The Mansfield ruling didn't actually make slaves free in England, though the perception among pro-slavery and anti-slavery lobbies was that it did. So, technically speaking, slavery wasn't actually abolished in England until very recently, I think.
It's a mistaken assumption made by quite a few lesser historians, such as William Hague in his much-heralded and over-rated biography of 'Wilberforce'. But I refer you to Simon Schama's excellent 'Rough Crossings':
"Although it is quite true that, in the interests of a clear-cut moral and legal drama, the press and public opinion in London had all taken the freeing of Somerset to vindicate Serjeant Davy's axiom that 'as soon as any slave sets foot on English grounds he becomes free', that was not, in fact, what Mansfield had said; indeed, he had inflicted contortions on himself to avoid saying it. What he had said was that the power of a master to TRANSPORT his slave against his will, out of England and to a place where he might be sold, had never been known or recognised under Common Law. And that, indeed, was the ground on which Somerset had been liberated.
"But aside from the exceptionally attentive, neither party - neither the West Indian sugar interest, which had now launched a furious lobby for legislation to recognise their property rights when in England, nor the elated crusaders for (African) freedom - took the measure of Mansfield's fastidiousness. Both sides did, in fact, think that he HAD made slavery illegal in England. Many owners continued, nonetheless, to act as if the SOmerset judgment had never happened. Auctions and sales were advertised and held, not just in London but in the provincial centres of colonial trade. Runaways were still hunted down." p61
Monday 21 March 2011
Western Civilisation on Channel 4
New series on Channel 4 seeking to explain why the West became dominant.
I watched the first episode, which looked at how China led the way over Europe centuries ago in terms of development. But how did Europe catch up with China and pass them out? Niall Ferguson presented an interesting argument that the competition between European states led to this dominant state, as opposed to China, which was one united state that ended up stagnating.
I watched the second episode, which was about 'science', and how the Ottomans led the way before 1500, and how they lost that hegemony to western Europe after the Renaissance. I thought it was quite good....
I watched the third episode, which was about 'property', and I feel Niall Ferguson came to some misleading conclusions based on faulty premises. His main theory was that the reason North America succeeded, and South America didn't, boiled down to the ownership of property. He maintains that immigrants to British colonies in America could attain the dream of working hard and owning property, while those is Spanish colonies couldn't, because a rich elite controlled all the property, and stifled economic development. I find that theory very simplistic, for a number of reasons....
1) The 'American dream' only pertained to New England. The colonies in the southern US and the British Caribbean had more in common with Latin American colonies than they did with New England. In the southern US and the British Caribbean, early settlers secured large swathes of land which were then used to create huge plantations. In the US SOuth they grew tobacco and then cotton, while in the British Caribbean they grew sugar. Those British colonists who came to the island after these early settlers found land very difficult to acquire, and often became 'poor whites', who didn't own any land. That group was conveniently ignored by Ferguson, because they didn't fit into his theory.
2) Ferguson claimed that any white colonist could dream of owning his own piece of land, however small, and that led to the great prosperity of North America. But if that was the case, then Haiti would be a rich country. When it was St Domingue, it was a colony of huge sugar plantations owned by a small rich elite. It was a rich colony then, but when Petion became president, he divided up the country into small allotments, so that nearly every Haitian could own his little bit of land. Contrary to Ferguson's theory, that action by Petion condemned Haiti to inevitable poverty.
3) Ferguson just glosses over the reforms that Brazil have made, making blanket statements that because these reforms have taken place, Brazil is likely to overtake the US in terms of development. That's a hypothesis I don't necessarily buy. I'm not convinced that Brazil's destined to overtake the US on that basis.
4) It was good to see Ferguson highlighting the contradiction of America being the land of the free only for white people, while keeping black people in servitude. But I don't agree with his hypothesis that this unequal treatment of black people is one of the main reasons why Brazil will overtake the US. Ferguson seems to accept at face-value the Brazilian policy of miscegenation, while the US maintained segregation. On the contrary, now that the civil rights movement has removed barriers in the US in the 1960s, I think the two countries are on equal footing as far as race relations are concerned. For example, the US has a black president, while Brazil have never had one. Racism is still very much an issue in Brazil, but in different ways....
