200 years ago today saw the foundation of the British Anti-Slavery Society. The ban on the slave trade in 1807 had done nothing to stamp out slavery itself, and indeed victory over Napoleon had given Britain additional slave colonies. It was time to open the Bible again.
Yes, the Bible. The claim that it did not condemn slavery as such was made by the defenders of the institution, who generally had a pecuniary interest in it. But the idea that everyone thought that for the first eighteen centuries of Christianity's existence is simply false, and it is very telling that the abolitionists were castigated and mocked specifically for taking the Word of God too seriously.
By taking it so, then they were unable to believe that the different "races" were different species with different origins, as was widely believed by the theological conservative-liberal elitists of the day, the forebears of the persecutors of Dr Stephen Sizer and of those of Bishop Robert Byrne. We now know that it was the people who had at least read the first two pages of Scripture who were scientifically correct. The suggestion that until some very late date no one had thought that slavery was unbiblical and un-Christian is bound up with the suggestion that there was no opposition to it in its heyday, but that simultaneously England and then Britain had taken it up purely for the pleasure and honour of stamping it out.
In fact, though, we were not even the first country to abolish slavery, since that was Haiti, after the only successful slave revolt in history. We have still not yet been free of it for as long as we practised it. And while it is true that it could never officially exist in the Imperial Motherland because "the air of England was too pure" for it, from where did English Common Law arrive at that conclusion? Out of that thin air itself? Or from Christianity?
Fascinating and a most welcome corrective.
ReplyDeleteYou could not be more welcome.
DeleteThe ban on the slave trade in 1807 had done nothing to stamp out slavery itself,
ReplyDeleteIt was Britain's rule of the seas, made possible by Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, that helped stamp out the slave trade with the Royal Navy going on to free 155,000 slaves across the Atlantic in enforcing the anti-slavery treaties.
As Niall Ferguson points out, it was capitalism and the British Empire that ended slavery.
You need to read a book. I mean, one written by someone who was not doing it half for a laugh and half for the money.
DeleteI have read many on this period of history. And everything I wrote above is of course correct. Read up on it yourself.
ReplyDeleteDon't need to, dear boy. Don't need to.
DeleteThe capitalist and anti-slavery North of America had far greater economic productivity through waged labour than the inefficient, slave-owning South. Slavery apologists such as John C Calhoun openly criticised the capitalist model of the North, arguing that waged labour is more inhumane because bosses can fire workers at will since they are merely hiring them, whereas slavers look after their property from cradle to grave since they own them.
ReplyDeleteIt was during the 19th century free-trade model of the British Empire that we became an anti-slavery empire. Not by coincidence.
Better out than in, darling?
DeleteIt really is high time that you were in bed.
Don't need to.
ReplyDeletePerhaps why you haven't been able to refute a single fact mentioned above.
I have probably known that public school pub quiz since before you were born. If you take the likes of Ferguson seriously, then you have missed the point. You are not in on the joke, but you have given him your cash. Then again, that is the point, I suppose. He is not the only one like that. Like the right-wing papers, it is a very good living, and great fun if you like that kind of thing.
DeleteIn other words, you can't address the facts.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, what you wrote had nothing to do with the post. They are just your spaniel-like trained response to the sight or sound of the word "slavery". Utterly predictable. Utterly hilarious.
DeleteIt was directly relevant to the post, which contained the complete red herring that defeating Napoleon didn't end slavery (who ever said it did?). It was our victory at Trafalgar that helped do so by establishing Pax Brittanica. There's been no better anti-slavery task force than the Royal Navy before or since.
ReplyDeletePoint proved.
DeleteYou are well-trained, I give you that. And that can be entertaining.