The Mighty Experiment

Free Labor Versus Slavery in British Emancipation
Erscheinungsjahr 2004
ISBN: 978-0-19-517629-2
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 318 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 488 g

By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, Great Britain had amassed Europe's largest imperial stake in the transatlantic slave system. During the next three generations the British dismantled that stake in a graduated series of withdrawals. This process has been portrayed, on the one hand, as a rational disinvestment in a foundering overseas system by the world's greatest and most dynamic economic power. On the other hand, it has been assessed as the world's most expensive per capita overseas investment in modern history. In this latter perspective, British anti-slavery was the the crucial element in the greatest humanitarian achievement of all time. For those who actually planned, debated, implemented, and adjusted to the process, ending British slavery was best conceived neither as a timely withdrawal from a failed economy nor an unprecedented national sacrifice. Properly done, it was to be a rational social experiment. Emancipation was designed to simultaneously minimize agitation on both sides of the Atlantic, and to maximize the scientifically proven superiority of free over slave labor. It would thereby not only benefit planters, consumers, and capitalists within the empire, but also accelerate the peaceful and voluntary surrender of millions of chattels throughout the world. The implementation and evaluation of emancipation turned out to be a far more contentious affair than the originators had anticipated. It absorbed minds of a whole generation of parliamentarians, governments, and journalists. The origin, execution, and public assessment of this great experiment, in its own contemporary terms, is the subject of this study.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Drescher, Seymour

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Geschichte der Sklaverei
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Arbeitsmarkt

Über Autor(innen)

Seymour Drescher is University Professor of History and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Econocide: British Slavery in the Age of Abolition (1977), Capitalism and Antislavery (OUP, 1987), and From Slavery to Freedom (1999) and the co-editor of Slavery (OUP, 2001).