In the academic world one needs an area of expertise. It is even better
if one can stake a claim to a new, unexplored area. One may not
necessarily be correct in the new thesis; the creative and unclaimed
nature of the notion is often enough. One comes up with an idea--the
more provocative the better--develops a thesis to accompany it and then
develop and nurture it as your own franchise. Interviews and tenure may
follow. This is The Art of the Plausible.
It is the essence of revisionism. One takes a well established historic event and recast it with as little Procrustean effort as possible into a new, fresh concept. Eskimos, because they survived, are a culture superior to the Ancient Greeks, because they did not. Shakespeare was a Catholic. But any innovation will do. The Freudian franchise. The various takes on the Kennedy Assassination. The Nazca Lines of Peru are proof of extraterrestrials. Crucial is the ability to take such ideas and elevate them from simple interesting coffee house banter to a marketable academic--or simply popular--franchise.
One of the more startling such concepts popped up on C-Span recently, the novel idea that the United States rebellion against the British was not rooted in a desire for independence but just the opposite: It was an effort to protect the Colonies from the rising British abolitionist movement. (Irony is a great assent in The Art of the Plausible.)
The first European nation to engage in the Transatlantic Slave Trade was Portugal in the mid to late 1400's. Captain John Hawkins made the first known English slaving voyage to Africa, in 1562, in the reign of Elizabeth 1. Hawkins made three such journeys over a period of six years. He captured over 1200 Africans and sold them as goods in the Spanish colonies in the Americas.
To start with, British traders supplied slaves for the Spanish and Portuguese colonists in America. However, as British settlements in the Caribbean and North America grew, often through wars with European countries such as Holland, Spain and France, British slave traders increasingly supplied British colonies.
The exact number of British ships that took part in the Slave Trade will probably never be known but, in the 245 years between Hawkins first voyage and the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807, merchants in Britain dispatched about 10,000 voyages to Africa for slaves, with merchants in other parts of the British Empire perhaps fitting out a further 1,150 voyages.
Historian Professor David Richardson, has calculated that British ships carried 3.4 million or more enslaved Africans to the Americas. Only the Portuguese, who carried on the trade for almost 50 years after Britain had abolished its Slave Trade, carried more enslaved Africans to the Americas than the British (the most recent estimate suggests just over 5 million people).
Nestled into these centuries of abuse are a number of legal debates that peppered the British courts. Where did the Magna Carta place slaves? Did a slave converted from paganism have a different status? In 1772, Somerset vs. Stewart debated the movement of an escaped slave in Britain and the legality of his resale per Common Law.
Looking over the timeline of the world's evolving opinion on slavery one can see a remarkable development, almost a "contagion of conscience," as small cities and city-states gradually outlawed slavery and the flow moved from Europe--where there were few slaves and the consequence of the decision was less--to North America, then South America, then Asia and finally the Middle East where the illegality of slavery is relatively quite modern--within the last several generations. (ISIS excepted.)
(Note to self: "Contagion of Conscience" possibly a Plausible notion?)
It is the essence of revisionism. One takes a well established historic event and recast it with as little Procrustean effort as possible into a new, fresh concept. Eskimos, because they survived, are a culture superior to the Ancient Greeks, because they did not. Shakespeare was a Catholic. But any innovation will do. The Freudian franchise. The various takes on the Kennedy Assassination. The Nazca Lines of Peru are proof of extraterrestrials. Crucial is the ability to take such ideas and elevate them from simple interesting coffee house banter to a marketable academic--or simply popular--franchise.
One of the more startling such concepts popped up on C-Span recently, the novel idea that the United States rebellion against the British was not rooted in a desire for independence but just the opposite: It was an effort to protect the Colonies from the rising British abolitionist movement. (Irony is a great assent in The Art of the Plausible.)
The first European nation to engage in the Transatlantic Slave Trade was Portugal in the mid to late 1400's. Captain John Hawkins made the first known English slaving voyage to Africa, in 1562, in the reign of Elizabeth 1. Hawkins made three such journeys over a period of six years. He captured over 1200 Africans and sold them as goods in the Spanish colonies in the Americas.
To start with, British traders supplied slaves for the Spanish and Portuguese colonists in America. However, as British settlements in the Caribbean and North America grew, often through wars with European countries such as Holland, Spain and France, British slave traders increasingly supplied British colonies.
The exact number of British ships that took part in the Slave Trade will probably never be known but, in the 245 years between Hawkins first voyage and the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807, merchants in Britain dispatched about 10,000 voyages to Africa for slaves, with merchants in other parts of the British Empire perhaps fitting out a further 1,150 voyages.
Historian Professor David Richardson, has calculated that British ships carried 3.4 million or more enslaved Africans to the Americas. Only the Portuguese, who carried on the trade for almost 50 years after Britain had abolished its Slave Trade, carried more enslaved Africans to the Americas than the British (the most recent estimate suggests just over 5 million people).
Nestled into these centuries of abuse are a number of legal debates that peppered the British courts. Where did the Magna Carta place slaves? Did a slave converted from paganism have a different status? In 1772, Somerset vs. Stewart debated the movement of an escaped slave in Britain and the legality of his resale per Common Law.
Looking over the timeline of the world's evolving opinion on slavery one can see a remarkable development, almost a "contagion of conscience," as small cities and city-states gradually outlawed slavery and the flow moved from Europe--where there were few slaves and the consequence of the decision was less--to North America, then South America, then Asia and finally the Middle East where the illegality of slavery is relatively quite modern--within the last several generations. (ISIS excepted.)
(Note to self: "Contagion of Conscience" possibly a Plausible notion?)
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