Short Essay 2

In the period covering 1600-1800 the position an African held in European society was significantly enhanced by conversion to Christianity.  Here, African expatriates found an avenue of assimilation, which, by its righteous nature, caused the established order to question whether it could continue to turn a blind eye to what could only be seen as inhumane behavior, and continue to oppress their subjugated fellow man, many now being Christians.  This forced the hand of the religious elite: a choice either to accept that they were on the unholy side of an oppressive system, or to reform that system to continue its moral legitimacy.

In Equiano’s writing, we see that indigenous practices are seen as ignorant and inferior to western European standards.  He demonstrates that his Christian identity was crucial to assimilation into European society.  He is direct in his assertions that he received enlightenment by way of his conversion to Christianity.  This caused him to begin to look at the world through a Protestant filter, questioning each of his life events as to how they revealed the truth and higher understanding of the will of his creator, thereby shaping his entire outlook on every aspect of daily living.[1]  Additionally, he gained status as an Englishman, later in life being requested by Governor Macnamara to travel back to Africa to proselytize on behalf of the British crown – though the Bishop would deny this request.[2]

On an institutional level, the readings present two opposing points of view over what caused the abolition of slavery within England.  Christopher Leslie Brown presents the perspective that the Protestant sects that broke away from the Anglican Church marked increasing momentum of revolutionary institutional changes.  In his article, we see that Quakers within the Society of Friends were among the earliest, most prominent, examples of abolitionist activism.  The Quakers encouraged African conversion to Christianity while encouraging their slave-holding leaders to support abolition.[3]

            Brown’s article, however, focuses on the notion that these splinter groups encouraged positive change and spurred reform.  They are seen basically as leading the cause to abandon slavery.  Nicholas Hudson takes a contrary position, that a large number of these radical groups were actually in large part reactionary on the matter of slavery, citing prominent examples of leaders offering a defense of slavery based on the pragmatic benefit of human bondage to the subsequent lucre of its sugar trade.[4]  A closer look at Brown’s article, after considering this perspective, shows that leadership within the Society of Friends as needed convincing from anti-slavery advocates to abandon their privileged position as slave owners.  They are not, as such, an inherently anti-slave organization.  This would tend to support Hudson’s view that the more traditionally conservative elements of England held the more favorable view of abolition overall.

            On the French side, we see in Boulle’s article a complex matter of jurisdictional conflicts between the sources of governmental power, ultimately conflicted over racial purity and French exceptionalism.  Much of the public debate centered on the idea that the real scourge of African slavery was the dilution of French purity – a mindset in which non-Frenchmen brought a volatile combination of health risks and revolutionary stirrings.[5]  This fear led to the disallowance of black or mulatto marriages, and decrees ordering blacks to the colonies across the Atlantic where they would be unable to cause a stir within the mainland.

            This demonstrates another aspect of the difficulty in recognizing the suppression of a Christian portion of society.  Rather than declare that nonwhite people living in France could receive no education or religious enlightenment, Sartine stated that “religion was better taught in the colonies,” as Boulle puts it.[6]  Rather than making the planter class give up their slaves or concede that French superiority was a flawed notion, rules were made in a sort of “out of site, out of mind” manner, neglecting the fact that the conditions of slavery were equally unjust (and, in fact, harsher) in the colonies.

            To briefly cover the readings not already mentioned, Gerzina’s article supports the notion that Africans looked to religious conversion to improve their station, as well as to come to grips with their forced removal of their homeland.[7]  The focus is more on the freedom presented by a seafaring life, and stories like that of Equiano, as mentioned here prior.  Peabody touches on religion in passing, mentioning that Francisque and his brother were sent to live in France to receive religious education.  Her focus is on racial aspects of French slavery, indicating that Francisque achieved his freedom largely because of an appeal that he was more European than African.[8]  In Walvin’s piece, the focus is on the rise of the slave trade in the New World and the evolving nature of slavery as an institution.  There is no religious focus, though Walvin states that the closer blacks worked to whites the more acculturated they became in European ways, and that the relationship was not as inequitable on the whole as we might imagine.[9]

            In sum, the path to abolition was fraught with debate over moral purity.  The avenue for this was, in the European mindset, Christianity.  Ultimately, though reactionary forces like Poncet de la Grave intervened at times to make cases that legitimized a bigoted suppression encouraged by planters’ economic self-interest, the avowed belief in Christian teachings made the continuance of slave trading unsustainable.  By the early 19^th century the confluence of factors aforementioned caused the system to collapse.

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[1] Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Or Gustavus Vassa, The African (New York: Random House, 2004): 254.

[2] Equiano, 237.

[3] Christopher Leslie Brown, “Christianity and the campaign against slavery and the slave trade,” The Cambridge History of Christianity, 7, (Cambridge Histories Online 2008): 520.

[4] Nicholas Hudson, "’Britons Never Will be Slaves:’ National Myth, Conservatism, and the Beginnings of British Antislavery,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34, no. 4 (Summer 2001): 562.

[5] Pierre H. Boulle, “Racial Purity or Legal Clarity? The Status of Black Residents in Eighteenth-Century France,” The Journal of The Historical Society, VI:1 (March 2006): 32.

[6] Boulle 28

[7] Gretchen Holbrook Garzina, "Freedom of Movement in the Early Black Atlantic," South Atlantic Quarterly, 100:1 (Winter 2001): 43.

[8] Sue Peabody, “Race, slavery and the law in early modern France,” Historian, 56:3 (Spring 1994): 507-508.

[9] James Walvin, "FORGING THE LINK: Europe, Africa and the Americas" in James Walvin, Questioning Slavery (London, UK: Routledge, 1996):15-17.