Book Description
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide.
Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.
Customer Reviews:
Capitalism and Slavery is definitely food for the brain........2006-08-19
This is a very, very excellent piece of work. I read and studied this book when I was a teenager in high school in Trinidad. At that time I was required to study the book as part of our Caribbean History syllabus. That was over 13 years ago. So as an adult I decided to purchase the book and appreciate the information. And boy this was the best decision I ever made. I recommend people of all races and backgrounds to read this book. As the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Dr. Eric Williams has left us with a gift.
Capitalism and Slavery.......2006-05-11
The basic theory underlying Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery is that slavery in the colonies, particularly the West Indies so far as this analysis is concerned, brought about capitalism, and thereby led to its own decline.
The first five chapters of the book explain the nature of British economics prior to the American Revolution. Synthesizing information rather than expressing his own view, Williams discusses triangular trade among England, the African coast, and the slave-holding colonies. In essence, England exported goods and ships, Africa exported slaves, and the colonies exported slave-produced raw materials.
American independence destroyed the mercantilist scheme of triangular trading. The ex-colonies now had no incentive to trade with the West Indies at their monopoly prices, instead turning to French islands for their sugar, at considerably lower prices. Consequently, British businessmen were no longer interested in giving economic protection to the West Indies because doing so without mainland North America would cost them money. One basic tenet of Adam Smith's capitalism is that business should be efficient and profitable, and monopolies simply were neither. The laissez-faire approach, or Smith's "invisible hand," meant eliminating monopolies and letting economics take its course.
During this time the Industrial Revolution also occurred, generating new machinery, most notably Watt's steam engine, and simplifying the extraction of raw materials. Ironworks were now much more efficient, for example, as was the process of turning wool into useable cloth. These advantages put Great Britain in a position to economically dominate the world. During this time also Spanish colonies in South America began breaking away from Spain, opening up vast regions for British trade. Similarly, Asia became a possibility for a wide variety of goods, most notably, in the scope of Williams' book, East Indian sugar. All these opportunities and Britain's economic superiority culminated in the end of monopolistic practices.
Slavery had precipitated these developments by generating fantastic wealth through triangular trading; without slavery, that trade scheme would not have existed. Once these developments came to pass, however, slavery proved itself largely pass?. Without the monopoly on West Indian sugar, slave trading became substantially less profitable. At the same time, when the American mainland split from Great Britain, suddenly Britain was no longer dependent on slavery for economic success, but instead could be a global distributor for goods. Furthermore, abolitionists in England gave cry to the crime of slavery, since they were no longer directly dependent on it, and eventually Britain banned the slave trade.
Williams's analysis is interesting and well worth reading. That said, his assertion that slavery declined is only partly true; it was alive and well in the southern United States. Furthermore, while Williams claims slavery brought about triangular trading, which in turn brought about the Industrial Revolution, one wonders if slavery simply expedited the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, he focuses to a significant extent on British humanitarianism in ending slavery; cynically, one must consider the relevance of slavery to those humanitarians, and how many there were after the Industrial Revolution.
A wonderful thesis withstanding the tests of time.......2006-03-21
I recently read this book for graduate school and highly recommend it. This book was written in 1940 and while critics have been able to pick at a few details within the book, noone has every successfully disproven his entire thesis - that the rise of industrial capitalism would not have been possible without the existence profits derived from slavery and the slave trade. Williams does a splended job of illustrating how slavery influenced all facets of the triangular trade, which in turn shaped Britian into an economic power. It also brings put the economic reasons for the abolitionist movement (namely, that abolitionists were motivated by free-trade, no necessarily compassion in their opposition to the slave trade).This is a must-have book for anyone interested in a strictly economic look at slavery, it's rise, fall and demise.
Misunderstanding of Islamic slavery.......2005-11-13
The last two reviewers who seemed to criticize Williams for not discussing other forms of slavery miss the point. Williams was not engaged in some sort of West bashing but attempted to explain the significance of slavery in the development of the Caribbean. Insofar as Islam is concerned, the reviewers once again miss the essential point. Rather than investigate what Islam actually says about slavery they go with a knee-jerk assumption. Here is what Kecia Ali has written about slavery in Islamic society:
"The Qur'an, which Muslims believe to have been revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, makes numerous references to slaves and slavery (e.g., Q. 2.178; 16.75; 30.28). Like numerous passages in the Hebrew bible and the New Testament, the Qur'an assumes the permissibility of owning slaves, which was an established practice before its revelation. The Qur'an does not explicitly condemn slavery or attempt to abolish it. Nonetheless, it does provide a number of regulations designed to ameliorate the situation of slaves. It recommends freeing slaves, especially "believing" slaves (Q. 2.177). Manumission of a slave is required as expiation for certain misdeeds (Q. 4.92; 58.3) and another verse states that masters should allow slaves to purchase their own freedom (Q. 24.33).
The Qur'an also suggests certain means of integrating slaves, some of whom were enslaved after being captured in war, into the Muslim community. It allows slaves to marry (either other slaves or free persons; Q. 24.32; 2.221; 4.25) and prohibits owners from prostituting unwilling female slaves (Q. 24.33). Despite this protection against one form of sexual exploitation, female slaves do not have the right to grant or deny sexual access to themselves. Instead, the Qur'an permits men to have sexual access to "what their right hands possess," meaning female captives or slaves (Q. 23.5-6; 70.29-30). This was widely accepted and practiced among early Muslims; the Prophet Muhammad, for example, kept a slave-concubine (Mariya the Copt) who was given to him as a gift by the Roman governor of Alexandria.
