave trade caused.</p>
<p>The question of whether aid should be part of the equation also raises a host of tricky issues. Have, as some might argue, Western countries not already compensated for the slave trade via foreign aid? And what of the misuse of aid which has been <a href="https://ssir.org/books/reviews/entry/dead_aid_dambisa_moyo">stolen by corrupt governments</a>?</p>
<p>Whether reparations or aid, the same problems of mismanagement, lack of transparency, and corruption emerge. </p>
<h2>Making amends</h2>
<p>Whatever celebrations the UN organises to mark the 20th anniversary of the Durban conference, former Western slave-trading states bear moral responsibility to offer reparations to Africa. </p>
<p>Apologies, a truth commission on the trans-Atlantic trade, and symbolic financial compensation will not solve the problems of Africa’s continued underdevelopment. But they would at last constitute an admission that the West should never have engaged in this trade. They would also be an acknowledgement of the West’s responsibility to try to remedy the continued legacy of the slave trade in Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for research for her book, Reparations to Africa (2008) from which some of this article is drawn.</span></em></p>The turn towards authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that former Western slave-trading nations will agree to reparations in the near future.Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1272992020-02-27T14:03:23Z2020-02-27T14:03:23ZSlave revolt film revisits history often omitted from textbooks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317465/original/file-20200226-24659-1bh9tkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1027%2C0%2C3940%2C2584&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Reenactment of 1811 German Coast Uprising.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Soul Brother</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Armed with machetes and pitchforks and uttering chants of “Freedom or Death,” hundreds of men and women made their way along a 26-mile route along the River Parishes of Louisiana.</p>
<p>The spectacle – which I witnessed in November 2019 in St. John the Baptist Parish, in the heartland of Louisiana’s sugar cane and oil industries – was a reenactment of what historians believe was the <a href="https://www.slave-revolt.com/">largest slave rebellion</a> in United States history, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery-iv-slave-rebellions">1811 German Coast Uprising</a>.</p>
<p>That winter, along the east bank of the Mississippi River, <a href="https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/1402">Charles Deslondes</a>, an enslaved man believed to have arrived in Louisiana from Haiti, led a group of about 30 enslaved people in an uprising at a plantation owned by Manuel Andry. They killed Andry’s son, Gilbert, and then set out to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/its-anniversary-1811-louisiana-slave-revolt-180957760/">establish a black state</a> along the banks of the Mississippi. As the movement continued, the uprising grew to about 500 people headed for New Orleans.</p>
<p>In real life, a group of 100 armed bounty hunters put the uprising down. Dozens of the rebels were subjected to a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/its-anniversary-1811-louisiana-slave-revolt-180957760/">monstrous public punishment</a> that included torture and execution. Many were <a href="http://slaveryandremembrance.org/collections/object/?id=OB0102">decapitated</a> – their heads placed on spiked poles along a 60-mile stretch of the Mississippi River in a message meant to frighten other enslaved people who might have dared to resist.</p>
<p>In the reenactment, which artist <a href="https://www.dreadscott.net/">Dread Scott</a> is making into a documentary film that is set to be released in October 2020, the revolt ends in victory.</p>
<h2>Hard histories</h2>
<p>As a scholar who studies <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3lZyTkwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">race and how historical events are represented and remembered</a>, I see Scott’s forthcoming film as an opportunity to correct a glaring problem with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-ways-to-improve-education-about-slavery-in-the-us-110013">way that slavery is taught</a> – or not taught – in U.S. schools. And that is, the history of slavery in America is often either excluded or taught in ways that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/27/magazine/slavery-education-school-1619-project.html">humiliate students and sympathize with slaveholders</a>.</p>
<p>The history of slavery is also usually not taught as something that was created by white supremacy, and <a href="https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/02/07/how-is-slavery-taught-in-us-schools.html">protected and sanctioned by the Constitution</a>.</p>
<p>Scott’s film – which is being produced with a US<a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dread-scotts-epic-reenactment-rebellion-1700433">$1 million budget</a> – deliberately reimagines the outcome for one of several <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery-iv-slave-rebellions">slave revolts</a> – an aspect of slavery that scholars believe <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/08/28/historians-slavery-myths">has not gotten its due</a>. </p>
<h2>Imagining freedom</h2>
<p>Though some might criticize this cinematic interpretation as historically inaccurate, I believe the reenactment can generate important classroom discussions about historical memory and the history of slavery.</p>
<p>What does it mean, for instance, to imagine freedom as something that happened – instead of something that was destroyed – for those who participated in slave revolts? What does it mean to transform their death and public punishment into an uplifting narrative of hope and freedom? </p>
<p>How to confront the histories and afterlives of slavery is a central concern for Dread Scott, whose artist name pays homage to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Dred-Scott-decision">1857 Dred Scott</a> Supreme Court case that ruled against an enslaved man’s bid for freedom.</p>
<p>Scott says it was an ethical decision to refuse to replicate a massacre of black people at the hands of white bounty hunters who would earn money from their deaths. </p>
<p>As Scott has stated, the reenactment is “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/11/louisiana-slave-rebellion-reenactment-artist-dread-scott">interrupting the historic timeline</a>.”</p>
<h2>Inspiring action</h2>
<p>Scott is not a historian but an artist who calls upon the public to imagine speculative histories. In this respect, I believe that his work examines freedom struggles and abolition across time. Scott’s endeavor contributes significantly to a much-needed conversation about slavery and the violence that it entailed. It leaves open the challenge of how to reimagine art for art’s sake, and to instead use art for the sake of social action.</p>
<p>Revisiting histories like the history of slavery is a painstaking and painful task. The difficulties are not only about asking the nation to confront the legacy of racial supremacy. Rather, the 1811 Slave Rebellion Reenactment is also about creating new political futures.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ana Paulina Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A reenactment of the largest slave rebellion in US history involves a plot twist. A scholar who studies race, history and memory says the new ending can spark new beginnings.Ana Paulina Lee, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1284452019-12-19T12:14:24Z2019-12-19T12:14:24ZHow migrants and their supporters are reviving the ethos of the 19th-century underground railroad<p>The story of the 19th-century underground railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses helping enslaved African-Americans to escape, has received renewed interest over recent months. The railroad was run by activists who referred to themselves as agents, conductors and station masters, and to fugitives as passengers. </p>
<p>In May 2019, the Trump administration stirred <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/23/trump-delays-putting-harriet-tubman-on-20-bill-outrage">controversy</a> by delaying the release of the $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman, a slave turned underground railroad activist and abolitionist. In November, the film <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/movies/harriet-review.html">Harriet</a> was released, depicting the heroic struggle of the railroad’s most famous “conductor”. </p>
<p>But the underground railroad has also gained renewed attention in the context of precarious migration towards Europe and North America. <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html">Growing mass displacement</a> caused by conflict, persecution, poverty or environmental destruction has coincided with tightening visa regimes and enhanced border controls. In response, forms of support and sanctuary for those on the move have spread.</p>
