Excellent piece. But I think the conclusion goes overboard. Slavery eg was abolished by state legislatures in the US North slowly over a period of years. During the American Revolution a substantial portion of NYC residents were slaves and Alexander Hamilton's powerful in-laws were slaveholders. Northern states were able to get rid of slavery peacefully because industrial development dwarfed the slave economy there.... So maybe not so black and white?
Persuasive. But are we sure that slavery was always less efficient than free labour while its abolition could only be arrived through revolution, war or external imposition? Does not Brazil represent an exception? Incidentally, Britain’s pressure for Brazil to abolish slavery reflected in part the lack of competitiveness of the sugar production of British Caribbean possessions after the abolition of slavery relative to Brazil.
Very helpful. I need to read Smith's Lectures. Historians are increasingly taking the view that Atlantic slavery which is what you are discussing was abolished by the growing resistance of slaves as as much as by other forces. Obviously Islamic slavery and African indigenous slavery were very different since they were driven in part by incorporationist impulses. We are still the victims of our inadequate vocabulary in this field.
Some elements of this discussion rely too much on abstractions and not enough on empirical facts.
On the basis of Smith's abstract analysis, it is argued that voluntary emancipation of slaves should essentially never occur.
But while this is largely (not entirely? Brazil?) true at the national level, contrary to the analysis offered voluntary manumission at the individual level was not rare. Nor are the reasons why it should be rare borne out in the facts either.
I refer mostly of the American South, the case about which I know something - and of course a leading case.
In a very famous example, George Washington manumitted all of his slaves via his will (but not Martha's; she had only a life estate in hers). And this manumission was in fact carried out, per his wishes, within two years of his death (with some necessary legal steps to effectuate it - note that Virginia apparently respected a deed of manumission).
This mode of manumission was not rare in the Southern states, though of course only for a small percentage of the enslaved population.
Nor did some quite conceivable steps against it occur in the facts.
i) Washington, and other manumitters via will, experienced no significant social disapproval from their fellow slaveholders - so far as I am aware. Group manumission was rarer than manumission of some favor individual slave(s), and again I'm not aware of any widely expressed condemnation of this practice coming from the slaveholder class as a whole.
(ii) If individual manumission was such a threat to the slaveholding system (assertedly as dangerous as a slave revolt), why were there not laws enacted by Southern states against manumission? They could easily have done that, but I am not aware of any such law.
(iii) Individual manumission was economically disadvantageous to the slaveholder (in the near term, it vaporized major capital value of the slaveholder, and also reduced the collateral he could offer to bank lenders (often in NYC!), but manumissions were nonetheless carried out on various moral grounds (applicable to the whole group, as with Washington, or to favored individuals in other instances).
Like a few other commenters, I also wondered about Brazil (and Cuba, though perhaps there the Ten Years War, in which erstwhile slaves participated, is enough to fit it into your model). One argument about Brazil, made in this interesting article, is that the adoption of gradual emancipation measures in Brazil came about under the joint influence of developments in the US and fears of large-scale slave resistance in Brazil: https://academic.oup.com/past/article/257/1/248/6490596
If you're interested in slave society culture, consider Saturnalia: it was Halloween for slave&master roles. This requires a society where it is absolutely clear that the roles will switch back to normal the next morning.
Excellent points. I just finished Adam Smith's America thanks to your review and had many similar thoughts on the narrowly economistic view of the world.
Interesting to read about Adam Smith’s take on how slavery is maintained even if it is financially better to free the slaves. However, I understand in many non-Western societies (including Arab), some slaves did rise to high positions and entrusted with managing the affairs of their masters.
Maybe the “industrial scale slavery” practised by Europeans in the New World is different from the “domestic slavery” in Old World societies.
Reading this after just finishing the history of slavery season of The Empire podcast - adds more context. And yes modern slavery and human trafficking still exists.
Lots of and land and limited supply of workers tends toward slavery and serfdom. The opposite tends toward free labour as the free labour is available at low prices. After the Black Death landowners attempted to tighten serfdom to offset the increased costs of the less available labour. American slaves were fully financialized and therefore treated as assets supporting loans, making it financially ruinous for slave owners to release them from slavery. It took the North to do that, then debt peonage turned them back into neo-slaves.
Perhaps out of nostalgia, we still keep 600,000 slaves quite legally, since the law still permits enslavement of incarcerated persons.