Traditional Islamic law (fiqh) elaborates significantly on the Qur'anic material concerning slavery. The enslavement of war captives is regulated, along with the purchase and sale of slaves. While it is not permissible to enslave other Muslims, the jurists clarify that if a non-Muslim converts to Islam after enslavement, he or she remains a slave and may be lawfully purchased and sold like any other slave. (This rule closes a potential loophole allowing for slaves to gain their freedom by the simple fact of conversion.) The law also prescribes penalties for slave owners who maltreat or abuse their slaves; these penalties can include forced manumission of the slave without compensation to the owner.
Islamic law devotes special attention to regulating the practice of slave marriage and concubinage, in order to determine the paternity and/or ownership of children born to a female slave. A man cannot simultaneously own and be married to the same female slave. The male owner of a female slave can either marry her off to a different man, thus renouncing his own sexual access to her, or he may take her as his own concubine, using her sexually himself. Both situations have a specific effect on the status of any children she bears. When female slaves are married off, any children born from the marriage are slaves belonging to the mother's owner, though legal paternity is established for her husband. When a master takes his own female slave as a concubine, by contrast, any children she bears are free and legally the children of her owner, with the same status as any children born to him in a legal marriage to a free wife. The slave who bears her master's child becomes an umm walad (literally, mother of a child), gaining certain protections. Most importantly, she cannot be sold and she is automatically freed upon her master's death."
As for the Aztec, they had a system of slavery that also came with a bundle of rights, far different from the chattel slavery of the European variety.
Caribbean History.......2004-12-03
Although there may be complainants about Dr. Williams not addressing certain forms of slavery throughout history it has to be kept in mind that his thesis was about the hows and whys of African enslavement in the Caribbean. Williams firmly argues and details how today's culture of racism and capitalism was born.
This book is extremely well done and a great beginner for anyone interested in the topic of Caribbean history.
Customer Reviews:
clarke great historian.......2007-06-06
clarke knew his stuff.people can refute his claims but they hold merit
Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust.......2007-02-14
Professor John H. Clark has done a amazing analysis with providing the reader with a clear understanding on how the slave trade and genocides was instituted and systematized into what is now identified as capitalism on a gobal scale. This is a must read for anyone exploring the history of the African American history.
Is an "Afrikan" anything like an African?.......2006-03-03
Just another academic making money with half-truths that suit his prejudiced worldview. The deliberate spelling of "African" as "Afrikan" tells you all you need to know: it's the same as oh-so-worldly college sophomores who spell "America" as "Amerika" to prove they're politically aware after taking that popular "African-American/gay/La Raza/womyn's studies" course on how America is evil because it expects people to work for a living and holds them responsible for the results of their decisions.
Myth Crusher!!!.......2006-02-23
Dr. Clarke has again crushed myths of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The number one myth is "Afrikans are just as much to blame for selling slaves as Europeans". If ANYONE has ever said this to you and you didn't tell them that was a pile of buffalo poo poo, than you need this book! If you agreed with that statement you need this book. Dr. Clarke breaks down our ways back before the trade. And the BIG differences between European & Arab slavery to Afrikan slavery. TUA NTR Dr. Clarke!!! In which 99% of the people don't know how Afrikan slave system worked. And yes where are our memorials? And the true nature of the Atlantic Slave traders is exposed in detail. Also what did Afrikans do when they found out what was REALLY going on? That answer reveals our nature and how beautiful, strong and weak we are. This books hits EVERY corner about the Slave Trade. And crushes alot of myths. Again Dr. Clarke provide a slamming bibliography. That is a library listing by itself! Every child should read this book when starting to learn our history in America. And the strategies used by both sides. I could go on & on, this book is just everything about the subject in one book!
"Where's our Memorial".......2006-01-03
Dr. Clarke presents to us an interesting book that asks the question "Where's our Memorial?" The Jews, Irish and Asians remember what happened to them, but somewhere down the line, we forgot. As Dr. Clarke says this was the biggest crime in history. Europeans set in motion a type of slavery that was inhumane and savagelike.
Another misconception is that the Afrikans, and Natives Europeans encountered were brought "civilization." This couldn't be further from the truth because the European just denounced any culture they didn't understand. What is most interesting as well is 700 years earlier the European was enslaved and brought out of the Dark Ages because of the Moors(Afrikans) and Arabs. The Moors introduced chess, public baths, water systems, 70 universities and brought literacy to the kings and queens of Europe. The same Afrikans they enslaved on the Gold Coast(read the book to understand why it is Gold Coast) had been the ones to birth their enlightenmet. Also Europe(who were the only ones) believed the world was flat in their ignorance. Afrikans already knew this wasn't true based on two voyages. One was with the king of Mali, and the other maybe in the time of Ramesees III. For more on this read They Came before Columbus.
Thank You Dr. Clarke
Customer Reviews:
The Truth Hurts.................2007-10-24
Mr. Boothe has done an ASTOUNDING job in this long overdue, very much needed exposition of our Justice system in America. The same system that was designed for justice for ALL. What we all know, but really hate to accept is the truth, especially when there is an exposure of our system. The judical system, which we all have to rely on one day, whether being a victim or a criminal. We all are taught to either, cover up or diminish our history, and what still exsists in society today. I commend Mr. Boothe for his well-intentioned work. Not only has he taken his own experiences, but the factual accounts of others, to exemplify the number of African American men that have become victims of the government. No, he isn't blaming the goverment for all of the black men in prison, but proving how the system uses every opportunity to destoy the life of these men forever, or impact their lives even after prison. Thanks Mr.Boothe for unveiling the "REAL TRUTH"! I'm glad someone finally has the guts to do so.I recommend this book to everyone. This is a MAGNIFICENT piece of work MR.BOOTHE!