<p>In North America, such <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/8/sanctuary-cities-are-new-unsaerground-railroad/">sanctuary and solidarity movements</a> have grown since the 2016 election of Donald Trump. These movements uphold the underground railroad’s tradition and ethos by promising to support and hide those threatened by deportation. Some even facilitate migrant movements across borders, at times along the trails of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/the-underground-railroad-for-refugees">the original underground railroad</a>.</p>
<p>In Europe, comparisons to the underground railroad have also appeared, particularly since 2015 when over a million people crossed the EU’s external borders. This prompted some to talk of the <a href="https://crimethinc.com/2017/02/13/the-syrian-underground-railroad-migrant-solidarity-organizing-in-the-modern-landscape">Syrian underground railroad</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/05/world/europe/france-italy-migrants-smuggling.html">French railroad “conductors”</a>, or a transnational railroad <a href="http://spheres-journal.org/disobedient-sensing-and-border-struggles-at-the-maritime-frontier-of-europe/">across the Mediterranean</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GqoEs4cG6Uw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Spirit of the railroad lives on</h2>
<p>In a recent journal <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0002764219883006">article</a>, I explored these associations between past and present forms of fugitive escape and acts of solidarity. The 19th-century underground railroad was, according to the historian <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/gateway-to-freedom/">Eric Foner</a>, “an interlocking series of local networks”, composed of “a small, overburdened group of dedicated activists”. Much of the activism of these so-called vigilance committees was not underground at all, but, in fact, very visible – fund-raising, mobilising the public, offering legal aid and confronting slavecatchers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/before-sanctuary-cities-heres-how-black-americans-protected-fugitive-slaves-72048">Before sanctuary cities, here's how black Americans protected fugitive slaves</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This history of solidarity with those on the move was re-activated over a century later through the sanctuary movement in the US of the 1980s. A <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/04/no-more-deaths-scott-warren-migrants-border-arizona/">network of nuns, priests and their parishioners</a> smuggled people from Central America, many of whom were fleeing US-supported death squads, into the US. </p>
<p>Today, the spirit of this activism lives on in countless ways, ranging from direct interventions along deadly borders, such as the the <a href="https://alarmphone.org/en/">Mediterranean Sea</a>, the <a href="https://nomoredeaths.org/en/">Sonoran</a> desert along the US border and <a href="https://alarmephonesahara.info/en/">Saharan</a> desert in Africa, to providing <a href="https://w2eu.info/">guidance</a> to those still trying to move. It also lives on in <a href="http://www.irr.org.uk/resources/bhc/series/01-04-04-01-08-01/">anti-deportation</a> and <a href="https://detention.org.uk/">anti-detention</a> campaigns, and in networks creating <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/radical-history-review/issue/2019/135?fbclid=IwAR0sfHFlEk8hasaikadDse7sxhdyH9qYdeyjjopk4SsUZkUU9D3qn-HB2DA">sanctuary</a> spaces and cities after arrival.</p>
<h2>Denial of agency</h2>
<p>When drawing these parallels between past and present forms of escape and support for those in flight, I noticed that in many accounts, the initiative of those escaping – both historic slaves and today’s migrants – is downplayed or ignored. </p>
<p>For the most part, slave fugitives in the 19th century could expect support from activists of the underground railroad only after they had moved north and crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary between slave states in the southern US and free states in the north. Retrieving slaves from the south and guiding them north, as Tubman did, was rare. For much of their journeys, slaves had to rely on their own ingenuity and strength as well as spontaneous acts of solidarity along the way, offered mostly by black people and communities not considered part of the underground railroad. </p>
<p>Similarly, the initiative of those migrating precariously today is often erased. Even in well-meaning <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/anti.12320">humanitarian accounts</a>, migrants are regularly portrayed as mere victims and denied any agency in their own migration projects. The activism and solidarity of people in the global south and diaspora communities is also erased – without their support many migrant journeys and border crossings would be even more dangerous. This means that many aspects of past and present underground railroads remain underground and unacknowledged. </p>
<p>This erasure of slave and migrant agency is also due to arguments developed by those opposed to the escape of “fugitives”. As I show in my study, both in the 19th-century US and in Europe today, those who support people on the move are blamed for causing such “illegal” movements. Back then, the phenomenon of slave runaways was <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/gateway-to-freedom/">wrongly attributed to “enticement”</a> by northerners. Slave owners accused abolitionists of instilling the idea of flight in their “human property”. </p>
<p>Today, migrant escape is also often attributed to enticement by “northerners”. For example, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activists working to rescue lives in the Mediterranean Sea are often <a href="https://blamingtherescuers.org/">wrongly constructed as a pull factor</a> that encourages people to make the journey. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ngos-under-attack-for-saving-too-many-lives-in-the-mediterranean-75086">NGOs under attack for saving too many lives in the Mediterranean</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Politicians such as Italy’s Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party and a former deputy prime minister, have <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2018/06/malta-responsible-lifeline-boat-denied-italy-180622154705983.html">derided NGOs</a> for supposedly profiting from “loading this valuable cargo of humans – of human flesh – on board”. The country’s former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/opinion/matteo-renzi-helping-the-migrants-is-everyones-duty.html?_r=2">depicted</a> migrant smugglers as “the slave traders of the 21st century”. Through these accounts, European politicians have sought to justify militarising the Mediterranean Sea and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/mediterranean-battlefield-migration/">sending tens of thousands of migrants</a> back to Libya, where their <a href="https://theconversation.com/migrants-calling-us-in-distress-from-the-mediterranean-returned-to-libya-by-deadly-refoulement-industry-111219">lives are in danger</a>. </p>
<p>The story of the 19th-century underground railroad and the countless acts of escape and solidarity it symbolises serves as a reminder today that migrants, too, are seeking freedom, acting on their own needs and desires. At the same time, countless acts of solidarity along the way and forms of sanctuary upon arrival show that the ethos of the underground railroad lives on, even at a time when borders and social divisions seem to emerge all around us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128445/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurice Stierl receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. He is also a member of the network Alarm Phone. </span></em></p>Both in 19th-century America and today, the initiative and choices of those making the journey are often ignored.Maurice Stierl, Leverhulme Research Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1289682019-12-17T16:32:31Z2019-12-17T16:32:31ZWhat the 19th-century fad for anti-slavery sugar can teach us about ethical Christmas gifts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307440/original/file-20191217-58292-nlmvmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sweet and toil. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/granulated-white-sugar-spoon-some-cubes-1138338317">Losmandarinas</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With shopping days to Christmas fast running out, how many of us are thinking about the ethics behind what we buy? This can be a difficult area to understand, since data on ethical consumption is very thin on the ground. One indicator, the <a href="https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/research-hub/uk-ethical-consumer-markets-report">Ethical Consumer Markets Report 2018</a>, points to good news and bad news in the recent past. </p>
