Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:35:29.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ending of the Slave Trade and the Evolution of European Scientific Racism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Seymour Drescher
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

How might a discussion of the ending of the Atlantic slave trade in relation to the development of European racism illuminate the question of who gained and who lost? The question can be approached at three levels. The first concerns the degree to which the racial attitudes of Europeans were affected by the process of termination. The second would be how the people of Europe and of Afro-America were affected by the termination itself. The third and broadest aspect would be the long-term effects of that complex process. It seems to me that the answers become more speculative as the scope of potential impact broadens, as the discussion moves from a concern with attitudes and ideology to social conditions, as the geographical scope broadens, and as the temporal dimension to be considered expands to encompass the twentieth century. The first level, the relation of the processes of abolition to racism, is the primary focus of this paper; a few brief remarks on the second and third issues are reserved for the conclusion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , Fall 1990 , pp. 415 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1990 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atlas Geographus (1711-17) 5 vols., London: John Nutt.Google Scholar
Barker, Anthony J. (1978) The African Link: British Attitudes to the Negro in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1550-1807. London: Frank Cass.Google Scholar
The Beauties of Nature and Art Displayed (1763-64) 13 vols., London: G. Robinson.Google Scholar
Bénot, Yves (1989) La révolution française et la fin des colonies. Paris: Éditions La Découverte.Google Scholar
Biddiss, Michael D. (1970) Father of Racist Ideology: The Social and Political Thought of Count Gobineau. New York: Weybright and Talley.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Robin (1988) The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bolt, Christine (1971) Victorian Attitudes to Race. London: Routledge and K. Paul.Google Scholar
Boulle, Pierre H. (1986) “In defense of slavery: Eighteenth-century opposition to abolition and the origins of a racist ideology in France,” in Krantz, Frederick (ed.) History from Below: Studies in Popular Protest and Popular Ideology in Honor of George Rude. Montreal: Concordia University: 221-41.Google Scholar
Carlyle, Thomas (1849) “Occasional discourse on the nigger question.” Fraser’s Magazine 40: 670-79.Google Scholar
Carver, Jonathan (1779) The New Universal Traveller. London: G. Robinson.Google Scholar
Cohen, William B. (1980) The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530-1880. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick (1980) From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1800-1925. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Courtet de ľlsle, Victor (1837) La science politique fondée sur la science de l’homme. Paris: A. Bertrand.Google Scholar
Curtin, Phillip D. (1964) The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Curtin, Phillip D. (1975) Economic Change in Pre-Colonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade. 2 vols., Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Cuvier, Georges de (1817) Le règne animal: Distribué d’après son organisation. Paris: Deterville.Google Scholar
Daget, Serge (1980) “A model of the French abolitionist movement and its variations,” in Bolt, C. and Drescher, S. (eds.) Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform. Folkestone, Kent: William Dawson: 64–69.Google Scholar
Davis, David Brion (1966) The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, David Brion (1975) The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, David Brion (1983) “American slavery and the American Revolution,” in Berlin, Ira and Hoffman, Ronald (eds.) Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia: 262-80Google Scholar
Davis, David Brion (1984) Slavery and Human Progress. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Debbasch, Yvan (1967) Couleur et liberté: Le jeu du critère ethnique dans un ordre juridique esclavagiste. Paris: Dalloz.Google Scholar
Drescher, Seymour (1980) “Two variants of anti-slavery: Religious organization and social mobilization in Britain and France, 1780-1870,” in Bolt, Christine and Drescher, Seymour (eds.) Anti-slavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey. Folkestone, Kent: William Dawson: 43–63.Google Scholar
Drescher, Seymour (1982) “Public opinion and the destruction of British slavery,” in Walvin, J. (ed.) Slavery and British Society, 1776-1848. London: Macmillan: 22–48.Google Scholar
Drescher, Seymour (1985) “The historical context of British abolition,” in Richardson, David (ed.) Abolition and Its Aftermath: The Historical Context, 1790-1916. London: Frank Cass: 3–24.Google Scholar
