Earning and Learning in the British West Indies: an Image of Freedom in the Pre-Emancipation Decade, 1823–1833

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olwyn M. Blouet
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
British West Indies ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Free Press ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
British West Indian ◽  
Civilized Society

In 1833 slavery was abolished in the British West Indian colonies. A labour system that had been in operation for two hundred years, ended. A campaign based on the concept of freedom came to fruition. The idea of freedom was central to enlightenment thought. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of movement, a free press, free trade and free labour were all part of enlightenment ideology. The institution of slavery, which limited all freedoms, came under pressure in an enlightened environment. Unlike the ancients who believed there could not be a civilized society without slaves, enlightenment philosophers developed the view that slavery was antithetical to civilization.

The Problem of Liberal Empire Reconsidered

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-177
Author(s):  
Adom Getachew
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The Political ◽  
British West Indies ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Violence ◽  
Liberal Political Economy ◽  
Liberal Imperialism

This review essay situates Christopher Taylor’s Empire of Neglect: The West Indies in the Wake of British Liberalism (2018) in the context of the two-decade-long debate about the emergence of a liberal imperialism during the nineteenth century. Through an examination of the political economy of emancipation in the British West Indies, Taylor recasts the problem of liberal imperialism by decentering its justificatory discourses in the metropole to examine its practical effects in the colonies. In this turn, he provides an important and missing “materialization” of liberal empire that makes the deep connections between free trade and freeing slaves legible. The practical and theoretical coincidence of these nineteenth-century developments as well as Taylor’s reconstruction of a West Indian tradition of political economy provide a new way of conceptualizing colonial economic violence elaborated as the product of a neglectful empire. It is in this tradition of critiquing and resisting a neglectful empire that we find critical and normative resources to think beyond the terms of our own entrapments within the terms of liberal political economy.

“A Civil Inconvenience”? The Vexed Question of Slave Marriage in the British West Indies

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia A. Green
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Public Safety ◽  
British West Indies ◽  
Property A ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
British West Indian ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Vexed Question ◽  
Indirect Rule

This article revisits the debates on the question of slave marriage that were carried on for roughly two centuries, both back and forth across the Atlantic and on the local terrain of the British West Indian plantation colonies. These debates came into critical focus during the fifty-year showdown over “amelioration,” which ended—though only in a manner of speaking—with the British Abolition Act of 1833. For a long time the lines were starkly drawn, but, in the context of laissez-faire political imperium or “indirect rule,” seldom tested. The metropolitan authorities felt some obligation to uphold the grand moral and civilizational integrity of the as-yet imperfectly imagined British Empire, as well as of Western Christendom. They, therefore, were inclined to see the slave as a species of imperial subject, still vaguely conceived within the emerging terms of reference of their global trusteeship and presumptive legal jurisdiction. They felt that, to honor the dignity of the latter, and sustain and nurture its moral legitimacy, the slaves—their subjects, ultimately—should be encouraged to marry, and their marriages should be formally marked, if only symbolically or by summary Christian rite. The planters, for their part, were unshaken in their certitude that the slaves were a species of property,theirproperty no less, and that the idea of any kind of formal marriage among them was preposterous, a great impertinence, an attack on their authority and rights of property, a threat to public safety, and a dangerous intrusion upon the sacrosanctity of European racial exclusivity and superiority.

The “Apprenticeship” System in Mauritius: Its Character and Its Impact on Race Relations in the Immediate Post-Emancipation Period, 1839-1879

1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moses D.E. Nwulia
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
British Empire ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
British West Indies ◽  
British West Indian ◽  
Public Record ◽  
Limited Period

In the summer of 1833, the British Parliament passed into law a bill designed to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire. The Abolition Act conferred freedom on all slave children in the plantation colonies, who were not over six years of age, and declared as free persons children born after the passage of the act. All persons over six years of age became free but were required to work for their former owners as “apprentices” for a limited period: the domestics were to serve for four years, while the agricultural slaves were to work for six years. The act also provided for twenty million pounds sterling to be given as compensation to the owners of the slaves. As the title of the act states, the “apprenticeship” system was designed to promote the “industry of the manumitted slaves …” (Great Britain, Public Record Office [PRO], C.O. 167/205, Glenelg to Nicolay, 6 November 1838). The apprenticeship system was inaugurated in the British West Indies in 1834, and in Mauritius and her dependent colonies on 1 February 1835. Following the examples of Antigua and Barbados, the British West Indian colonies aborted the system in 1838; in Mauritius and its dependencies the system came to an end in 1839.The assessments of the apprenticeship system are varied. The framers of the Abolition Act pronounced the system as one in which “manumitted” slaves performed compulsory labor for a limited period and in their own interests. Some contemporary observers (Baker and Blackhouse, 1838) were inclined to think that the apprenticeship system was a prolongation of slavery.

Carbonate Environments and Sequences of Caicos Platform: Caicos, British West Indies to Miami, Florida, July 20–26, 1989

10.1029/ft374 ◽  
1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold R. Wanless ◽  
Jeffrey J. Dravis ◽  
Lenore P. Tedesco ◽  
Victor Rossinsky
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
British West Indies

PERSECUTION AND THE ART OF FREEDOM: ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FREE PRESS AND FREE SPEECH IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Khalil M. Habib
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Freedom Of The Press ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Free Press ◽  
Constituent Element ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Right ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractAccording to Tocqueville, the freedom of the press, which he treats as an extension of the freedom of speech, is a primary constituent element of liberty. Tocqueville treats the freedom of the press in relation to and as an extension of the right to assemble and govern one’s own affairs, both of which he argues are essential to preserving liberty in a free society. Although scholars acknowledge the importance of civil associations to liberty in Tocqueville’s political thought, they routinely ignore the importance he places on the freedom of the press and speech. His reflections on the importance of the free press and speech may help to shed light on the dangers of recent attempts to censor the press and speech.

scholarly journals Looking for Agency in Transnational Refugee Trajectories during the Second World War - Eric T. Jennings. Escape from Vichy: The Refugee Exodus to the French Caribbean. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2018. 308 pages. ISBN: 9780674983380, $36. - Megan Koreman. The Escape Line: How the Ordinary Heroes of Dutch-Paris Resisted the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 410 pages. 9780190662271, $29,95. - Joanna Newman. Nearly the New World: The British West Indies and the Flight from Nazism, 1933–1945. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019. 306 pages. 9781789206494, $29,95.

Itinerario ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-187
Author(s):  
Rosa de Jong
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
New World ◽  
French Caribbean ◽  
British West Indies ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
The Government ◽  
Flight Route

AbstractThe authors of three recent monographs, The Escape Line, Escape from Vichy, and Nearly the New World, highlight in particular the relevance of transnational refugee and resistance networks. These books shed new light on the trajectories of refugees through war-torn Europe and their routes out of it. Megan Koreman displays in The Escape Line the relevance of researching one line of resistance functioning in several countries and thereby shifts from the common nationalistic approach in resistance research. In Escape from Vichy Eric Jennings researches the government-endorsed flight route between Marseille and Martinique and explores the lasting impact of encounters between refugees and Caribbean Negritude thinkers. Joanna Newman explores the mainly Jewish refugees who found shelter in the British West Indies, with a focus on the role of aid organisations in this flight.

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