<p>In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, the average person in the UK spent £1,238 on ethical purchases, compared to £542 ten years earlier. That’s a rise of over £500 per head even after inflation is <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator">taken into account</a> – although <a href="https://journal.ethicalconsumer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JCE_2018_1_21_28-Boyce-Harrison.pdf">we need to be</a> slightly cautious with this kind of information because the data is based on products that have been categorised as ethical. It ignores the fact that people sometimes buy them for other reasons, such as health or availability. </p>
<p>Year on year, the report painted a mixed picture. There was a 20% rise in UK purchases of ethical clothing and a 23% rise in purchases of second-hand clothing for environmental reasons. Ethical food and drink purchases rose 16% and green energy spending grew 56%. Yet this was offset by an 87% drop in sales of solar panels and a 28% drop in sales of energy-efficient cars. This was because the government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/19/subsidies-for-new-household-solar-panels-to-end-next-year">subsidies</a> had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/12/scrapping-uk-grants-for-hybrid-cars-astounding-says-industry">been</a> shifted to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-go-further-and-faster-to-tackle-climate-change">other areas</a>. </p>
<p>We also shouldn’t assume that purchases of ethical goods will keep on increasing over time, just like the ten-year data seems to show. In fact, history tells us to be careful here. One interesting case study that I was <a href="http://links.springernature.com/f/a/MXbayq5ppqzLY0e83wU9lg%7E%7E/AABE5gA%7E/RgRfmWD-P0QwaHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcHJpbmdlci5jb20vLS8yL0FXNFhjYklMRjJmd1B0OVNSbnFtVwNzcGNCCgAAfi24XUlWgXJSHEplbm5pZmVyLmpvaG5zQGJyaXN0b2wuYWMudWtYBAAABuc%7E">involved in</a> examining is that of rise and fall of free-labour sugar. It highlights just how little power consumers may actually have when it comes to ethical shopping, and how we need to put more pressure on businesses and governments to do the right thing.</p>
<p>In late 18th century Britain, several sugar producers started offering consumers a choice between slave-produced and free-labour sugar. Many housewives chose the free-labour sugar, even though it cost more. They had the support of leading businessmen such as the potter Josiah Wedgewood, who produced a <a href="https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/collections/research/sankofa/legacies-slavery/item-186990.aspx">custom sugar bowl</a> advertising to the afternoon tea guest the moral decision of their host. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307442/original/file-20191217-58311-1je6uq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wedgewood’s bowl.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/collections/research/sankofa/legacies-slavery/item-186990.aspx">Liverpool Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet in the 1830s, free-labour sugar was withdrawn from the marketplace. This wasn’t because people had stopped buying it. The businessmen who had been selling the sugar had died or retired, and the next generation did not continue to sell the product. Also the government had <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Slavery-Abolition-Act">abolished slavery</a> in 1833, and imposed tariffs on slave sugar which meant there was no longer a need for a separate free-labour category. </p>
<p>These tariffs were lifted a few years later, however, creating a free market in sugar again. People would have been aware that the cheap sugar on the market now came from slave plantations, but they bought it in large quantities anyway. Public concerns had moved on to other issues, such as child labour and safety in British factories. </p>
<p>What does this tell us about ethical consumption in our own era? One lesson is that consumers are arguably the least powerful agents in the whole retail system: they can only buy what businesses are offering. Though there are alternatives like second-hand clothes or <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-a-sustainable-future-we-need-to-reconnect-with-what-were-eating-and-each-other-123490">sharing initiatives</a>, they are only marginal in terms of the market as a whole. </p>
<p>Ethical product lines can disappear as easily as they arrive. For instance, the fair trade model is <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-a-very-merry-christmas-for-fairtrade-chocolate-69761">under threat</a> because of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/23/fairtrade-ethical-certification-supermarkets-sainsburys">questions</a> about its purpose and effectiveness. There is a great danger here of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. </p>
<h2>Beyond ethical lines</h2>
<p>Another implication of the free-labour sugar story is that our focus should not just be on ethical products. To challenge the modern-day equivalents of slave sugar, we should be seeking to ensure that all products and services that we consumer are made, sourced, transported and sold under ethical conditions. This won’t be true of the vast majority of the gifts that we place under the Christmas tree this year. Many of them will have involved the exploitation of labour, unsafe and insecure working conditions, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/some-people-trapped-in-modern-slavery-are-underworked-and-they-pay-a-heavy-price-for-it-99863">more extreme forms</a> of modern slavery and human trafficking. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307443/original/file-20191217-58311-1tor0d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not really made by elves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/presents-gifts-under-christmas-tree-winter-530221042">Pro-stock Studio</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is not simply a question of recognising the power of businesses to create more ethical products. Firms are under pressure to generate profits for shareholders. Many will be <a href="https://www.drapersonline.com/news/further-redundancies-loom-at-asos/7038061.article">downsizing or eliminating teams</a> working on areas like ethical supply and corporate social responsibility – often without consumers knowing anything about it. </p>
<p>Government regulation can also have an effect, which underlines the need for political pressure to enforce positive change. New regulations are just as likely to make things worse as better, just like the 1830s tariffs removed slave sugar from shelves for a few years before later policy changes allowed it back again. </p>
<p>In 2015, for instance, the UK government introduced the <a href="https://journal.ethicalconsumer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JCE_2018_1_38_48-Webb.pdf">Modern Slavery Act</a>, which required supply chains to be more transparent. This did raise the profile of modern slavery, and brought it to the attention of company boards. But the new rules were framed in such a way that they effectively passed the responsibility for supply-chain monitoring from the government to companies. </p>
<p>The recent UK election would have been a good opportunity to bring this out in the open, but the three largest political parties <a href="https://assets-global.website-files.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5dda924905da587992a064ba_Conservative%202019%20Manifesto.pdf">barely</a> mentioned <a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Real-Change-Labour-Manifesto-2019.pdf">modern slavery</a> in their election <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/pages/57307/attachments/original/1574684060/Stop_Brexit_and_Build_a_Brighter_Future.pdf?1574684060">manifestos</a>. None of them said anything about ethical consumption either. </p>
<p>In short, consumers need to make businesses and politicians care more about these issues. They can try to enact change by supporting ethical brands, or by putting pressure on businesses if they are shareholders or investors. They also need to question highly exploitative business practices that are taken as the norm. As <a href="http://awajfoundation.org/staff/nazma-akter/">Nazma Akter</a>, a Bangladeshi union leader, recently expressed to me: “If you see buy one get one free, someone is paying. It’s not you in the UK, it is the Bangladeshi workers living in slums.” </p>
<p>As we saw from the case of free-labour sugar, people should never take ethical products for granted. Advancing ethical consumption is a constant battle. We need to keep fighting, one Christmas present at a time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128968/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Johns received funding DFID/British Academy, grant number TS170023.
