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Slavery and Emancipation in Comparative Perspective: A Look at Some Recent Debates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Stanley L. Engerman
Stanley L. Engerman
Affiliation:
The author is Professor of Economics and History, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627
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Abstract

This paper examines several recent arguments about the role of slavery in the settling of the New World, the viability of slavery as an economic institution in the nineteenth century, and the causes and consequences of slave emancipation in the Americas. Comparisons are made between the analysis of slavery and that of other labor institutions, such as serfdom and free labor.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , June 1986 , pp. 317 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1986

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References

1 The quantitative estimates in this section are generally drawn from: Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969);Google ScholarGemery, Henry A., “Emigration from the British Isles to the New World, 1630–1700: Inferences from Colonial Populations,” Research in Economic History, 5 (1980), pp. 179–231;Google ScholarGalenson, David, White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (Cambridge, 1981);Google ScholarEltis, David, “Free and Coerced Transatlantic Migration: Some Comparisons,” American Historical Review, 88 (04 1983), pp. 251–80;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLovejoy, Paul E., Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983);Google ScholarGemery, Henry A., “European Emigration to North America, 1700–1820: Numbers and Quasi-Numbers,” in Bailyn, Bernard, et al., eds., Perspectives in American History, New Series, 1 (1984), pp. 283–342;Google Scholar and Eltis, David, The Ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Economic Growth and Coercion (New York, forthcoming).Google Scholar See also Fogel, Robert William and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross (Boston, 1974);Google Scholar and Engerman, Stanley L., “Servants to Slaves to Servants: Contract Labor and European Expansion,” in van den Boogaart, E. and Emmer, P. C., eds., Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery (The Hague, 1986), pp. 263–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For excellent discussions of some of the substantive questions raised see the essays in Jack, P. Greene and Pole, J. R., eds., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Baltimore, 1984),Google Scholar particularly those by Dunn, Richard S. and Potter, James; and McCusker, John J. and Menard, Russell R., The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill, 1985).Google Scholar

2 See Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1982).Google Scholar

3 Eltis, , “Free and Coerced Transatlantic Migrations,” p. 255. It might be noted that the ratio is somewhat above that implied by his table 3, but even allowing for that and for the probable understatement of U.S. immigrants before 1820 (fn. 5), the basic point of the relative importance of slave versus free migration holds.Google Scholar

4 See the essays by Ubelaker, Douglas H. and Dobyns, Henry F. in William, M. Denevan, ed., The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 (Madison, 1976).Google Scholar

5 See Gemery, , “European Emigration to North America”;Google Scholar and Fogel, Robert W., et al., “The Economics of Mortality in North America, 1650–1910: A Description of a Research Project,” Historical Methods, 11 (Spring 1978), pp. 75–108.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

6 For those looking to compare population densities, it can be pointed out that the present area of the 8 of the first 14 states north of the Mason-Dixon line contained about two-fifths of the total area of British North America exclusive of Canada; those 6 below, about three-fifths; and the British Caribbean between 1 and 2 percent. For those liking broader comparisons the United States in 1790 accounted for about 5 percent of the total area of the New World, and the Caribbean less than 1 percent (with the British Caribbean being only about 7 percent of the land area of the Caribbean islands).

7 See Shepherd, James F. and Walton, Gary M., Shipping, Maritime Trade, and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, 1972);Google Scholar and Jones, Alice Hanson, Wealth of a Nation to Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

8 See the essays in Hahn, Steven and Prude, Jonathan, eds., The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation: Essays in the Social History of Rural America (Chapel Hill, 1985).Google Scholar

9 Davis, David Brion, Slavery and Human Progress (New York, 1984).Google Scholar

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11 Domar, Evsey D., “The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis,” this JOURNAL, 30 (03 1970), pp. 18–32.Google Scholar

12 Sombart, Werner, Why is There no Socialism in the United States? (White Plains, 1976; reprint of Tübigen, 1906), p. 119 (italicized in original).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Cairnes, John Elliott, The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs (New York, 1969; reprint of 2nd edition, London, 1862), pp. 274, 350.Google Scholar

