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HOW IDEOLOGY WORKS: HISTORIANS AND THE CASE OF BRITISH ABOLITIONISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2009

WILLIAM PALMER
WILLIAM PALMER*
Affiliation:
Marshall University, USA
*
Department of History, Marshall University, Huntington, WV 25755, USApalmer@marshall.edu
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Abstract

This review considers how historians have approached the role of ideas in understanding the beginnings of early British abolitionism. It pays particular attention to the work of Eric Williams, Roger Anstey, David Brion Davis, and, most recently, Christopher Leslie Brown. It uses Brown's Moral capital as a point of departure for offering an alternative approach to the role of ideology in early British abolition and about its operation generally.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 1039 - 1051
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 For some works on the origins of slavery in the English colonies, see Betty Wood, The origins of American slavery: freedom and bondage in the English colonies (New York, NY, 1997); Edmund S. Morgan, American slavery, American freedom: the ordeal of colonial Virginia (New York, NY, 1975); Alan Kulikoff, Tobacco and slaves: the development of southern cultures in the Chesapeake (Chapel Hill, NC, 1986); and April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: intercolonial relations in the seventeenth century (Philadelphia, PA, 2007).

2 For a good, recent narrative history of British abolitionism, see Adam Hochschild, Bury the chains: prophets and rebels in the fight to free an empire's slaves (Boston, MA, 2005); on abolition more generally, see Robin Blackburn, The overthrow of colonial slavery (London, 1989).

3 For some of these works, see Thomas Clarkson, The history of the rise, progress and accomplishment of the slave trade by the British parliament (2 vols., London, 1808); Frank J. Klingberg, The anti-slavery movement in England: a study in English humanitarianism (New Haven, CT, 1926); Reginald Coupland, The British anti-slavery movement (1933; repr., New York, NY, 1964).

4 Eric Williams, Capitalism and slavery (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944). For some critiques of Williams, see Drescher, Seymour, ‘Eric Williams, British capitalism, and British slavery’, History and Theory, 26 (1987), pp. 180–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howard Temperley, ‘Eric Williams and abolition: the birth of a new orthodoxy’, both in Barbara L. Solow and Stanley Engerman, eds., British capitalism and Caribbean slavery: the legacy of Eric Williams (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 229–57, 317–45.

5 David Brion Davis, The problem of slavery in the age of revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, NY, 1975), pp. 461–4.

6 William Palmer, Engagement with the past: the lives and works of the World War II generation of historians (Lexington, KY, 2001), p. 300.

7 Anstey, Roger, ‘A re-interpretation of the abolition of the British slave trade, 1806–1807’, English Historical Review, 87 (1972), pp. 304–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British slavery in the era of abolition (Pittsburgh, PA, 1977); idem, ‘The decline thesis since Econocide’, Slavery and Abolition, 7 (1986), pp. 3–24; David Eltis, Economic growth and the ending of the transatlantic slave trade (Oxford, 1987).

8 Roger Anstey, Atlantic slave trade and British abolition, 1760 to 1810 (London, 1975).

9 David Brion Davis, The problem of slavery in the western world (Ithaca, NY, 1966); idem, The problem of slavery in the age of revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, NY, 1975). See also Davis's Slavery and human progress (Oxford, 1984). Davis has also recently summed up his views in Inhuman bondage: the rise and fall of slavery in the new world (Oxford, 2006).

10 Davis, Problem of slavery in the age of revolution, pp. 252–4.

11 Ibid., See also Jackson Lears, T. J., ‘The concept of hegemony: problems and possibilities’, American Historical Review, 90 (1985), pp. 567–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 The relevant portions of the debate, including Davis's original chapters, were reprinted in Thomas Bender, ed., The anti-slavery debate: capitalism and abolitionism as a problem in historical interpretation (Berkeley, CA, 1992). All references are taken from this text. Haskell's line appears on p. 117, with additional discussion on self-deception on pp. 117–27. See also the critique by Drescher, Seymour, ‘The anti-slavery debate: capitalism and abolitionism as a problem in historical interpretation’, History and Theory, 32 (1993), pp. 311–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Haskell in Bender, ed., Anti-slavery debate, p. 141.

14 Ashworth in Bender, ed., The anti-slavery debate, p. 186; and Davis in Bender, ed., Anti-slavery debate, pp. 291–2.

15 Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral capital: the foundations of British abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006).

16 Ibid., pp. 22–30.

17 Ibid., pp. 155–206.

18 Lawrence Stone, The causes of the English Revolution, 1529–1642 (New York, NY, 1972; repr. 1986). Also, this review will concern itself mainly with the questions that Brown raises about ideology and the importance of the American Revolution. If more space was available, it might also explore some other issues about Moral capital, such as whether the main writers cited by Brown actually had any influence over anyone, or if any historian who thinks that the leaders of British abolitionism were acting upon humanitarian motivations can be dismissed, as Brown does, as a slave to Thomas Clarkson's early history, or if most earlier writers on British abolitionism were guilty of overly simple generalizations, such as whether early abolitionists were all saints or all used anti-slavery to cloak other interests.

19 For works on the urban conflict underlying the Reformation, see Steven Ozment, The Reformation in the cities (New Haven, CT, 1984); Thomas A. Brady, The politics of the German Reformation (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1996).

20 John Dickinson, Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, 1768), in Paul L. Ford, ed., The writings of John Dickinson (Philadelphia, PA, 1895), p. 357; Oliver St John, Mr St.-John's speech to the Lords … January 7, 1640 concerning ship-money (London, 1641).

21 Richard Overton, A remonstrance of many thousand citizens, in Don M. Wolfe, ed., Leveller manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution (New York, NY, 1967), pp. 113–14, 124. On the Levellers generally, see H. N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution (Palo Alto, CA, 1961).

22 Caroline Robbins, The eighteenth-century commonwealthman (Cambridge, MA, 1959), esp. pp. 111–21.

23 Lynn Hunt, Inventing human rights: a history (New York, NY, 2007); Brian Tierney, The ideas of natural rights: studies on natural rights, natural law, and church law, 1150–1625 (New York, NY, 1997); and Richard Tuck, Natural rights theories: their origins and development (Cambridge, 1982).

24 James Otis, The rights of the British colonies asserted and proved (Boston, MA, 1764), in Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776 (Cambridge, MA, 1965), pp. 434–5, 439, and 441–50.

25 Crosby, David L., ‘Anthony Benezet's transformation of anti-slavery rhetoric’, Slavery and Abolition, 23 (2004), pp. 39–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Bernard Bailyn, The ideological origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1967), pp. 230–319; see also Gary B. Nash, The unknown American Revolution: the unruly birth of democracy and the struggle to create America (New York, NY, 2005), pp. 8–43.

27 Samuel Cooke, A sermon preached at Cambridge … May 30th 1770 (Boston, MA, 1770), p. 42, quoted in Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, p. 145.