</span></em></p>After several decades in which many housewives turned their backs on slave sugar, it suddenly made a comeback.Jennifer Johns, Reader in International Business, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1166072019-05-09T14:29:01Z2019-05-09T14:29:01ZThe story of Oromo slaves bound for Arabia who were brought to South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273600/original/file-20190509-183096-1brlr85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=117%2C263%2C2578%2C1327&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oromo children saved from slavery. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by author</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In September 1888, the HMS Osprey serving in the Royal Navy’s anti-slave trade mission in the Red Sea, based in Aden, intercepted three dhows embarked from Rahayta and Tadjoura on the Ethiopia coast. </p>
<p>Aboard were 204 boys and girls bound for resale in Arabian markets. Other dhows with young human cargo were also apprehended. The children came from the highland area of Oromia Region of Ethiopia, and spoke the Oromo language.</p>
<p>They had been trekked as many as several hundred kilometres to the coast. The children were taken to Aden and, for a time, were housed and cared for at the Free Church of Scotland mission at Sheikh Othman. </p>
<p>The arrivals, however, were often too debilitated to withstand the harsh climate and prevalent malaria. In 1890, 64 of the survivors were transferred to the Free Church of Scotland’s Lovedale Institution, in Alice, a town in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. </p>
<p>The story is captured in a new book laden with graphs, maps, charts and statistics. But if you like your history as narrative, you’ll have the job of piecing together this extraordinary <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/sandra-rowoldt-shell-children-of-hope/fyyp-5169-g0a0">story</a> written by Sandra Rowoldt Shell in <em>Children of Hope: The Odyssey of the Oromo Slaves from Ethiopia to South Africa</em>. </p>
<h2>Fate of Oromo kids</h2>
<p>During the 10 years the children spent at Lovedale they proved to be good students and on good terms with their Xhosa-speaking and English school mates. Four in five survived and left the school as young adults in search of opportunities. They became teachers, shop assistants, carpenters, painters, cooks, clerks.</p>
<p>Most remained in South Africa, but 17 earned fares to Ethiopia. A few married and started families. One whose story is traced in the book is Bisho Jarsa who married former Lovedale student Reverend Frederick Scheepers. Their daughter Dimbiti married carpenter James Edward Alexander, and were the parents of South African liberation struggle veteran and academic <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-neville-edward-alexander">Neville Alexander</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273021/original/file-20190507-103045-1646uii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But most of the Oromo orphans’ lives ended in obscurity or tragedy. Mortality among the returnees was particularly high (33%). </p>
<p>However, the orphans’ stories are not completely lost. Many left behind their autobiographies at Lovedale. They related, in their own voices, their individual ordeals from the time they were captured, sold or pawned, including the tortuously long journeys between their Oromo homeland to the coast. All are rendered in full in the books’ appendices.</p>
<p>Much of Shell’s account delivers the quantitative side of the Oromo story. She followed an assiduous research path to retrieve all possible data related to the orphans, their place of origin, the details of their enslavement and transfer, place by place to various entrepots, the traders and merchants involved, until over a 100 pages later, the Royal Navy’s Osprey appears.</p>
<h2>Rich detail</h2>
<p>Once in Aden, lengthy asides document the Sheikh Othman mission and its Keith-Falconer school (illustrated by photographs), personal details about the missionaries involved, orphan mortality, age and gender data. </p>
<p>After the orphans reach East London, in the Eastern Cape, we learn a lot about the Lovedale curriculum, comparative performance of Oromo and non-Oromo students (the Oromo did better on average), supplemented with graphs on class marks and percentages, including distributions, gendered results, class positions, and mortality rates, among others (the reproductive quality of the graphs is not very good).</p>
<p>A teacher scandal gets its own sleuthing through the display of doctored photographs eliding the suggestive hands of an Oromo boy on the alleged culprit’s shoulders prior to his dismissal. </p>
<p>Once leaving Lovedale, individuals are traced (thanks to a 1903 questionnaire results unearthed by Shell) that reflect the mixed fortunes of the Lovedale graduates. Though she displays many Oromo group photographs, Shell has uncovered only one individual photograph (the arresting Berille Boko). </p>
<p>A full one-third of the volume is made up of appendices on data variables, the Oromo autobiographies with a place-name gazetteer, an essay by Gutama Jarafo, detailed endnotes, bibliography and an extensive index.</p>
<p>Shell has added a great deal to our understanding of how children were ensnared into the Indian Ocean slave trade, which connected much of the Eastern African interior to Arabia, the Persian Gulf and India. Long after the Atlantic slave trade was snuffed out, the Indian Ocean trade continued almost to the beginning of the 20th century. The Osprey’s intervention and the survival of but a mere quarter of those it rescued suggests that thousands of children’s lives remained enslaved and in misery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fred Morton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Book adds a great deal to our understanding of how children were ensnared into the Indian Ocean slave trade.Fred Morton, Professor of History, University of BotswanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/971152018-08-23T08:44:48Z2018-08-23T08:44:48ZTransatlantic slave trade was not entirely ‘triangular’ – countries in the Americas sent ships out too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229600/original/file-20180727-106527-1wwi5i0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sections of a Brazilian slave ship from the 19th century.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.slaveryimages.org/details.php?categorynum=5&categoryName=Slave%20Ships%20and%20the%20Atlantic%20Crossing%20(Middle%20Passage)&theRecord=77&recordCount=78">Robert Walsh, as shown on www.slaveryimages.org, compiled by Jerome Handler and Michael Tuite and sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities." caption="A Brazilian slave ship from the 19th century." zoomable="true</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For much of the English-speaking world, the term “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/history/industrial_era/the_slave_trade/revision/2/">triangular trade</a>” refers to one thing only: the transatlantic slave trade. Many school history books feature maps with arrows linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas, with mindboggling figures and icons representing the commodities exchanged. </p>
<p>From the perspective of Britain, France and the Netherlands, “triangular trade” is an apt descriptor. But from the perspective of Brazil, Cuba, and others, the term has much less validity. When the European powers abolished their slave trades, merchants in the Americas built on many years of experience in their own bilateral trades to keep it going. </p>
<p>According to the latest figures from Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, an authoritative source which contains information on over 80% of all slaving voyages, nearly <a href="http://slavevoyages.org/voyages/kM9CqnWc">40% of all enslaved Africans</a> arrived in the Americas aboard vessels that had sailed to Africa directly from New World ports. That means that almost two-fifths of the entire slave trade traced a bilateral, rather than a triangular pattern. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-digital-archive-of-slave-voyages-details-the-largest-forced-migration-in-history-74902">A digital archive of slave voyages details the largest forced migration in history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>So there was no single “transatlantic slave trade”. And this makes it very difficult to generalise about the slave trade. Understanding this dimension also underscores the global nature of the trade, which was organised by merchant networks spanning not only the Atlantic but also the Indian Ocean.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229594/original/file-20180727-106508-1xvzrbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229594/original/file-20180727-106508-1xvzrbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229594/original/file-20180727-106508-1xvzrbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229594/original/file-20180727-106508-1xvzrbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229594/original/file-20180727-106508-1xvzrbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229594/original/file-20180727-106508-1xvzrbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229594/original/file-20180727-106508-1xvzrbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229594/original/file-20180727-106508-1xvzrbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Brazil’s trades</h2>
<p>By far, the most important of the bilateral traders was Brazil. This is hardly surprising, since Brazil imported more captives than any other New World region, receiving <a href="http://www.slavevoyages.org/estimates/hhrcUTbc">just under half</a> of all of the Africans transported across the Atlantic. While many of these Africans arrived aboard vessels sailing from Portugal, the vast majority – perhaps nine in ten – came <a href="http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/search">aboard vessels</a> that had originally sailed from Brazil. Merchants in Brazil began trading in earnest in the 1630s, when parts of the colony were occupied by the Dutch, but increased participation dramatically after the Dutch expulsion in 1654. </p>
<p>After British abolition in 1807, Britain went on a crusade to get other countries to end the slave trade, pressuring them to sign treaties. But Brazil’s ability to supply its own market for captives helped it to resist British pressure to stop slave trading – even after Brazil, which declared independence from Portugal in 1822, formally renounced slave trading in 1830. </p>