14 Similar arguments arose in debates about the need for the abolition of the slave trade and were used by both those supporting and those opposing the legislative interference with this form of commerce in people. In the British case it became linked to the demographic arguments about the West Indian slaves. Lord Liverpool, for example, argued in 1792 that no interference was required “because the event, without any of the evils that might arise from the immediate adoption of that measure, must, in the natural order which he had described, take place in the course of a very short period,” without, however, defining what “very short” meant. Hansard's Parliamentary History, 29 (1791–1792), pp. 1131–32.Google Scholar

15 Basler, Roy P., ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, 1953), vol. 3, p. 181.Google Scholar

16 See Sewell, Richard H., Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860 (New York, 1976), pp. 170–201, 292–320.Google Scholar

17 See, for example, Fogel, and Engerman, , Time on the Cross, and the ensuing debates for a sense of changing views.Google Scholar See also Fogel, Robert William, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, forthcoming).Google Scholar Some issues in this section are discussed in greater detail in Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Klein, Herbert S., and Engerman, Stanley L., “The Level and Structure of Slave Prices on Cuban Plantations in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Some Comparative Perspectives,” American Historical Review, 88 (12 1983), pp. 1201–18;Google Scholar and Engerman, Stanley L., “Contract Labor, Sugar, and Technology in the Nineteenth Century,” this JOURNAL, 43 (09 1983), pp. 635–59.Google Scholar

18 It now seems clear that areas of proto-industrialization in Europe were those with less productive agriculture than those areas in which it did not occur.

19 See, for example, An Abolitionist, A Few Observations on the Importation of Slave-Grown Sugar into the British Market (London, 1844). The same, or similar, words were widely-used throughout the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

20 Van Delden Laërne, C. F., Brazil and Java: Report on Coffee-Culture in America, Asia and Africa to H. E. the Minister of the Colonies (London, 1885). Two implications of his arguments with broader generality might be noted: the desire for legislation to alter the racial composition of the population and the reason given for limited white immigration while slavery persisted.Google Scholar

21 See Eltis, The Ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade; and Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery.Google Scholar

22 Domar, Evsey D. and Machina, Mark J., “On the Profitability of Russian Serfdom,” this JOURNAL, 44 (12 1984), pp. 919–55;Google Scholar and Rudolph, Richard L., “Agricultural Structure and Proto-Industrialization in Russia: Economic Development with Unfree Labor,” this JOURNAL, 45 (03. 1985), pp. 47–69.Google Scholar

23 Blum, Jerome, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 This section draws upon Fogel, Robert William and Engerman, Stanley L., “Philanthropy at Bargain Prices: Notes on the Economics of Gradual Emancipation,” Journal of Legal Studies, 3 (06 1974), pp. 377–401;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Engerman, Stanley L., “Economic Change and Contract Labor in the British Caribbean: The End of Slavery and the Adjustment to Emancipation,” Explorations in Economic History, 21 (04 1984), pp. 133–50,CrossRefGoogle Scholar which also appears in Richardson, David, ed., Abolition and Its Aftermath: The Historical Context, 1790–1916 (London, 1985), pp. 225–44.Google Scholar

25 Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944).Google Scholar

26 Ragatz, Lowell, The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1783–1833: A Study in Social and Economic History (New York, 1928).Google Scholar

27 Drescher, Seymour, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh, 1977).Google Scholar

28 For price data, mainly for Jamaica, the largest British slave-owning island and the one most central to the abolition and emancipation debates, see Engerman, “Economic Change and Contract Labor”; Drescher, Seymour, “Public Opinion and the Destruction of British Colonial Slavery,” in Walvin, James, ed., Slavery and British Society, 1776–1846 (Baton Rouge, 1982), pp. 22–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar (and the greater detail in the 1828 Parliamentary Papers on which his calculations are based); Sheridan, Richard B., “Slave Demography in the British West Indies and the Abolition of the Slave Trade” in Eltis, David and Walvin, James, eds., The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and the Americas (Madison, 1981), pp. 259–85;Google ScholarSheridan, Richard B., Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (Baltimore, 1973), p. 252; and my own calculations for the period from 1786 to 1812 from decedent inventories at the Jamaica Public Records Office, Spanish Town. Adjustments to the nominal prices based upon British price indices would not alter the basic conclusions, and while for some of this period the slave population fell, it was generally by smaller percentages than the price changes.Google Scholar

29 And from then until the mid-1890s the gross annual inflow of contract labor into the British West Indies usually varied between 7000 and 9000. See Roberts, G. W. and Byrne, J., “Summary Statistics on Indenture and Associated Migration Affecting the West Indies, 1834–1918,” Population Studies, 20 (07 1966), pp. 125–34.Google ScholarPubMed