I feel Ferguson missed one crucial point. The reason the British colonies developed faster and better than Spanish colonies came down to one major factor, and it had very little to do with property. It had to do with economics. The British colonies established a business practice that was very much in demand by the growing economies of Europe. In the southern US, they produced tobacco and cotton, while in the British Caribbean they produced sugar. This is in contrast with the Spanish colonies, which were in the main obsessed with finding precious metals.
The contrasting approaches had significantly differing results. The Spanish found huge deposits of gold and silver in Mexico and Peru. While those discoveries made adventurers rich, it had a simple economic spinoff. Huge amounts of coins, etc, were sent back to Spain, and it resulted in much more money entering the Spanish economy, with little economic activity to back it up. Inevitably, that led to spiralling inflation in Spain in the century after the mid-1550s, and it practically weakened Spain significantly.
The Spanish authorities made little effort to develop economic activities for export in their colonies. For example, Jamaica was a trading port where Spanish colonies reared cattle and pigs for traders landing there. The Spanish colonists who lived there were extremely poor. When the British conquered Jamaica in 1655, they set up large sugar plantations owned by army officers, and the island quickly became a wealthy British colony. It was a simple story of demand and supply, which Ferguson surprisingly ignored....
Then, there were the support systems. Britain had an excellent navy and merchant shipping, which ensured that trade between the mother country and the colonies was controlled, and the wealth passed only between Britain and its colonies. As Spain went into decline, they couldn't maintain a proper merchant navy, and ended up losing out to British, French and American smugglers, who made themselves rich trading with Spanish colonies. In the end, Spain sold asientos (rights to trade with Spanish colonies) to British and French ships.
I would've like to hear Ferguson say, rather, why New England succeeded, while the southern US and the Caribbean lagged behind. I believe a lot had to do with the institutions that were set up in New England, i.e. universities, centres for thought, industrial development, private enterprise, new technologies, etc. In the southern US and the British Caribbean, there was very little of that. Plantation owners were more concerned with keeping black slaves from rebelling and cutting their throats, to be thinking about advancing themselves. In fact, Jamaica-born planters always thought of themselves as 'English', and looked forward to the day when they would 'go home'. This is in contrast with New England, where colonists had a regional pride that the whites in slave societies did not have....
All in all, I thought episode three was disappointing, because it had a faulty hypothesis that led to inaccurate conclusions.
I watched the first episode, which looked at how China led the way over Europe centuries ago in terms of development. But how did Europe catch up with China and pass them out? Niall Ferguson presented an interesting argument that the competition between European states led to this dominant state, as opposed to China, which was one united state that ended up stagnating.
I watched the second episode, which was about 'science', and how the Ottomans led the way before 1500, and how they lost that hegemony to western Europe after the Renaissance. I thought it was quite good....
I watched the third episode, which was about 'property', and I feel Niall Ferguson came to some misleading conclusions based on faulty premises. His main theory was that the reason North America succeeded, and South America didn't, boiled down to the ownership of property. He maintains that immigrants to British colonies in America could attain the dream of working hard and owning property, while those is Spanish colonies couldn't, because a rich elite controlled all the property, and stifled economic development. I find that theory very simplistic, for a number of reasons....
1) The 'American dream' only pertained to New England. The colonies in the southern US and the British Caribbean had more in common with Latin American colonies than they did with New England. In the southern US and the British Caribbean, early settlers secured large swathes of land which were then used to create huge plantations. In the US SOuth they grew tobacco and then cotton, while in the British Caribbean they grew sugar. Those British colonists who came to the island after these early settlers found land very difficult to acquire, and often became 'poor whites', who didn't own any land. That group was conveniently ignored by Ferguson, because they didn't fit into his theory.
2) Ferguson claimed that any white colonist could dream of owning his own piece of land, however small, and that led to the great prosperity of North America. But if that was the case, then Haiti would be a rich country. When it was St Domingue, it was a colony of huge sugar plantations owned by a small rich elite. It was a rich colony then, but when Petion became president, he divided up the country into small allotments, so that nearly every Haitian could own his little bit of land. Contrary to Ferguson's theory, that action by Petion condemned Haiti to inevitable poverty.
3) Ferguson just glosses over the reforms that Brazil have made, making blanket statements that because these reforms have taken place, Brazil is likely to overtake the US in terms of development. That's a hypothesis I don't necessarily buy. I'm not convinced that Brazil's destined to overtake the US on that basis.