<p>Brazilians managed to do this by trading their plantation surpluses for slaves in Africa. The most important of these was cachaça, the Brazilian sugarcane spirit, but tobacco also played a key role, along with gold. Traders supplemented these goods with Indian textiles, which they obtained via the global Portuguese mercantile networks, and with sophisticated financial instruments that allowed them to transfer credits around the globe. </p>
<p>Portuguese-Brazilian merchants in south Atlantic ports such as Luanda in Angola <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Way_of_Death.html?id=flAJ7IH3Cj4C&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">played a key role</a> in assembling trade goods and procuring captives, which they often shipped on freight to Brazil. Unlike the north Atlantic model, in which the organisers of a voyage owned the vessel, the trade goods, and captives, Brazilian traders were often shipowners whose vessels carried captives as freight for multiple owners from Africa to Brazil.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229592/original/file-20180727-106508-pxb6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229592/original/file-20180727-106508-pxb6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229592/original/file-20180727-106508-pxb6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229592/original/file-20180727-106508-pxb6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229592/original/file-20180727-106508-pxb6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229592/original/file-20180727-106508-pxb6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229592/original/file-20180727-106508-pxb6uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The port of Salvador in Bahia. Only Liverpool dispatched more slaving vessels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Salvador_bahia_panorama_1870.jpg">By Guilherme Gaensly (1843-1928), via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Caribbean merchants build their own trade</h2>
<p>Although Brazil was by far the largest bilateral slave trading power, it was not alone. As my own ongoing research is showing, merchants in the British Caribbean, Barbados especially, also participated, although at <a href="http://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/li6BVhBI">much lower levels</a>. Their trade was concentrated in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, motivated by the chronic inability of the Royal African Company, the British slave trading monopoly, to deliver enslaved African labourers in the numbers they desired. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232691/original/file-20180820-30599-1lvhn4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232691/original/file-20180820-30599-1lvhn4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232691/original/file-20180820-30599-1lvhn4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232691/original/file-20180820-30599-1lvhn4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232691/original/file-20180820-30599-1lvhn4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232691/original/file-20180820-30599-1lvhn4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232691/original/file-20180820-30599-1lvhn4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232691/original/file-20180820-30599-1lvhn4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like the Brazilians, British Caribbean merchants monetised their plantation produce in the form of rum and traded it for captives. And like the Brazilians, they supplemented their rum cargoes with textiles, British woollens more than Indian cottons. </p>
<p>Merchants in the New England colonies, principally Newport, Rhode Island and Boston, Massachusetts, began a similar trade. Theirs was unique in that it ran in triangular fashion from New England, to Africa, to the Americas – the only New World-based trade to do so. During the colonial period, most of these captives were taken to the British Caribbean, but after independence in 1776 Americans supplied captives to their own markets, as well as to Cuba.</p>
<p>As a slave-trading power in its own right, the Spanish colony of Cuba was a latecomer. Large-scale plantation slavery <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Sugarmill.html?id=H9dWCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">only emerged</a> there in the second half of the 18th century. Few there had any experience slave trading, largely because the British and Americans supplied most of the captives. However, when those two nations abolished their slave trades in 1807-8, Cuban traders <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Slave_Society_in_Cuba_During_the_Ninetee.html?id=NmVgQAAACAAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">became more involved</a>. For a few years they served an apprenticeship of sorts, then began operating their own slave trade, establishing commercial connections on the African coast. Like the other traders, they exchanged cane spirits and tobacco for captives, but also British textiles and manufactures, and even some silver. </p>
<p>After 1820, all of this was illegal under an Anglo-Spanish treaty, in which Spain committed to ending its slave trade, but by then merchants had created a multinational, polyglot network of traders, bankers, shipbuilders, and traders that operated illegally. This network operated for four more decades before finally <a href="http://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates">succumbing in the 1860s</a>.</p>
<p>The common denominator in all of these trades was an ability for these colonies to turn slave-grown plantation produce into goods that were exchanged for captive slaves. Cane spirits – rum, cachaça, aguardiente – was the backbone for most, but tobacco figured in some of them. All but the Americans supplemented these goods with manufactured products, textiles for the most part. Most of these came from Asia via trade networks that extended into the Indian Ocean, but Britain was also a major source, especially in the 19th century.</p>
<p>Even when restricted to the British, French, and Dutch trades, the term “triangular trade” conveys the false impression that it was a closed system. In reality, the slave trade was a vast enterprise, assembling goods from across the globe, exporting and re-exporting them to Africa for captives who were then carried to the New World to labour at a variety of tasks. Geometry doesn’t even begin to capture it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Kelley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Merchants from Brazil, Cuba, North America and the British West Indies traded goods grown by slaves on plantations, for more slaves.Sean Kelley, Senior Lecturer in Global History, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/858462017-10-18T10:17:35Z2017-10-18T10:17:35ZThe swashbuckling tale of John Brown – and why martyrs and madmen have much in common<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190653/original/file-20171017-30417-1n2bia6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ole Peter Hansen Balling's painting of John Brown. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=John+Brown+Balling&title=Special:Search&go=Go&searchToken=6c44lwd2h5f4uh1fubvvq7wqn#/media/File:Ole_Peter_Hansen_Balling_-_John_Brown_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Flailing devil-horn brows; cross-eyed glare; hooked nose; unkempt beard; angular cheek bones; reckless hair, and hands bound in the dark corners of canvas. That’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Brown-American-abolitionist">John Brown</a>, as <a href="http://www.civilwar.si.edu/slavery_brown4.html">depicted by Ole Peter Hansen Balling</a> in earthy oil-paint tones, circa 1872. </p>
<p>It was my fourth visit to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. Airy, flush green olive trees, showery water fountains, golden shards of light; it beat the stuffy DC summer streets and the even stuffier Library of Congress newspaper reading room. But on this occasion, I paid particular attention to the opening line of the box of text beneath Balling’s portrait:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There were those who noted a touch of insanity in abolitionist John Brown …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It reminded me of a display I had seen at the Gettysburg Battlefield Museum just a few weeks earlier. A bold, capital-lettered, mega-font question was emblazoned on the wall, next to a rusty pike and a picture of Brown:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>JOHN BROWN. MARTYR OR MADMAN?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And here I was, back at the gallery, staring at the same man, asking myself that same question, like thousands before me.</p>
<p>Born in Torrington, Connecticut in 1800, Brown remains, over a century and a half after his death, one of the most fiercely debated and contested figures in 19th-century American history. </p>
<p>On the evening of October 16, 1859, just months before the American Civil War fully ignited, Brown led a band of raiders into the small town of <a href="https://www.civilwar.org/learn/collections/john-browns-harpers-ferry-raid">Harper’s Ferry, Virginia</a>, in a bid to instigate a slave rebellion. Brown’s plan was to seize federal ammunition supplies and arm slaves with rifles, pikes and weaponry in order to strike fear into slave-holding Virginians, and catalyse further revolts in the south. </p>
<p>Greatly outnumbered by local militia and government marines, he was swiftly captured and sentenced to hang, which he did on December 2, 1859. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190649/original/file-20171017-30422-jkrr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190649/original/file-20171017-30422-jkrr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190649/original/file-20171017-30422-jkrr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190649/original/file-20171017-30422-jkrr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190649/original/file-20171017-30422-jkrr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190649/original/file-20171017-30422-jkrr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190649/original/file-20171017-30422-jkrr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Brown and others inside the engine house of the Harper’s Ferry Armory just before the US Marines ram through the door.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/john-brown-others-inside-engine-house-237231835?src=RBbODGEccpQz9Kes3g7XRg-1-5">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A symbolic man</h2>
<p>While some abolitionists immediately labelled Brown a heroic martyr, others more cautiously warned against his violent approach. Southern newspapers, on the other hand, expressed disgust at how this violent madman could ever be deemed heroic.</p>