30 See LeVeen, E. Phillip, “A Quantitative Analysis of the Impact of British Suppression Policies on the Volume of the Nineteenth Century Atlantic Slave Trade,” in Engerman, Stanley L. and Genovese, Eugene D., eds., Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton, 1975), pp. 51–81;Google Scholar and Eltis, The Ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade.Google Scholar

31 See, for example, Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, 1975);Google ScholarAnstey, Roger, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760–1810 (London, 1975);CrossRefGoogle ScholarDrescher, Seymour, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective (London, 1986);CrossRefGoogle ScholarEltis, , The Ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade; Fogel, Without Consent or Contract; and the essays in Solow, Barbara L. and Engerman, Stanley L., eds., Caribbean Slavery and British Capitalism (Cambridge, forthcoming).Google Scholar

32 This section draws upon Engerman, Stanley L., “Economic Adjustments to Emancipation in the United States and British West Indies,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 13 (Autum 1982), pp. 191–220;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Klein, Herbert S. and Engerman, Stanley L., “The Transition from Slave to Free Labor: Notes on a Comparative Economic Model,” in Fraginals, Manuel Moreno, Pons, Frank Moya, and Engerman, Stanley L., eds., Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1985), pp. 255–69.Google Scholar

33 The dilemma was succinctly worded in a paper read before the Statistical Section of the British Association at Belfast on Sept. 2, 1852: “Indeed if free labour were not able to compete with slave labour, the moral question respecting slavery would be put in great danger. For, although our duty would not be altered by the circumstance, still it is much easier to get a moral principle adopted in action, when the moral conclusion is shown to be coincident with the economic considerations of self-interest, than when the moral duty cannot be discharged without a sacrifice of a large field for the production of human wealth.” Hancock, W. Neilson, The Abolition of Slavery Considered, with Reference to the State of the West Indies Since Emancipation (Dublin, 1852), p. 8.Google Scholar

34 See Nieboer, H. J., Slavery as an Industrial System (The Hague, 1900).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 It should be noted that for parts of Africa and Asia trade in slaves and in contract laborers continued into the twentieth century, as did the trade in Pacific islanders. The trade in contract labor persisted even though it drew the condemnation of many observers, who drew the connection with the slave trade. A participant in the 1920s trade from the Pacific islands to New Guinea for workers in the gold mines describes it as follows: “the recruiters often took these Kanakas into virtual slavery. It was called ‘indentured labor’ but it was worse than that, once they signed up and got away from their towns.” Flynn, Errol, My Wicked, Wicked Ways (New York, 1959), p. 112. (I owe this quotation to Martin Feinberg.)Google Scholar

36 Komlos, John, The Habsburg Monarchy as a Customs Union: Economic Development in Austria-Hungary in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1983). Similar conclusions have been reached by others studying this particular case. See, for example, the various writings on this area by David Good and Richard Rudolph.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 This section draws upon Engerman, Stanley L., “Coerced and Free Labor: Property Rights and the Development of the Labor Force,” Annales (forthcoming, in translation).Google Scholar

38 SirSteuart, James, Principles of Political Economy (London, 1805; original edition, 1767), p. 52.Google Scholar

39 Marryat, Joseph, Thoughts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and Civilization of Africa (London, 1816), p. 222.Google Scholar

40 “Heads of a Plan for the Abolition of Negro Slavery, and for the Securing of the Continued Cultivation of the Estates by the Manumitted Slaves,” Colonial Office 320/8 (Public Record Office, London). An 1853 advocate of small sugar cane and cotton farms in Jamaica and British Guiana presented a variant on this argument to explain the mobility of West Indian ex-slaves: “The disposition to emigrate westward evinced by the inhabitants, both of the United States and Canada, in all latitudes, is not usually regarded as proof of their indolence, but of their enterprise and energy. It is a love of independence which influences alike the free citizen of the American Republic and the free negro of the West Indies.” A Resident in the West Indies for Thirteen Years, Suggestions Relative to the Improvement of the British West India Colonies (London, 1853), p. 56.Google Scholar

41 Wenkstern, Otto, An Anti-Slavery Pamphlet (London, 1861), pp. 89–90.Google Scholar