(RAW Rating: 4.5) - What is happening to black men?.......2007-08-04
Demico Boothe has explored the reasons so many black men are indeed in prison in, WHY ARE SO MANY BLACK MEN IN PRISON? He begins with his own story of a shaky upbringing and his subsequent dabbling in drug dealing. He was caught with a few grams of crack cocaine but because it was the dreaded crack, he was given 10 years in prison. When he left prison after serving his time, he was actually railroaded back into prison by a crooked justice system. He delves deeply into our justice system and the motives behind all the new prisons that are being built. He gives succinct and reasonable views of exactly what is happening now in the United States and how the past has played a role in the present. He uses persuasive statistics regarding the number of black men in prison as compared to the number of white men who are incarcerated.
Demico Boothe has done an excellent job of researching his subject and it is a plus, if unfortunate for him, that he has actually experienced first hand what he's talking about. I knew I was hearing the real story rather than just statistics from an intellectual who had no real idea of what the prison system is really like. I would have liked for Boothe to search a little deeper into the Haiti, Aristide and USA question, maybe even reading Randall Robinson's take on the situation, and then he might see it a bit differently. Otherwise, it is a good book and one every one in America should read. We indeed, have a crisis going on.
Reviewed by Alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
Why Are So Many Black Men In Prison? A Comprehensive Account Of How And Why The Prison Industry Has Become A Predatory Entity In.......2007-06-09
The book was very interesting. I learned soooo much about the government and the prison industry. I did some searching independantly to check on the things reported in the book and they are very true. Great Read!! Buy the book.
A Must Read.......2007-05-25
Mr. Demico's book is a must-read for anyone concerned about young African American men. Although I did not agree with every conclusion he reached, Demico's main premises are convincing. As a white woman who teaches mainly students of color, I am always impressed, and often in awe, of those young men who reach college with so much going against them. Demico's books lays bare not only the horrible inequalities of our society, but also the racist attitudes of our political system - - Democrats, Republicans, and most everyone in between.
Why are so many Black Men in Prison?.......2007-05-13
I is a well put together book. He really goes into a lot of detail of how our society is really set up.
Amazon.com
Globalism is nothing new, argue leftist historians Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. Centuries ago, European trade concerns, such as the Dutch East Indies Company and the Virginia Company, sought to create an overseas empire owned by corporations, not governments. Backed by governments all the same, these companies found themselves opposed only by a congeries of revolutionary sailors, artisans, farmers, and smallholders, who formed a "many-headed hydra" of resistance.
Arguing that this history of resistance to globalism has been unjustly overlooked, Linebaugh and Rediker delineate key episodes. When, for instance, a group of English sailors and common laborers were shipwrecked on the island of Bermuda en route to America, they created their own communal government, which was so pleasant to them that they refused to be "rescued" and had to be removed to the colonies by force. Their ideological descendants later banded with runaway slaves and other discontents to form multi-ethnic, multilingual pirate navies that hindered the transatlantic traffic in metals, jewels, and captive humans. Some of the men and women involved in these pirate bands, this "Atlantic proletariat," put their skills at the service of the American Revolution, which, in the author's view, "ended in reaction as the Founding Fathers used race, nation, and citizenship to discipline, divide, and exclude the very sailors and slaves who had initiated and propelled the revolutionary movement." The fire of rebellion soon spread all the same, they note, to such places as Haiti, Ireland, France, even England, helped along by these peripatetic and unsung rebels.
Linebaugh and Rediker's book is provocative and often brilliant, opening windows onto little-known episodes in world history. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
"For most readers the tale told here will be completely new. For those already well acquainted with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the image of that age which they have been so carefully taught and cultivated will be profoundly challenged."âDavid Montgomery, author of Citizen Worker
Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.
When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization in the early seventeenth century launched the first global economy, a vast, diverse, and landless workforce was born. These workers crossed national, ethnic, and racial boundaries, as they circulated around the Atlantic world on trade ships and slave ships, from England to Virginia, from Africa to Barbados, and from the Americas back to Europe.
Marshaling an impressive range of original research from archives in the Americas and Europe, the authors show how ordinary working people led dozens of rebellions on both sides of the North Atlantic. The rulers of the day called the multiethnic rebels a "hydra" and brutally suppressed their risings, yet some of their ideas fueled the age of revolution. Others, hidden from history and recovered here, have much to teach us about our common humanity.
"A landmark in the development of an Atlantic perspective on early American history. Ranging from Europe to Africa to the Caribbean and North America, it makes us think in new ways about the role of working people in the making of the modern world."âEric Foner, author of The Story of American Freedom
"What would the world look like had the levelers, the diggers, the ranters, the slaves, the castaways, the Maroons, the Gypsies, the Indians, the Amazons, the Anabaptists, the pirates . . . won? Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker show us what could have been by exhuming the revolutionary dreams and rebellious actions of the first modern proletariat, whose stories~until now~were lost at sea. They have recovered a sunken treasure chest of history and historical possibility and spun these lost gems into a swashbuckling narrative full of labor, love, imagination, and startling beauty."âRobin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!