<p>Since the 1860s, Brown has been a symbolic cultural resource for interest groups to draw upon, define, explain, or galvanise a course of action or belief. Depending on one’s point of view, he has variously been claimed a heroic martyr for African Americans, one of the <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/news/state/kansas/article177411271.html">greatest Americans of all time</a>, a cold-blooded killer and even <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2011/spring/brown.html">America’s first terrorist</a>. But is there a historical “truth” to whether he was actually (partisan bias aside) madman or martyr?</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190651/original/file-20171017-30441-1ri66px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190651/original/file-20171017-30441-1ri66px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190651/original/file-20171017-30441-1ri66px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190651/original/file-20171017-30441-1ri66px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190651/original/file-20171017-30441-1ri66px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1022&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190651/original/file-20171017-30441-1ri66px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1022&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190651/original/file-20171017-30441-1ri66px.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1022&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Brown, May 1859.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/john-brown-portrait-may-1859-238815067?src=BALCHs8T6l0_IerU3hrFPA-1-0">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The very idea of martyrdom tends to proliferate during periods of social change and historical action. Martyr stories are also marked by personal quests, violence, institutional execution, and dramatic final actions that heroically demonstrate a commitment to a cause with disregard for one’s own life.</p>
<p>Brown’s violent raid at Harper’s Ferry at the dawn of the Civil War, his theologically-infused commitment to ending slavery, and institutional hanging fit perfectly into these historical patterns of socio-religious martyrdom. So why the “madman” moniker?</p>
<p>The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term “madman” as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A man who is insane; a lunatic. Also more generally (also hyperbolically): a person who behaves like a lunatic, a wildly foolish person.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Problematically, the first part of the definition – “insane” – connotes a mentally ill male, unable to fully control their physical and mental faculties.</p>
<p>But Brown was committed to his final act, and recognised violence, imprisonment and sacrifice as a forum for abolitionism. Consequently, it might be argued that his actions suggest a form of heightened (rather than lack of) self-control, something you’d expect of a martyr. </p>
<h2>Cultural stories</h2>
<p>However, the second part – to behave like a “lunatic” or “wildly foolish” person – more aptly describes Brown’s personality. There is certainly a case for considering Brown’s final act at Harper’s Ferry to be “wildly foolish”. Even his most famous supporters such as Frederick Douglass described it as <a href="https://archive.org/stream/johnbrownaddress00doug/johnbrownaddress00doug_djvu.txt">cold-blooded, if well intended</a>.</p>
<p>Even if a present-day medical, neurobiological, or psychological analysis of Brown was possible, however, his actions would surely be considered outside the realms of what psychologists call a healthy “clinical population”. That is, his class of behaviours stretched beyond the limits – psychological, mental, physical – of the normative masses. Which begs the bigger question: is it not a streak “madness” that always makes a martyr?</p>
<p>So, the futile question of whether Brown was madman or martyr is irrelevant: Brown was, and will continue to be, both.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arun Sood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>He took a remarkable stand against slavery in the countdown to the American Civil War – but opinion differs about his methods.Arun Sood, Lecturer in English, University of PlymouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/725642017-02-16T20:33:58Z2017-02-16T20:33:58ZFive lessons Trump could learn from Lincoln<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157196/original/image-20170216-32702-110xmzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lincoln in 1858; Trump in his official White House portrait, 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln#/media/File:Abraham_Lincoln_by_Byers,_1858_-_crop.jpg/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#/media/File:Donald_Trump_official_portrait.jpg">Abraham Byers/unknown</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How will Donald Trump observe Presidents Day? </p>
<p>Will he have the inclination or take the time to read about or reflect on the qualities of our greatest leaders? </p>
<p>Given how busy Trump is issuing executive orders, fighting with the judiciary, managing the scandal surrounding the dismissal of his national security advisor, becoming acquainted with world leaders and tweeting, the answer is probably no. </p>
<p>As a historian who has studied presidential leadership for decades, perhaps I can save him some time by suggesting a few things he might learn from the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.</p>
<h2>Lesson 1: Grow a thick skin</h2>
<p>Lincoln was more reviled than <a href="http://savasbeatie.com/books/LINCOLN_book.htm">any American president</a>. The <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469620152/a-dangerous-stir-/">opposition press</a> described him as a “fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism,” a “worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed from the days of Nero” and “a <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Lincoln-and-the-Power-of-the-Press/Harold-Holzer/9781439192726">vulgar village politician</a> without any experience worth mentioning.” Even Lincoln’s now-classic Gettysburg Address <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/119420915/abraham-lincoln-a-press-portrait-his-life-and-times">was derided</a> as a display of “ignorant rudeness.”</p>
<p>These attacks stung, but Lincoln refused to take the bait. “No man resolved to make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention,” <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln6/1:1116?rgn=div1;singlegenre=All;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=a+dog">he wrote</a>. “Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including … the loss of self-control.” Lincoln realized that getting into the gutter would diminish his stature, distract the public from important issues and burn crucial political bridges. “A man has no time to spend half his life in quarrels,” <a href="http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/residents-visitors/visitors-from-congress/visitors-congress-henry-winter-davis-1817-1866/">he advised a political ally</a>. “If any man ceases to attack me I never remember the past against him.”</p>
<p>If Trump doesn’t dial back his attacks – which so far have included invectives against Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Madonna, John Lewis, Charles Schumer, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, a growing list of federal judges and the CIA – he will appear more petulant than presidential.</p>
<h2>Lesson 2: Engage your critics strategically</h2>
<p>Lincoln occasionally responded to critics – but always civilly, always strategically. </p>
<p>When, in 1862, Republican editor Horace Greeley charged that Lincoln’s unwillingness to end slavery sabotaged the Union war effort, Lincoln replied in a public letter. He had already decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, but gave the impression that he was agnostic on the matter. With respect to slavery, Lincoln told Greeley, his policies would be dictated by what best served the Union cause. By tying his position to preserving the Union, Lincoln laid groundwork for making his ultimate decision more palatable to the many Unionists – in the North and the border states – who supported slavery. He did so without insulting Greeley and other abolitionists and concluded his letter by <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln5/1:848?rgn=div1;singlegenre=All;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=I+have+here+stated+my+purpose">emphasizing common ground</a>: “I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.”</p>
<p>Trump has yet to absorb the lesson that in the world of presidential communications, less is more – especially when the less is carefully crafted, strategic and cultivates those whose support is needed. For Trump, that means the majority of Americans <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/results/president">who didn’t vote for him</a> and who have given him the lowest approval ratings of any incoming president <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/trump-executive-orders-majority-disapproval-poll-551873">in modern times</a>.</p>
<h2>Lesson 3: Be informed and ask questions</h2>
<p>Aside from a brief stint as a militia volunteer in the 1830s, Lincoln had no military experience. Nevertheless, he was a war president and helped to develop the grand strategy that crushed the Confederacy. </p>
<p>How did he do it? By reading extensively on military strategy and tactics and meeting frequently with his secretary of war and generals, asking them questions and discussing military operations. <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;idno=heb01656">He spent countless hours</a> in the War Department telegraph room, reading and sometimes responding to telegrams from the front, and often visiting armies in the field. While he gave the generals wide latitude, he remained curious, focused, well-informed and critical to the Union’s military success.</p>
<p>To develop effective policies on the issues he cares about, Trump must become better-informed. He should demand briefings on key issues from a variety of experts (especially those who oppose him), read them thoroughly and ask questions. Rather than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/01/10/trump-wants-lawmakers-to-replace-obamacare-very-quickly-after-repeal/?utm_term=.3e5a1866f5ae">glibly promise</a> that Republicans will quickly repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with a plan that expands coverage, lowers costs and increases choice, he should learn about the complexities of health care and the inevitable trade-offs involved in replacing the ACA. Raising hopes only <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/02/06/513718166/trump-congressional-gop-back-off-from-immediate-obamacare-repeal">to dash them in fairly short order</a> is neither good leadership nor good politics.</p>