Drescher, Seymour (1987) Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, William F. (1829) Des caractères physiologiques des races humaines. Paris: Compère Jeune.Google Scholar
Eltis, David (1987) Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Emmer, Pieter C. (1985) “The great escape: The migration of female indentured servants from British India to Surinam,” in Richardson, David (ed.) Abolition and Its Aftermath: The Historical Context, 1790-1916. London: Frank Cass: 245-66.Google Scholar
Fryer, Peter (1984) Staying Power: Black People in Britain since 1504. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities.Google Scholar
Gobineau, Arthur de (1853-55) Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines. 4 vols., Paris: Firmin-Didot.Google Scholar
Grégoire, Abbé (1808) De la littérature des nègres, ou recherches sur leurs facultés intellectuels, leurs qualités morales et leur littérature. Paris: Maradon.Google Scholar
Guenebault, J. H. (1837) The Natural History of the Negro Race. Charleston, SC: D. J. Dowling.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Léon-François (1973) Le nègre romantique: Personnage littéraire et obsession collective. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar
Hume, David (1875) Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. London: Longmans.Google Scholar
Hunt, James (1865) “On the Negro’s place in nature.” Memoirs Read Before the Anthropological Society of London 1: 1–60.Google Scholar
Jennings, Lawrence C. (1988) French Reaction to British Slave Emancipation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Jordan, Winthrop (1968) White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Paul, and Nicholls, Anthony (1981) Nationalist and Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany before 1914. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Knox, Robert (1850) The Races of Men: A Fragment. London: H. Renshaw.Google Scholar
Lawrence, William (1819) Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man. London: J. Callow.Google Scholar
Long, Edward (1774) The History of Jamaica. 3 vols. London: T. Lowndes.Google Scholar
Lorimer, Douglas A. (1978) Colour, Class, and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. New York: Holmes and Meir.Google Scholar
Meirs, Suzanne (1975) Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade. New York: Africana Publishing.Google Scholar
Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique de Paris (1841-47) 2 vols., Paris: Dondet-Duprey.Google Scholar
Montgomery, James (1828) Poetical Works. 4 vols., London: Longman, Rees, Orme, etc.Google Scholar
Mosse, George L. (1978) Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism. New York: Howard Fertig.Google Scholar
Nicholls, David (1988) “Haiti: Race, slavery, and independence (1804-1825),” in Archer, Leonice J. (ed.) Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour. London: Routledge: 225-38.Google Scholar
Observations from a Gentleman in Town to His Friend in the Country Relative to the Sugar Colonies (1781) London: R. Ayre.Google Scholar
Oldham, James (1988) “New light on Mansfield and slavery.” Journal of British Studies 27: 45–68.Google Scholar
Poliakov, Leon (1971) Le mythe aryen. Paris: Calmann-Lévy.Google Scholar
Poliakov, Leon (1974) The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, trans. Howard, Edmund. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Prichard, James C. (1826) Researches into the Physical History of Man, 2d ed. 2 vols., London: John and Arthur Arch.Google Scholar
Pruner-Bey, Franz (1861) “Mémoire sur les Nègres” (lecture of 21 February) Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris 2: 293–336.Google Scholar
Quinney, Valerie (1967) “The Committee on Colonies of the French Constituent Assembly, 1789-91.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin—Madison.Google Scholar
Ride, Alphonse (1843) Esclavage et liberté. Paris: H.-L. Delloye.Google Scholar
Stanton, William (1960) The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes toward Race in America, 1815-1859. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Stocking, George W. (1987) Victorian Anthropology. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Temperley, Howard (1972) British Antislavery, 1833-1870. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Tinker, Hugh (1974) A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walvin, James (1982) “The propaganda of anti-slavery,” in Walvin, J. (ed.) Slavery and British Society, 1776-1846. London: Macmillan: 49–68.Google Scholar
Walvin, James (1986) England, Slaves, and Freedom, 1776-1838. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Watson, Richard (1834-37) Works. 12 vols., London: John Mason.Google Scholar
Wilberforce, William (1807) A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. London: Luke Hansard and Sons.Google Scholar
Williams, Eric (1944) Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin (1987) “Capitalism and slavery on the islands: A lesson from the mainland,” in Solow, Barbara L. and Engerman, Stanley L. (eds.) British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 283–302.Google Scholar