"The Many-Headed Hydra is about connections others have denied, ignored, or underemployed. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europe, Africa, and the Americas came together to create a new economy and a new class of working people. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker tell their story with deep sympathy and profound insight. . . . A work of restoration and celebration of a world too long hidden from view."âIra Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
"More than just a vivid illustration of the gains involved in thinking beyond the boundaries between nation-states. Here, in incendiary form, are essential elements for a people's history of our dynamic, transcultural present."âPaul Gilroy, author of The Black Atlantic
"This is a marvelous book. Linebaugh and Rediker have done an extraordinary job of research into buried episodes and forgotten writings to recapture, with eloquence and literary flair, the lost history of resistance to capitalist conquest on both sides of the Atlantic."âHoward Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
Customer Reviews:
Table of Contents.......2006-10-22
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1. The Wreck of the Sea-Venture 8
2. Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water 36
3. "A Blackymore Maide Named Francis" 71
4. The Divarication of the Putney Debates 104
5. Hydrarchy: Sailors, Pirates, and the Maritime State 143
6. "The Outcasts of the Nations of the Earth" 174
7. A Motley Crew in the American Revolution 211
8. The Conspiracy of Edward and Catherine Despard 248
9. Robert Wedderburn and Atlantic Jubilee 287
Conclusion: Tyger! Tyger! 327
A Map of the Atlantic 1699 354
Notes 355
Acknowledgments 413
Index 417
From the bottom up.......2004-11-03
I recently had the opportunity to see Marcus Rediker speak about his latest book, "Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age." The room he spoke in was absolutely packed, and not just with students seeking to curry favor with their professors. Little kids turned up, as did local high school students. People who went to college when Eisenhower was president turned up as well. Why all the hoopla to see an academic speaking on a weekday evening? One word: pirates. People of all stripes love pirates. They simply can't get enough of these ruffians even though they have been gone from the scene for a couple of hundred years. Something about these rogues appeals to the American spirit, a spirit that also embraces the gunslinger of the Old West. We love the idea of rugged individuals living outside the norms of society, even if that life often led to a violent death at a young age. Look at all the films dealing with pirates and gunslingers, the most recent of which is "Pirates of the Caribbean" starring Johnny Depp. But the book I think Rediker's reputation will ultimately rest upon is this one, "The Many-Headed Hydra," written with fellow historian Peter Linebaugh.
Pirates ultimately play only a small role in this book. What we have here is an attempt to rewrite the entire history of the transatlantic region from a bottom up perspective. In other words, this book isn't a history of the monarchs of England, or the American Founding Fathers, or the merchants who owned the trading companies. It is a history of those too often ignored over the ages, those who toiled on the plantation, those who acted as foot soldiers in the armies of conquest, those who sailed the ships that brought slaves to the New World, and those held in bondage. It is a book about the men, women, and children who built the very tools necessary for the development and expansion of capitalism and colonization. It is a book about the nefarious "hydra," that mythic beast slain by Hercules and whose name the elites applied to anyone who dared challenge their authority. Francis Bacon wrote a treatise about this "hydra," arguing that they were subhuman "monsters" that the authorities should eradicate at the earliest opportunity. These wretches became the "hewers of wood and drawers of water," or peons good only for the basest labors.
The authors argue that several key factors played a part in the creation of this hydra. The most important was expropriation, that disastrous English policy that displaced thousands upon thousands of small farmers so that large landowners could fence in land, which led to such massive social unrest that the authorities had to do something about it. They chose to terrorize, to incarcerate, and execute those opposed to the new order. They also chose to ship many of these people overseas to use them as cheap labor to develop properties in the new world. The authors define subsequent events, everything from slave rebellions in Jamaica to a 1741 insurrection in New York, as class warfare between the poor and the wealthy. Members of the hydra (I should say heads of the hydra), according to the authors, always sought to unify their class interests in order to throw off the yoke of the oppressors. And the oppressors always managed to negate these attempts.
"The Many-Headed Hydra" is an enormous effort of scholarship, covering so many obscure events in British, Caribbean, and American history that the casual reader's mind will certainly founder under the onslaught of information. I'm a graduate student in history and I occasionally found myself looking up some of the events and people cited by the authors. Moreover, there are a couple of extraordinarily dense chapters examining how the hewers of wood and the drawers of water expropriated religion to their own class ends that will further boggle the mind. Not to worry, however, as the general themes of the book crystallize quite clearly through example after example of the attempted rise of the underclass and the subsequent crackdown by those in power. There are so many examples that follow this template that by the time the reader gets to the end of the book he or she is tempted to yell, "Enough already! I get the idea!" Eventual irritation aside, Rediker's and Linebaugh's book is an impressive reinterpretation of transatlantic history. It is also, unfortunately, rabidly left wing and biased. The following example will show the book's emphasis on underclass agency as well as its tendency to overstate its case.
Rediker and Linebaugh claim that impressment, that scurrilous activity effort by naval officers and ships' captains to forcibly coerce sailors into foreign service, was the key factor in starting the American Revolution. While it is no doubt true that the underclass in the American colonies had different beefs with their English masters than the colonial elites did, this book goes way too far in trying to show that the ENTIRE impetus for the revolution started with the underclass. According to the authors, colonial elites witnessing the riots started by disgruntled sailors and other "riffraff" were inspired to internalize this revolutionary fervor. Hogwash. All you need to do is go look for T.H. Breen's "Tobacco Culture," which successfully proved that wealthy colonial planters agitated for war because they owed so much money to English merchants that to stay within the British orbit would have ruined them. At best, we can say that BOTH the underclass and the upperclass had reasons to oust the British, and then went separate ways later. "The Many-Headed Hydra" is useful because it gives us another way to think about transatlantic history, but its one-sided arguments omit much.
A bottom-up theory of resistance.......2004-08-28
"The Many Headed Hydra" by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker is an exceptionally well-written and enlightening history of early capitalism. The authors offer a bottom-up theory of resistance and describe the conditions by which the modern nation state was founded as a solution to the problem of proletariat self-rule. Short narratives, biographies and illustrations of key events and individuals are framed within a discussion of the historical forces of the era, making the book an interesting, thought provoking and entertaining read.