<h2>Lesson 4: Adapt, change and grow</h2>
<p>Consider Lincoln’s position on slavery, race and citizenship. Lincoln opposed slavery, but he established restoration of the Union – not emancipation – as the Union’s war aim. </p>
<p>When he became president, Lincoln knew few African-Americans, probably saw them as inferior to whites and occasionally told racist jokes. As president, he listened to and learned from abolitionists who were among his most outspoken critics. They included radical Republican Sen. Charles Sumner and African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whom Lincoln collared after his Second Inaugural Address to ask his opinion of the speech. Critics of slavery helped Lincoln understand how emancipation and enlistment of black troops would undermine the rebellion, leading him to embrace emancipation and reframe the Union’s war aims to include liberty as well as Union. Abolitionists also helped him understand that African-American citizenship was essential to make the war’s promise of “a new birth of freedom” a reality. In a speech delivered three days before his death, Lincoln embraced the radical position that blacks who had served in the military or were literate should have <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Fiery-Trial/">the right to vote</a>.</p>
<p>Trump comes to office with an understanding of issues that reflects his campaign rhetoric. He cannot hope to leave this country better than he found it unless he listens to critics as well as supporters on a wide range of issues. Let’s start with terrorism. He may have proposed a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/donald-trump-muslim-ban-immigration/">Muslim ban</a> during the campaign, but now’s the time to develop a nuanced view of Islam at home and abroad and listen to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/jihadist-groups-hail-trumps-travel-ban-as-a-victory/2017/01/29/50908986-e66d-11e6-b82f-687d6e6a3e7c_story.html?utm_term=.02b7de954e61">national security experts</a> who understand the <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/01/31/512592776/will-trumps-refugee-order-reduce-terror-threats-in-the-u-s">perils of targeting Muslims</a>.</p>
<h2>Lesson 5: Use words carefully</h2>
<p>Lincoln had less than a year of formal education, yet he was among our most literate presidents. A voracious and eclectic reader, he appreciated the beauty and power of language and used his understanding to become a formidable writer. In the age of the telegraph, presidents communicated with the nation through the written word – speeches, open letters and state papers published in the press. </p>
<p>Lincoln worked hard to become a writer. As president, his precision and eloquence enabled him to make the case for the Union and the unimaginable sacrifices its preservation required. Lincoln defined the war as a “people’s contest,” a struggle to vindicate the efficacy of America’s founding principle – the right of people to govern themselves. His formulation of the principle evolved from the 1830s through his presidential addresses and achieved its most powerful expression in the Gettysburg Address. Skillfully weaving together emancipation and self government, <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln7/1:40?rgn=div1;singlegenre=All;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=four+score">he explained to a war-weary public</a> that their sacrifices would forge “a new birth of freedom” that assured that America’s founding principle – “government of the people, by the people, for the people” – would “not perish from the Earth.”</p>
<p>While Trump enjoyed vastly more formal education than Lincoln, he is neither <a href="https://newrepublic.com/minutes/133566/donald-trump-doesnt-read-books">a reader</a> nor a writer. He connects with supporters who find his barroom-like riffs <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/27/this-former-senator-totally-gets-president-trumps-appeal/?utm_term=.9bbb70389c53">“authentic” and honest</a>. But as a candidate who lost the popular vote decisively, he must reach beyond his base to succeed. To do so, he must use language more precisely and persuasively. Should he continue to issue poorly crafted policy statements – such as his executive orders banning entry to the U.S. by residents of seven predominantly Muslim nations – he will spend his time <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-gives-no-sign-of-backing-down-from-travel-ban/2017/01/29/4ffe900a-e620-11e6-b82f-687d6e6a3e7c_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_banledeall-917am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.3b2a7c502969">walking back his positions</a>, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/3-key-trump-mistakes-that-led-to-travel-ban-court-defeat-234884">defending ill-conceived actions in court</a> and <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-refugee-republicans-234326">undermining confidence in his competence</a>. If he continues to appeal to fear and narrow self-interest rather than forge a vision rooted in shared values and aspirations – as did Lincoln, FDR and Reagan – his presidency will fail and the country will suffer. Here again he should listen to Lincoln, who appealed to “the better angels of our nature” in the face of secession and imminent war.</p>
<p>If Trump wants a reset that will help him – and the country – succeed, there is no better guide than POTUS 16.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72564/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donald Nieman receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.</span></em></p>The most hated president in US history could teach our new leader a few things.Donald Nieman, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/695842016-12-01T15:17:12Z2016-12-01T15:17:12ZWhy the history of slavery in the US South is taking centre stage once again<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148279/original/image-20161201-25645-1m7iv2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C18%2C1106%2C772&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harriet Tubman: a conductor on the underground railroad. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harriet_Tubman.jpg">H. B. Lindsley via wikimedia commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the legacies of slavery in the US linger into the 21st century for African-Americans, a new wave of books, films, and television shows are attempting to document this harrowing part of the country’s history. With Barack Obama, America’s first black president, ending his second term, and Donald Trump gearing up to take office, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-in-the-us-runs-far-deeper-than-trumps-white-supremacist-fanbase-68259">spectre of race-relations</a> has become ever more concrete and visible. </p>
<p>December 2 marks the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/slaveryabolitionday/">International Day for the Abolition of Slavery</a>, first celebrated in 1986. While the day is focused on eradicating “contemporary” slavery around the world, the Atlantic Slave Trade, which transplanted over 12m people from Africa to the other side of the ocean as slaves, still impacts black Americans across the nation. African-Americans are, in literary scholar Christina Sharpe’s words, living “<a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-wake">in the wake</a>” of slavery and its aftermath. </p>
<p>Cultural memory – the recollection of the past through books and films – increases at particular moments in time when the past demands attention. So it is not surprising, given the “wake” of slavery in America – which includes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/mass-incarceration-black-americans-higher-rates-disparities-report">high incarceration rates</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ferguson-has-reinforced-racial-fear-and-lethal-stereotypes-34674">shootings of black people</a> by police, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/disappearing-acts-reflecting-on-new-orleans-10-years-after-katrina-46834">devastations</a> of hurricane Katrina and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-flint-water-scandal-says-about-us-politics-in-2016-55789">crisis in Flint, Michigan</a> – that writers and film-makers are attempting to grapple with its memory now. </p>
<h2>Confronting history on screen</h2>
<p>This wave of new cultural treatment of slavery began a few years ago. Two huge films on the topic were released in 2013: Steve McQueen’s award-winning <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2024544/">12 Years a Slave</a> and Quentin Tarantino’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Django Unchained</a>. McQueen’s film adapted the slave narrative of abolitionist Solomon Northup in graphic and disturbing detail. Aesthetically and politically, the film confronted a challenging history that the US had failed to examine on a large scale. Tarantino’s film, however, even in its depiction of the American South, tended towards the comic and unrealistic. Its focus on the revenge narrative and comic-book violence perhaps made it more consumable for general viewers.</p>
<p>2016 has seen a continued renaissance of this cultural memory, particularly in relation to the <a href="http://pathways.thinkport.org/about/about1.cfm">underground railroad</a>, the network of safe houses for slaves trying to escape the South for the North and Canada. Colson Whitehead’s much-praised novel <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Underground_Railroad.html?id=i-XNCwAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">The Underground Railroad</a>, for instance, imagines the railroad as a literal railway line beneath the earth. The book’s protagonist Cora is trapped on an exceedingly violent plantation in Georgia when she is offered the chance to escape with another slave, Caesar. Their journey north takes them through numerous states and vivid worlds, with each stop imaginatively depicted. </p>
<p>In a different tone, the WGN America show <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4522400/">Underground</a> and <a href="http://deadline.com/2016/05/harriet-tubman-fences-charles-d-king-beasts-of-no-nation-financiers-1201747788/">a forthcoming</a> HBO biopic about the abolitionist Harriet Tubman who <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/harriet-tubman/videos/harriet-tubman-and-the-underground-railroad">became a “conductor”</a> on the underground railroad, aim for a more realistic and historically accurate tone and aesthetic. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_nOEUogI7pQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>With Tubman’s face now <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-was-the-first-woman-depicted-on-american-currency-58245">set to adorn</a> the US$20 bill, it attests to the widescale interest and investment in this part of American history. No doubt, the narrative of escape – of potential freedom and an ostensible happy ending – plays into the desire to remember the railroad. This is a cultural memory Americans can perhaps feel good about. </p>