4) It was good to see Ferguson highlighting the contradiction of America being the land of the free only for white people, while keeping black people in servitude. But I don't agree with his hypothesis that this unequal treatment of black people is one of the main reasons why Brazil will overtake the US. Ferguson seems to accept at face-value the Brazilian policy of miscegenation, while the US maintained segregation. On the contrary, now that the civil rights movement has removed barriers in the US in the 1960s, I think the two countries are on equal footing as far as race relations are concerned. For example, the US has a black president, while Brazil have never had one. Racism is still very much an issue in Brazil, but in different ways....
I feel Ferguson missed one crucial point. The reason the British colonies developed faster and better than Spanish colonies came down to one major factor, and it had very little to do with property. It had to do with economics. The British colonies established a business practice that was very much in demand by the growing economies of Europe. In the southern US, they produced tobacco and cotton, while in the British Caribbean they produced sugar. This is in contrast with the Spanish colonies, which were in the main obsessed with finding precious metals.
The contrasting approaches had significantly differing results. The Spanish found huge deposits of gold and silver in Mexico and Peru. While those discoveries made adventurers rich, it had a simple economic spinoff. Huge amounts of coins, etc, were sent back to Spain, and it resulted in much more money entering the Spanish economy, with little economic activity to back it up. Inevitably, that led to spiralling inflation in Spain in the century after the mid-1550s, and it practically weakened Spain significantly.
The Spanish authorities made little effort to develop economic activities for export in their colonies. For example, Jamaica was a trading port where Spanish colonies reared cattle and pigs for traders landing there. The Spanish colonists who lived there were extremely poor. When the British conquered Jamaica in 1655, they set up large sugar plantations owned by army officers, and the island quickly became a wealthy British colony. It was a simple story of demand and supply, which Ferguson surprisingly ignored....
Then, there were the support systems. Britain had an excellent navy and merchant shipping, which ensured that trade between the mother country and the colonies was controlled, and the wealth passed only between Britain and its colonies. As Spain went into decline, they couldn't maintain a proper merchant navy, and ended up losing out to British, French and American smugglers, who made themselves rich trading with Spanish colonies. In the end, Spain sold asientos (rights to trade with Spanish colonies) to British and French ships.
I would've like to hear Ferguson say, rather, why New England succeeded, while the southern US and the Caribbean lagged behind. I believe a lot had to do with the institutions that were set up in New England, i.e. universities, centres for thought, industrial development, private enterprise, new technologies, etc. In the southern US and the British Caribbean, there was very little of that. Plantation owners were more concerned with keeping black slaves from rebelling and cutting their throats, to be thinking about advancing themselves. In fact, Jamaica-born planters always thought of themselves as 'English', and looked forward to the day when they would 'go home'. This is in contrast with New England, where colonists had a regional pride that the whites in slave societies did not have....
All in all, I thought episode three was disappointing, because it had a faulty hypothesis that led to inaccurate conclusions.
Benedict Arnold
Sometimes, history is written in a way that there are heroes and villains, and nothing illustrates that more than the way Americans see 'heroes' such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and 'villains' such as Benedict Arnold. But should all Americans share that view? It seems to be me that those who hold certain views on the existence of slavery should take the reverse view, because while Washington and Jefferson fought to uphold the institution of slavery, Arnold was offering slaves their freedom if they fought for Britain:
http://niahd.wm.edu/?browse=entry&id=7791
"The battle between the rebelling colonies and the British over control of the slave population continued into the last days of the war. As portrayed in Colonial Williamsburg's Revolutionary City, even during the British occupation of Williamsburg in 1781 Benedict Arnold was promising freedom to blacks who joined the British side. Promises such as this continued to feed debates among slaves themselves as to wether or not to run away."
It just goes to show what we've always known - history is written by the victors....
http://niahd.wm.edu/?browse=entry&id=7791
"The battle between the rebelling colonies and the British over control of the slave population continued into the last days of the war. As portrayed in Colonial Williamsburg's Revolutionary City, even during the British occupation of Williamsburg in 1781 Benedict Arnold was promising freedom to blacks who joined the British side. Promises such as this continued to feed debates among slaves themselves as to wether or not to run away."
It just goes to show what we've always known - history is written by the victors....
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