Linebaugh and Rediker describe the brutal process of primitive accumulation where the poor were forced off the land to create the proletariat class. The newly-dispossessed were disciplined harshly and made to labor for the benefit of the investor class. However, the pervasive "culture of fear" that was "indispensible to the creation of labor-power as a commodity" eventually led to revolt, first with the English Civil War in the 1640s and later throughout the colonial system.
The authors spotlight individuals who made the case for the rights of all people, including Edward Despard, James Naylor, Tom Paine, Thomas Spence and Robert Wedderburn. These voices articulated the desires of the masses to achieve equality and social justice. As these rights were consistently denied, the seeds of discontent and rebellion were planted. When not organizing resistance against empire, many chose piracy, formed their own renegade communities, or chose to live among the Native Americans.
In this light, the authors present the American Revolution as a cooptation of the democratic movement. Capitalist property and wage relations were legislated in a manner that secured elitist privilege. Race, sex and class effectively served to split the proletariat into factions that could be politically controlled. The nation state thus was born as an instrument to empower the bourgeoisie and channel the energies of the masses towards capitalist accumulation.
The unique value of this book is its convincing argument that the world we know may have turned out very differently. This tantalizing possibility is just one reason why "The Many-Headed Hydra" is an intriguing read. I highly recommend it to all.
Empire Begins.......2003-10-12
In 1741 at Hughson's, a waterfront tavern in New York City, a motley crew of men and women, members of what Linebaugh and Rediker call the Atlantic proletariat planned a rebellion against the New York ruling class. They included among others radical Irishmen and women, Africans slaves, the wretched refuse created by the enclosure of the commons, the plantation system and the slave trade. The rebellion was uncovered by the authorities, its leaders were tried convicted, lynched or broken on the wheel, or sent off to slave in plantations in the West Indies. Newspaper accounts of the time described vast crowds gathering from all over New York and elsewhere to view a peculiar, emblematic and perhaps even prophetic phenomenon. The lynched bodies of two leaders of the rebellion, Hughson, an Irishman, and John Gwin, an African, were left to rot as a warning. In death, the white's body turned black, and the black's turned white
According to the authors, this resistance in New York was not unusual. It was just one of many, many rebellions and uprisings in the Atlantic colonies by what the authors call the "hydrarchy," appropriating Francis Bacon's scurrilous metaphor of the many-headed hydra which he borrowed from the myth of Hercules and used to characterize dispossessed and extirpated peasantry of the Atlantic, a characterization used thereafter by the ruling class to describe those whom they enslaved to the exigencies of capitalism. As the authors say in their conclusion on pages 327-328: "In the preceding pages, we have examined the Herculean process of globalization and the challenges posed to it by the many headed hydra. We can periodize the almost two and a half centuries covered here by naming the successive and characteristic sites of struggle: the commons, the plantation, the ship and the factory. In the years 1600-1640, when capitalism began in England and spread through trade and colonization around the Atlantic, systems of terror and sailing ships helped to expropriated the commoners of Africa, Ireland, England, Barbados and Virginia and set them to work as hewers of wood and drawers of water."
The authors go on to say that in the second phase, 1640-1680, "the hydra reared against English capitalism, first by revolution in the metropolis, then by servile war in the colonies. Antinomians organized themselves to raise of a New Jerusalem against the wicked Babylon in order to put into practice the biblical precept that God is no respecter of persons. Their defeat deepened the subjection of women and opened the way to transoceanic slavery in Ireland, Jamaica, and West Africa. Dispersed to American plantations, the radicals were defeated a second time in Barbados and Virginia, enabling the ruling class to secure the plantation as a foundation of the new economic order."
They describe the third phase in 1680-1760 as the "consolidation and stabilization of Atlantic capitalism through the maritime state, a financial and nautical system designed to acquire and operate Atlantic markets." They note it was "the sailing ship -- the characteristic machine of this period of globalization -- combined features of the factory and the prison." Consider in this regard the famous 'tryworks" chapter in Moby Dick. They go on to say "ýIn opposition, pirates built an autonomous, democratic, multiracial social order at sea, but this alternative way of life endangered the slave trade and was exterminated." They note that connected with this counterrevolution from above, "a wave of rebellion ripped through the slave societies of the Americas in the 1730s, culminating in a multiethnic insurrectionary plot by workers in New York in 1741."
The final phase of their history tells the story of how the "motley crew" with Tacky's Revolt in Jamaica and a series of uprisings throughout the hemisphere created "breakthroughs in human praxis--the Rights of Mankind, the strike, the higher-law doctrine--that would eventually help to abolish impressment and plantation slavery." He suggests these rebellions also helped to produce the American Revolution, which, they claim, "ended in reaction as the Founding Fathers used race, nation and citizenship to discipline, divide and exclude the very sailors and slaves who had initiated and propelled the revolutionary movement."
After reading this eye-opening leftist history, the polyglot streets of New York, indeed of any port city on the Atlantic, suddenly make a lot more sense. Caught up in the brutal, enslaving machine of capitalism starting in the 1600s, the Atlantic and (and eventually) Pacific proletariat fought back against this deadly system of terror, enslavement and extirpation. And it clearly appears, with the assistance of this people's history of the American colonies, that the sons and daugthers of the hydrarchy are caught up now in just the latest model of Blake's dark, satanic mills, trapped and impressed into the vast, destructive combine of the corporate hegemon.
Too programmatically left wing in its somewhat idealizing potrayal of the rabble as a motley crowd who sought freedom from their enconomic enslavement, who practiced democracy and rebellion in reaction to the vicious disciplinary system of the ruling class? Perhaps, but not as tidy as those histories told from the top down which use the fumigated version of the historical record to tell those grand and increasingly obtuse stories of the birth of freedom, equality and opportunity for all.
