Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic WorldHarvard University Press, 30. 6. 2009 - Počet stran: 270 Eighteenth-century antislavery writers attacked the slave trade as "barbaric traffic"--a practice that would corrupt the mien and manners of Anglo-American culture to its core. Less concerned with slavery than with the slave trade in and of itself, these writings expressed a moral uncertainty about the nature of commercial capitalism. This is the argument Philip Gould advances in Barbaric Traffic. A major work of cultural criticism, the book constitutes a rethinking of the fundamental agenda of antislavery writing from pre-revolutionary America to the end of the British and American slave trades in 1808. Studying the rhetoric of various antislavery genres--from pamphlets, poetry, and novels to slave narratives and the literature of disease--Gould exposes the close relation between antislavery writings and commercial capitalism. By distinguishing between good commerce, or the importing of commodities that refined manners, and bad commerce, like the slave trade, the literature offered both a critique and an outline of acceptable forms of commercial capitalism. A challenge to the premise that objections to the slave trade were rooted in modern laissez-faire capitalism, Gould's work revises--and expands--our understanding of antislavery literature as a form of cultural criticism in its own right. Table of Contents: Introduction Notes This is a very important book which convincingly rethinks the fundamental agenda of Anglo-American anti-slavery literature from 1775 to 1808 (the end of the British slave trade). This is no small feat. Anti-slavery texts, Gould argues, offered less a critique of slavery than a critique of the slave trade. By distinguishing between good commerce (the importing of commodities that refined the manners) and bad commerce (the importation of slaves), these texts both critiqued commercial capitalism and outlined its acceptable and necessary forms. Thus anti-slavery texts endlessly deferred the issue of abolition in order to serve as a site of moral uncertainty about whether commercial capitalism would debase or civilize modern society. Sin is less feared than the depravity of manners which could corrupt Anglo-American culture at its core. Because virtuous and vicious commerce turned on the nature and regulation of passions, much was at stake. Closely attending to a vast number of transatlantic texts, Gould defines and demonstrates a "commercial aesthetic" that inflects the language of race and sentiments with issues of economic and social change. Gould's next move is to argue with reference to what he calls "the commercial jeremiad" that the very ideological discourse of civilization and savagery is rooted in trade. The concept of race is largely produced by this oppositional discourse rather than founded on its prior existence. --Jay Fliegelman, author of Prodigals and Pilgrims and Declaring Independence This is a very important book with compelling and new insights throughout. It is the first book to examine such a wide range of both literary and historical sources on 18th century Anglo-American antislavery, and it does so with superb textual readings. --John Stauffer, author of The Black Hearts of Men and John Brown and the Coming of the Civil War Extensively researched and carefully argued, Barbaric Traffic demonstrates an admirably sure-footed, clearsighted awareness of how transatlantic Enlightenment discourses of aesthetics, commerce, liberty, race, religion, and sentiment pursue distinct logics of their own yet cannot be pried apart. --Lawrence Buell, author of Emerson and Writing for an Endangered World Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the 18th Century Atlantic World appears as a welcome addition to debates about slavery, sentimentality, and culture in American studies. Its readings are meticulous, historically grounded, and theoretically informed. The writing is clear and persuasive. Gould has an original and sometimes really stunning sense of the relation between ethics and manners in eighteenth century interpretations of capitalism and slavery exposed so trenchantly by earlier critics like Eric Williams. In particular, he is very good at deciphering what he calls "the ideological movement from theology to ethics" that appears through debates about slavery and commerce in the period. Gould presents excellent interpretations of the Christian sentiments of Phillis Wheatley, of the under-interpreted political context of Slaves of Algiers, of the expose of the slave ship by the Philadelphian Mathew Carey, and of the racialized ambivalence attached to the yellow fever panic of 1793 in Philadelphia. Few critics writing today show the range of concerns and depth of research that appears in Gould's work, which reminds me of the historical depth and clarity of David Brion Davis, and also of the commitment to paradigm shifts of Thomas Haskell. In short, Philip Gould is one of the most thoughtful and engaged critics working in American literature and culture today. --Shirley Samuels, author of Romances of the Republic |
Vyhledávání v knize
Výsledky 1-5 z 89
... Human Species ( 1786 ) was perhaps the single most influential antislavery work in the years preceding the formation of the English Society for Ef- fecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. Clarkson's footnotes , for their part ...
... humanity . . . . British antislavery provided a bridge between preindustrial and industrial values ; by combining the ideal ... human being , ” the author asks , “ that can picture to himself this scene of woe , without at the same time ...
... human action and belief . . . . Commercial society , characterized by the incessant exchange of goods and services , moral and material , between its members , was that in which “ manners ” and “ polite- ness ” could reign undisturbed ...
... human be- havior by refining the passions.23 Thus in an early number of The Tatler Rich- ard Steele describes the ... humanity, charity, the love of country, and the fear of God.25 The passage grapples with the elusive issue of whether ...
... humanity , it derived largely from the English translation ( from the French ) of Michel Adanson's A Voyage to Senegal , the Isle of Goree and the River Gambia ( 1759 ) , a text that early , influ- ential Quakers like Anthony Benezet ...
Obsah
1 | |
12 | |
2 The Poetics of Antislavery | 43 |
3 American Slaves in North Africa | 86 |
4 Liberty Slavery and Black Atlantic Autobiography | 122 |
5 Yellow Fever and the Black Market | 152 |
Epilogue | 190 |
Notes | 199 |
Index | 253 |
Další vydání - Zobrazit všechny
Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the Eighteenth-Century ... Philip Gould Omezený náhled - 2003 |
Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the Eighteenth-Century ... Philip Gould Omezený náhled - 2003 |
Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the Eighteenth-Century ... Philip Gould Zobrazení fragmentů - 2003 |