From the Department of Labor's site: http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/moynchapter3.htm
Elegant,
Interesting reading, but I would note that most of the references are from the 1960s at the latest (and many, like Tannenbaum, are from the 1940s). His argument that Brazilian slavery was (and I'm grossly oversimplifying I know) somehow a kinder, gentler version of our peculiar institution struck me as suspect, however. In the first place, as a historian I generally don't think this kind of investigation (Who treated their slaves worse, or which slaves had it the worst?) is all that productive or useful, especially since we're dealing with two very different contexts here.
I haven't done a heck of a lot of reading in Latin American history, but I have read some (translated) accounts of what a typical day was like for slaves in Brazil and Cuba (which, of course, didn't abolish slavery until two decades after the US did); it was certainly no walk in the park (and race relations in those countries are still a serious concern, just as it is here, and to a large extent just as it is throughout the hempisphere). I found the following article on JSTOR (you can read it if you have access to it through school, or you can use the citation to find the print copy. Yes, it is still rather old scholarship (1970), but I haven't really been digging that hard and it provides a very interesting counterpart on the whole US-Brazil comparison vis-à-vis slavery (and based on what I've skimmed he seems to come to the conclusion, I think, that the two institutions really were not so dissimilar, either in theory or practice).
Slavery in Brazil and the United States: An Essay in Comparative History
Carl N. Degler
The American Historical Review, Vol. 75, No. 4. (Apr., 1970), pp. 1004-1028.
Also, since the articles you have cited (as well as Degler's response) deal heavily with the issue of how religion intersected with the institution of slavery and with slave life, I thought you might enjoy, for further reading (assuming you haven't already read it) "He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey" by Douglas R. Egerton. One of the big themes in his examination of how the slave society in Charleston seemed to allow for the Vesey conspiracy to take root, because masters in urban Charleston gave their slaves the kind of autonomy (i.e. allowing slaves to hire themselves out, to practice a trade, to read the Bible, to earn their own money, to join the African Methodist Episcopal Church, etc.) put their slaves in a better position to plan a revolt than would be the case on the rural, heavily regulated plantation. Egerton also has a very interesting discussion about how the Bible (especially the Old Testament) seemed to provide a moral justification for rebellion; while masters used other sections of it to support the Peculiar Institution, slaves relied on Biblical passages to justify its violent destruction. I thought it was a very well-written book, though it was once the subject of a bitter debate in the William and Mary Quarterly. Another historian (I forget his name at the moment) contended that Egerton had fundamentally misinterpreted the sources, and that there really was no Vesey conspiracy, that it was all fabricated by the authorities in Charleston to scare the crap out of slaveowners and persuade them to stop the more liberal practices mentioned above. Since I haven't really done much primary research here, nor have I read the debate in the Quarterly, I really can't form an opinion on whether his claims have merit. But I stand by my opinion that Egerton's discussion is fascinating and illuminating.
Sorry for the length. Take care, and happy reading.
131 Replies
18058 Views