Tremendously overrated.......2003-04-02
This is a deeply flawed book. It seeks to construct a radical reinterpretation of the early modern Atlantic world, one which privileges class conflict. To this end, it adopts a romantic, almost pre-Raphaelite vision of medieval European and Indian societies, and then recounts the destruction of those societies by the growth of capitalism. The authors' methodology is to comb through selected primary documents and secondary literature, picking out only those bits that fit the book's thesis. For example, they adopt the class elements of Edmund Morgan's analysis of Bacon's Rebellion (the part that has least survived subsequent scholarship) while doing their best to avoid branding the rebels with genocidal racism towards Indians, which Morgan (and every subsequent scholar) has argued drove the rebellion. Of course, presenting reinterpretations is the purpose of new scholarship, but the authors never actually make an argument or present evidence to justify their dismissal of these previous interpretations. The useful is recited, and the inconvenient is simply ignored.
The book is also awash in errors of fact, all of them conveniently aiding their argument. In fact there is often an interesting correlation between badly used evidence and a poorly referenced footnote. To take a few examples: the authors define antinomianism as the belief that God saves through a free gift of grace (perfectly orthodox Calvinism) and later as the doctrine that salvation occurs through faith alone (perfectly orthodox Protestantism). Their discussion of the Putney debates at one point quotes Thomas Rainborough so out of context as to reverse his intent, and the authors make a completely unsupported connection between the debates and opposition to African slavery. Their interpretation of the Antinomian crisis in Boston involves serious manipulations and omissions of evidence (ex. it is never mentioned that Captain Underhill, a commander in the Pequot War, was also one of Anne Hutchinson's followers; there is also no evidence for the authors' suggestion that the Hutchinsonians ever opposed the institution of slavery; and finally most of her followers were in fact merchants, not "proletarians"). While very much in the same school, the book lacks the subtlety and intelligence that E.P. Thompson and Christopher Hill managed to give their finer works. In the end, the popularity of this book lies in its very polemical blindness. Like Wiccans reading Margaret Murray and feeling "it just has to be true," Marxists and anti-globalization protesters devour this book as a confirmation of all their own presuppositions. Evidence was never really necessary.
Book Description
This acclaimed history of Portuguese and Brazilian slaving in the southern Atlantic is now available in paperback. With extraordinary skill, Joseph C. Miller explores the complex relationships among the separate economies of Africa, Europe, and the South Atlantic that collectively supported the slave trade. He places the grim history of the trade itself within the context of the rise of merchant capitalism in the eighteenth century. Throughout, Miller illuminates the experiences of the slaves themselves, reconstructing what can be known of their sufferings at the hands of their buyers and sellers. A landmark study in the history of the Atlantic slave trade. It will be an essential reference for anyone who writes on the trade, from whatever perspective, for years to come. . . . This book is full of rich data, especially concerning the passage from the interior to the coast, the role of Luso-Africans and Europeans in Angolan port cities, and conditions on the floating tombs that carried their deathly cargoes across the Atlantic.Phyllis M. Martin, African Economic History Way of Death . . . [opens] up in profuse detail and at considerable length the history of the Portuguese South Atlantic empire. . . . We meet African traders dependent on credit extended by Portuguese merchants supplying slaves to Brazilian shippers who were trying to become merchants on their own. And in the background is the shadowy . . . presence of English capital.Stuart B. Schwartz, New York Times Book Review Other scholars have attempted studies of this type, but no one approaches Miller in depth.John K. Thornton, International Journal of African Historical Studies
Customer Reviews:
Title not hyperbole.......2003-07-16
Joseph Miller's Way of Death is an exhaustingly long volume for a non-academic reader, but a rich and rewarding one, if you like your history deeply rooted in archival sources. The title (and headings such as "Floating Tombs" and "Merchants of Death") make the book sound like popularization, though they actually are more a reflection of Miller's penchant for metaphor, which gives the book an almost Tolstoyan quality. Indeed, the division of the book into discrete sections that view the Angolan slaving economy as it affected those involved (native African individuals and polities, mixed-race "Luso-African" traders, Brazilian ship and plantation owners, Lisbon-based merchants, Portuguese governors) lets you see his subject with a depth and complexity reminiscent of good fiction. But it doesn't make Way of Death easy to read-the section most like a narrative account, which ties together a number of the previous threads, doesn't come till well after the 500th page. Miller feels no need to summarize political history, so I recommend as background an earlier short work such as David Birmingham's Trade and Conflict in Angola (though its economic history needs correction in the light of Miller's research).
Trained as an Africanist, Miller is particularly sensitive to the Central African sense of wealth as people rather than as goods or specie, and the different political economies leading from one kind of wealth to the other-a linkage that passes from the traditional elders and lineage systems, in which control of land and women's fertility was power, to the monarchs and warlords who used material goods to acquire dependents, to the merchant princes who stockpiled goods and slaves rather than dependents, to Luso-African traders who provided the link between textiles, muskets, and rum from Europe, Asia, and Brazil and the slaves given up by Africans. The boundaries were not stable, and the "slaving frontier" moved east from Luanda and the coast in jumps, partly in response to periodic war and drought. After three and a half centuries, this "catchment zone" for captives spread across a vast expanse of Central Africa from the Congo to the upper Zambezi and the edges of the Kalahari.