Talk about retro America!
Excellent piece. But I think the conclusion goes overboard. Slavery eg was abolished by state legislatures in the US North slowly over a period of years. During the American Revolution a substantial portion of NYC residents were slaves and Alexander Hamilton's powerful in-laws were slaveholders. Northern states were able to get rid of slavery peacefully because industrial development dwarfed the slave economy there.... So maybe not so black and white?
Persuasive. But are we sure that slavery was always less efficient than free labour while its abolition could only be arrived through revolution, war or external imposition? Does not Brazil represent an exception? Incidentally, Britain’s pressure for Brazil to abolish slavery reflected in part the lack of competitiveness of the sugar production of British Caribbean possessions after the abolition of slavery relative to Brazil.
Very helpful. I need to read Smith's Lectures. Historians are increasingly taking the view that Atlantic slavery which is what you are discussing was abolished by the growing resistance of slaves as as much as by other forces. Obviously Islamic slavery and African indigenous slavery were very different since they were driven in part by incorporationist impulses. We are still the victims of our inadequate vocabulary in this field.
Some elements of this discussion rely too much on abstractions and not enough on empirical facts.
On the basis of Smith's abstract analysis, it is argued that voluntary emancipation of slaves should essentially never occur.
But while this is largely (not entirely? Brazil?) true at the national level, contrary to the analysis offered voluntary manumission at the individual level was not rare. Nor are the reasons why it should be rare borne out in the facts either.
I refer mostly of the American South, the case about which I know something - and of course a leading case.
In a very famous example, George Washington manumitted all of his slaves via his will (but not Martha's; she had only a life estate in hers). And this manumission was in fact carried out, per his wishes, within two years of his death (with some necessary legal steps to effectuate it - note that Virginia apparently respected a deed of manumission).
This mode of manumission was not rare in the Southern states, though of course only for a small percentage of the enslaved population.
Nor did some quite conceivable steps against it occur in the facts.
i) Washington, and other manumitters via will, experienced no significant social disapproval from their fellow slaveholders - so far as I am aware. Group manumission was rarer than manumission of some favor individual slave(s), and again I'm not aware of any widely expressed condemnation of this practice coming from the slaveholder class as a whole.
(ii) If individual manumission was such a threat to the slaveholding system (assertedly as dangerous as a slave revolt), why were there not laws enacted by Southern states against manumission? They could easily have done that, but I am not aware of any such law.
(iii) Individual manumission was economically disadvantageous to the slaveholder (in the near term, it vaporized major capital value of the slaveholder, and also reduced the collateral he could offer to bank lenders (often in NYC!), but manumissions were nonetheless carried out on various moral grounds (applicable to the whole group, as with Washington, or to favored individuals in other instances).
Like a few other commenters, I also wondered about Brazil (and Cuba, though perhaps there the Ten Years War, in which erstwhile slaves participated, is enough to fit it into your model). One argument about Brazil, made in this interesting article, is that the adoption of gradual emancipation measures in Brazil came about under the joint influence of developments in the US and fears of large-scale slave resistance in Brazil: https://academic.oup.com/past/article/257/1/248/6490596
Great piece. Equally as true in regards to the Chicago School fantasy that racism and discrimination can be solved by the market.
If you're interested in slave society culture, consider Saturnalia: it was Halloween for slave&master roles. This requires a society where it is absolutely clear that the roles will switch back to normal the next morning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia
Excellent points. I just finished Adam Smith's America thanks to your review and had many similar thoughts on the narrowly economistic view of the world.
Interesting to read about Adam Smith’s take on how slavery is maintained even if it is financially better to free the slaves. However, I understand in many non-Western societies (including Arab), some slaves did rise to high positions and entrusted with managing the affairs of their masters.
Maybe the “industrial scale slavery” practised by Europeans in the New World is different from the “domestic slavery” in Old World societies.
Reading this after just finishing the history of slavery season of The Empire podcast - adds more context. And yes modern slavery and human trafficking still exists.
Lots of and land and limited supply of workers tends toward slavery and serfdom. The opposite tends toward free labour as the free labour is available at low prices. After the Black Death landowners attempted to tighten serfdom to offset the increased costs of the less available labour. American slaves were fully financialized and therefore treated as assets supporting loans, making it financially ruinous for slave owners to release them from slavery. It took the North to do that, then debt peonage turned them back into neo-slaves.