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1 results

  • 2 - “A Blot on English Justice”

  • Zak Leonard
  • Book:
    Ethical Empire?
    Published online:
    05 October 2023
    Print publication:
    19 October 2023, pp 56-91

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 probes early reformers’ modes of rhetoric. To raise awareness of distant injustices in the post-Emancipation era, they denounced the anomalous “virtual slavery” suffered by famine-stricken peasant cultivators, subordinated Indian princes, and the British working classes alike. This chapter clarifies how reformers were conceptualizing virtual slavery as an act of coercion and dehumanizing instrumentalization that was as injurious as chattel slavery. In so doing, they employed two rhetorical scripts: one that highlighted these virtual slaves’ degradation under colonial and monopolistic rule, and one that protested the conversion of native sovereigns into dishonored, disposable tools.