From the perspective of Atlantic economies, the financial basis of 18th-century Luso-Brazilian slaving was very rickety. Exchange of precious metals for slaves was rare. Those most immediately concerned on the African end took European goods to sell on credit and only saw reimbursement after the surviving slaves were sold-at more or less fixed prices-in Brazil. The chronic undercapitalization of Angolan slaving and the dependence of both the Angolan and Brazilian side on credit extended by Portuguese and (indirectly) British merchants is a major theme of the book. The appalling death rate among captives between point of capture and delivery in Brazil made slaves a highly perishable commodity and considerable financial risk. Those seeking to wrest a profit engaged in "tight-packing" on slave ships, which meant cheating on official capacity and reducing space for water and food in order to fit more slaves on board-which raised the death rate on ships even higher. Miller's title is no hyperbole-between the long trip from the hinterland, the dreadful conditions in Luanda barracoons, and the middle passage, a minority of those who began the "way of death" reached Brazil.
A must-read for anyone seriously interested in Central Africa or the Atlantic slave trade.
Book Description
This pathbreaking interpretation of the slaveholding South begins with the insight that slavery and freedom were not mutually exclusive but were intertwined in every dimension of life in the South. James Oakes traces the implications of this insight for relations between masters and slaves, slaveholders and non-slaveholders, and for the rise of a racist ideology. Features 43 period illustrations, including drawings made by Clark.
Customer Reviews:
Academic, well-researched, thought-provoking.......2007-04-03
After reading Oakes' The Ruling Race (which I highly recommend), I decided to give this book a try. This book is just what the title says, an interpretation of the Old South. Specifically, Oakes looks at slavery and how it affected the antebellum South politically, socially, and economically. He also spends the last chapter discussing the differences between the South before the Civil War and after Reconstruction, disagreeing with historians who have stated that sharecropping was just like slavery and politics was exactly the same. In most of Oakes' arguments, he is very persuasive. Oakes brings a lot of new ideas to the table, but all of them are based upon meticulous research so he deserves kudos for that.
The only negative about the book is that it can be scholarly and academic, which means, at times, it does not read like a page turner, but at other times it really does read easy and flows well. Oakes' writing style helps, though.
Overall, while this is certainly not a definitive look at the antebellum South (and Oakes says as much in the preface), it can serve as an excellent intro or open even the most seasoned Southern historian's eyes to some new possibilities. Well worth the time.
Excellent view of the Old South.......2000-03-11
I was really impressed with the unbelievable wealth knowledge Professor Oakes brings to light in this book. I recommend it be used in high schools throughout the country. Everyone should have access to this information. I knew him from Northwestern University. Thanks Dr. Oakes.
Average customer rating:
- Interesting argument, but something is missing
- balanced study of the conflicts within the slave South
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Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic
John Ashworth
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Book Description
This is the first of a two-volume treatment of slavery, capitalism and politics in the forty years before the Civil War. It is both a novel reinterpretation, from a Marxist perspective, of American political and economic development and a synthesis of existing scholarship on the economics of slavery, the origins of abolitionism, the proslavery argument and the second party system. With its sequel, this book will locate the political struggles of the antebellum period in the international context of the dismantling of unfree labor systems. It will also show that the Civil War should be seen as America's "bourgeois revolution."
Customer Reviews:
Interesting argument, but something is missing.......2004-07-23
John Ashworth views the Civil War as a ?bourgeois revolution? that occurred because it was impossible for southern slavery to coexist with the emerging industrial capitalism of the North. Ashworth, however, does not provide full evidence of this in this first volume.
He does convincingly show that the industrial revolution caused a dramatic shift in values, which he summarizes by stating that, ?Contrary to the traditionally accepted view, freedom did not require ownership of property, or of means of production. Instead, it required self-ownership, which implied the right to sell one?s labor power for wages? (p. 167). Ashworth also persuasively shows that slavery and modern capitalism could not co-exist in the South. But what he does not do is to demonstrate that these differing economic systems could not exist as northern and southern neighbors. In other words, Ashworth does not make it clear how southern slavery would impede northern capitalism.
When the data do not fall neatly in line with his thesis, Ashworth resorts to vagueness. He claims that the capitalist elites of the North could not accept slavery as economically viable, but then mentions ?the unholy alliance between the ?Lords of the Loom? and the ?Lords of the Lash,?? (p. 160) without explaining this alliance or trying to argue that this apparent contradiction of his thesis is not actually the discrepancy it seems.
Part of Ashworth?s theory of incompatibility rests on his claim that radical abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison were motivated primarily by economic self-interest. But here Ashworth seems too boxed in by his Marxist ideology. Garrison could very well have been motivated by moral self-interest ? trying to assuage a bothered conscience. But despite admitting that abolitionists were a minority in the North, Ashworth does not explain why the economic perspective that was supposedly primary for abolitionists was lost on most northern capitalists.
Nonetheless, Ashworth does bring up the valid point that slavery has existed since the dawn of recorded history, and yet it was only in the nineteenth century that slavery was abolished relatively quickly in much of the world. Other factors unique to the modern world must have played a role ? moral scruples alone are insufficient. Correlating abolition with the rise of industrial capitalism is a logical place to look. The formidable task Ashworth has undertaken is to show a causal relationship between these coinciding events.
Still, insofar as the new value system created by modern capitalism gave abolitionists new tools with which to fight slavery, and with westward expansion bringing the political ramifications of slavery?s expansion home to the Congress, Ashworth?s thesis that the Civil War was a bourgeois revolution has some merit even if volume one does not successfully nail down the argument. We?ll have to wait for volume two to discover exactly how strong Ashworth?s thesis really is.
balanced study of the conflicts within the slave South.......2000-01-09
The emphasis here is upon the "class" tensions within the slave South and between the North with its "wage labor" and the South with its slave labor. Far too many historians in recent years have been afraid to use the concepts of "class" and "capitalism" for fear of being tainted with the brush of Marxism. But these are clearly terms and concepts the abolitionists and the pro-slavery thinkers themselves used in their attempts to make sense of their world. Ashworth does an admirable job of employing these concepts while avoiding the pitfalls of dogmatism and economic reductionism. He draws inspiration from Antonio Gramsci's concept of "hegemony" to provide his class and material analysis with a balance that emphasizes the complexities of human motivation.