<p>Another 2016 film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4196450/">The Birth of a Nation</a>, has caused much <a href="http://variety.com/2016/film/columns/the-birth-of-a-nation-nate-parker-1201883000/">debate</a> – but largely because of rape allegations from 1999 involving its director, Nate Parker, the history of which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/sep/30/nate-parker-birth-of-a-nation-rape-allegation-60-minutes-interview">has resurfaced</a> during early previews of the movie. The film examines the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Virginia and overturns the title of a notoriously racist <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0004972/">1915 civil war</a> feature film by D W Griffith. While not necessarily “feel-good”, the revolutionary aspect of Turner’s story injects hope and transformation into one of the darkest parts of the nation’s history. </p>
<p>Alongside these films, books and TV series, the opening in September of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC placed black memory at the forefront of cultural remembrance. As Obama <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/24/remarks-president-dedication-national-museum-african-american-history">said</a> at the opening: “African-American history is not somehow separate from our larger American story, it’s not the underside of the American story, it is central to the American story”. </p>
<p>Rather than being consigned to history, slavery’s impact clearly lingers in a multitude of ways for African-Americans. While the high rates of incarceration and the scandals of Flint and Katrina should not be equated with slavery, they are caught in its dark and troubling continuum. By remembering this past through books, films and television, we may find a way through today’s distressing times.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Lloyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A growing roll call of books, films and television shows are focusing on the legacy of slavery.Christopher Lloyd, Lecturer in English Literature, University of HertfordshireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/602752016-06-07T08:38:24Z2016-06-07T08:38:24ZModern slave trade: how to count a ‘hidden’ population of 46 million<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124652/original/image-20160531-1925-7e3tcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1860, just before the outbreak of the American Civil War, the United States carried out a <a href="https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/overview/1860.html">national census</a>. One result was the very precise count of <a href="http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/images/public_education/publications/SocialEd79_SlaveryanditsLegacies.pdf">3,953,761 slaves</a> in the country, amounting to 12.6% of the total population. It was the last clear cut count of slavery in a national population in history.</p>
<p>Since the abolition of legal slavery, it has become a hidden and uncountable crime, making it hard to gauge the number of people truly affected. Globally, slavery takes many forms, with most slaves doing dirty, dangerous, demeaning work – digging and breaking rocks, shaping bricks by hand, <a href="https://theconversation.com/modern-slavery-is-destroying-the-environment-to-meet-demand-for-shrimps-and-pet-food-59015">cutting down forests</a> with hand axes, or scrubbing floors. </p>
<p>Modern slavery is especially hard to measure compared to other crimes. This is something <a href="https://www.walkfree.org/">Walk Free</a> and Hull University’s <a href="http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/wise.aspx">Wilberforce Institute</a> has tried to change with the <a href="http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/">Global Slavery Index</a>. By applying a method which was first used to estimate the number of fish in a Swedish fjord, and combining it with a survey of more than 25 countries, researchers have been able to get a widespread picture on the crime of slavery, from a global perspective.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">African American slave family representing five generations all born on the same plantation in South Carolina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Everett Historical/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates there are <a href="http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/">45.8m people worldwide in slavery today</a>. This is an increase on previous estimates of 36m, but this does not necessarily mean that slavery is on the rise. Instead, the best way to view this figure is simply that the microscope is getting stronger, and better focused every year. This means we are now able to see slavery much more clearly, in places we weren’t able to in the past.</p>
<h2>Counting a crime</h2>
<p>In criminology, the difference between the actual number of crimes and the officially reported number of crimes is called the “<a href="http://www.academia.edu/6721162/Deviance_Crime_and_Social_Control_the_Dark_Figure_of_Crime">dark figure</a>”. There is a “rule of dark figures” which states that the more serious the crime, the more likely it is to be reported to the authorities. For example, <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/focus-on-violent-crime-and-sexual-offences--2012-13/rpt---chapter-2---homicide.html">the dark figure for murder is normally far below 1%</a>, but the dark figure for vandalism <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/116417/hosb1011.pdf">might be as high as 95% </a> – so nearly everyone who experiences vandalism doesn’t bother to report it. This is a clear pattern in most countries, but there are two types of crime that often confound this rule.</p>
<p>Rape and sexual assault are very serious crimes, but are rarely reported to the police. This is primarily due to the social stigma attached to and felt by those who have been assaulted, along with the fear they might not be believed. Victims of slavery also feel stigma and shame, in part because sexual assault is very common in slavery cases. But slavery also defies measurement for a unique reason. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Painting showing the abolition of slavery in the French Colonies in 1848.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Everett - Art/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Normally, to determine the level of any specific crime in developed countries, the results of a <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/crime-statistics-methodology/guide-to-finding-crime-statistics/crime-survey-for-england-and-wales--csew-/index.html">national sample crime survey</a> are compared to the official arrest and conviction rate. When being counted, all crimes are treated as “events” – also known as short single episodes – a mugging for example may only take one or two minutes. </p>
<p>But slavery is a crime which starts, and then continues for an indeterminate time – the victimisation may last for days, months, or even years. This unique fact about slavery crime means it can rarely be measured using national crime surveys, as the victim is so often hidden away, enslaved, and not available to answer questions.</p>
<h2>Understanding slavery</h2>
<p>This is what researchers are up against when they try to understand the scale of slavery across the world. In an attempt to combat this, for the slavery index, we cast the net wider and instead of just individuals, we surveyed households and families to see if anyone knew anyone who had experience of slavery. </p>
<p>Much like the 1860 US Census, these surveys provide an estimate of the proportion of the population who are enslaved, and includes cases that happened in other countries. For example, respondents in national surveys in Nepal identified significant numbers of family members enslaved in Qatar and other Gulf States. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children of brick factory workers in Kolkata, India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">arindambanerjee/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These household surveys work well in countries in the developing world, but in North America and Europe more active law enforcement means criminals work hard to keep their slaves hidden – plus the total number of slaves in the population is much smaller. Fortunately a statistical technique called multiple systems estimation (MSE) can provide reliable estimates of these hidden populations. </p>
<p>First used to estimate the number of fish in a Swedish fjord, MSE has been regularly used to determine <a href="https://hrdag.org/syria">the number of civilian deaths in ongoing conflicts</a>, such as the current civil war in Syria. It works by comparing lists of casualties from hospitals, police, and families, to determine an estimate of the total killed. When applied to slavery, it creates an estimate by comparing the lists of victims known to different agencies, such as the police, non governmental organisations (NGOs), and social service providers. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Child labour on tea plantations in India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PavelSvoboda/shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The UK was the first country to use this technique to estimate slavery, in late 2014, and immediately revised its official figures upwards from the 2,744 cases that were known to exist to an estimated 10,000 to 13,000 slaves, which is where the estimated figure stands today.</p>
<p>As the modern antislavery movement pushes forward, these new breakthrough methods mean there is a yardstick to gauge the progress of liberation. This is important because you can’t solve a problem you can’t understand, so a metric is crucial if effective action is to be taken. </p>
<p>Knowing the geographical spread of slavery also brings with it knowledge of which products and commodities might be tainted by bondage – such as the minerals in our phones and laptops. And as the estimates become more precise, governments, NGOs, and international bodies can mark their progress (or lack thereof) allowing us to trace the best roads to freedom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Bales does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The number of people in slavery across the world is on the rise, or maybe researchers are just getting better at counting.Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.