The author clearly reveals the points at which the slave system was in inner conflict and shows how the southern attempts to provide an intellectual defense of slavery were doomed to fail because of the conflicts and tensions within the southern class system. He goes on to detail the ideology and the foundations of the Jacksonian Democrats, the Whig Party, and the Republican Party and in the process gives the reader a balanced perspective on the forces that led to the Civil War. This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in why the two sections of the country were so different and came to think of themselves as different peoples.
Average customer rating:
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Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (Galaxy Books)
Elizabeth and Eugene D. Fox-Genovese
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 019503158X |
Customer Reviews:
Paradoxes of freedom........2001-02-19
This brilliant collection of essays by Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese covers numerous aspects of the spread of merchant capitalism in the colonial period of American history. They see the American experiment as begun in dread of modernity and as part and parcel of the most extreme early capitalist reactionary movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Far from intending to provide the cutting edge of historical development, many of the early colonists were trying to recreate a reactionary paradise before the Fall they saw occurring in European society.
Book Description
Born in Trinidad, Eric Williams (1911-81) founded the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago's first modern political party in 1956, led the country to independence from the British culminating in 1962, and became the nation's first prime minister. Before entering politics, he was a professor at Howard University and wrote several books, including the classic Capitalism and Slavery. In the first scholarly biography of Williams, Colin Palmer provides insights into Williams's personality that illuminate his life as a scholar and politician and his tremendous influence on the historiography and politics of the Caribbean.
Palmer focuses primarily on the fourteen-year period of struggles for independence in the Anglophone Caribbean. From 1956, when Williams became the chief minister of Trinidad and Tobago, to 1970, when the Black Power-inspired February Revolution brought his administration face to face with a younger generation intellectually indebted to his revolutionary thought, Williams was at the center of most of the conflicts and challenges that defined the region. He was most aggressive in advocating the creation of a West Indies federation to help the region assert itself in international political and economic arenas. Looking at the ideas of Williams as well as those of his Caribbean and African peers, Palmer demonstrates how the development of the modern Caribbean was inextricably intertwined with the evolution of a regional anticolonial consciousness.
Customer Reviews:
Dr. Eric Eustace Williams: The Politician revealed.......2007-04-06
The book is well written. It is balanced, and gives an insight into the deep love and commitment Dr. Eric Williams had for the people of the Caribbean, and especially citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. The book discloses in authentic detail, the struggle to reclaim Chaguramas from the United States of America, who had got if from the British in the second world war, ostensibly for defence of North America, South America, and the Caribbean. It is a treasure of history, showing the struggle of a former British colony reaching for its political and economic independence. The book is also well worth reading from a literary point of view.
A Great Fish in a Small Pond.......2006-03-31
Eric Williams was a complex and controversial giant who led a small Caribbean nation into independence. Professor Palmer attempts to understand him and his influence on the modern Caribbean by dissecting some of the major issues with which he dealt in the course of constructing his government. The result is a fascinating, well-researched study which should interest students of the Caribbean but also those interested in the problems of governance of small countries generally. He ends his book in 1970, though Williams continued as Prime Minister until his death in 1981; the years of plenty when high oil prices funded an economic boom are not covered, and would also make fascinating reading. However, while there is much more to say about Williams' tenure, what Palmer does cover can be taken on its own merits.
Just one quibble: the author's arithmetic in the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 228 doesn't add up, making his conclusions unintelligible; I trust this is the result of typographical error??
Average customer rating:
- The strength of slave women
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The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation (Studies in Modern Capitalism)
Wilma A. Dunaway
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Slavery in the American Mountain South (Studies in Modern Capitalism)
ASIN: 0521012163 |
Book Description
Wilma Dunaway contends that studies of the U.S. slave family are flawed by the neglect of small plantations and export zones and the exaggeration of slave agency. Using data on population trends and slave narratives, Dunaway identifies several profit-maximizing strategies that owners implemented to disrupt and endanger African-American families. These effective strategies include forced labor migrations, structural interference in marriages and childcare, sexual exploitation of women, shortfalls in provision of basic survival needs, and ecological risks. This book is unique in its examination of new threats to family persistence that emerged during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Download Description
Wilma Dunaway contends that studies of the U.S. slave family are flawed by the neglect of small plantations and export zones and the exaggeration of slave agency. Using data on population trends and slave narratives, Dunaway identifies several profit-maximizing strategies that owners implemented to disrupt and endanger African-American families. These effective strategies include forced labor migrations, structural interference in marriages and childcare, sexual exploitation of women, shortfalls in provision of basic survival needs, and ecological risks. This book is unique in its examination of new threats to family persistence that emerged during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Customer Reviews:
The strength of slave women.......2005-11-29
Dunaway does a remarkable job of detailing the lives of Appalachian slaves. Full of facts and statistics this book is invaluable to the history student and captivating to the history buff. The author sheds light on the day to day lives of slaves, including marriage practices, truancy, chores and general resistance. Subtle resistance and coping strategies of slaves are included within each chapter. The reader should appreciate the information related specifically to women (and not merely the sexual exploitation aspect)since available information often refers to men or slaves in general. Dunaway's well organized information flows smoothly throught the book making it a good reference source while holding the readers interest as if a novel. As a college student I found this book to be very useful in writing history papers. As a historian it has become one of my favorite books.
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