Postgraduate Course: Antislavery and Emancipation in the Atlantic World (PGHC11346)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | In the mid-eighteenth century, racial slavery was a robust institution that was practiced across large portions of the Atlantic World without significant opposition. By 1888, little more than a century later, it had been abolished throughout Europe and the Americas. The main objective of this course is to investigate how and why this shift took place. We will explore the rising tide of antislavery opinion, particularly in Great Britain and the northern United States, including its intellectual, religious, and economic dimensions. We will also compare the different forms emancipation took in different times and places, taking into account such factors as political culture and the role of violence. Throughout, we will adopt (and critically evaluate) transnational approaches to the study of this subject, comparing underlying socioeconomic structures and analysing the transmission of ideas across national boundaries. |
| Course description |
This course will supplement existing offerings available for students on a number of taught MSc programmes: American History, Slavery and Forced Labour Studies, Modern British and Irish History, Intellectual History, and History. The transatlantic approach of the course reflects significant interest among staff and graduate students in the Atlantic World framework.
In the mid-eighteenth century, racial slavery was a robust institution that was practiced across large portions of the Atlantic World without significant opposition. By 1888, little more than a century later, it had been abolished throughout Europe and the Americas. The main objective of this course is to investigate how and why this shift took place. We will explore the rising tide of antislavery opinion, particularly in Great Britain and the northern United States, including its intellectual, religious, and economic dimensions. We will also compare the different forms emancipation took in different times and places, taking into account such factors as political culture and the role of violence. Throughout, we will adopt (and critically evaluate) transnational approaches to the study of this subject, comparing underlying socioeconomic structures and analysing the transmission of ideas across national boundaries.
D. Content of the course
1) Introduction
2) Slavery in the Atlantic world
3) Origins of antislavery thought
4) The age of revolutions
5) Opposition to the international slave trade
6) Caribbean and Latin American emancipations
7) U.S. abolitionism
8) Radical transatlantic abolitionism
9) Emancipation in the United States
10) Emancipation in Brazil and Cuba
11) Conclusion: comparative perspectives on antislavery and emancipation
|
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
After successfully completing the course, students will be able to demonstrate:
* an advanced understanding of the major events and historical trends that gave rise to the opposition to slavery and the achievement of emancipation across the Atlantic World.
* awareness of the major historiographical debates involving antislavery and emancipation, including the ability to assess historians' positions in these debates and to formulate original interventions therein.
* the ability to evaluate critically primary sources, secondary sources and the seminar contributions of their colleagues.
* the use of these critical skills to advance clear, well-reasoned and independent arguments in both written and oral forms.
* where relevant, students should also have begun to devise a plan of research for the MSc dissertation that takes into account and critically responds to appropriate historiographical contexts.
|
Reading List
Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition (London, 1975).
Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (London, 1988).
R. J. M Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989).
Christopher L. Brown, "Empire without Slaves: British Concepts of Emancipation in the Age of the American Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly 56 (2) (1999): 273-306.
_____, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, 2006).
Patrick T. J. Browne, ""To Defend Mr. Garrison": William Cooper Nell and the Personal Politics of Antislavery," The New England Quarterly 70:3 (September 1997): 415-442.
Robert Conrad, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888 (Berkeley, 1972).
David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, 1975).
_____, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y, 1967).
Merton Lynn Dillon, Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Their Allies, 1619-1865 (Baton Rouge, 1990).
Seymour, Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh, 1977).
_____, ed., From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery (Basingstoke, 1999).
_____, "Whose Abolition? Popular Pressure and the Ending of the British Slave Trade," Past and Present 143 (May 1994): 136-166.
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, 2004).
_____. Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill, 2004).
W. E. B Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (Millwood, N.Y., 1973).
Carol Faulkner, "The Root of the Evil: Free Produce and Radical Antislavery, 1820-1860," Journal of the Early Republic 27:3 (2007): 377-405.
Paul Goodman, Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality (Berkeley, 1998).
Thomas Haskell, David Brion Davis, and John Ashworth, debate on capitalism and abolitionism, AHR 90 (1985): 339-361, 547-566, and AHR 92 (1987): 797-878. Reprinted as The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation (Berkeley, 1992).
Julie Roy Jeffrey, Abolitionists Remember: Antislavery Autobiographies & the Unfinished Work of Emancipation (Chapel Hill, 2008)
_____, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill, 1998)
Lawrence C. Jennings, French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802-1848 (Cambridge, 2006).
Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850 (Chicago, 1989)
Carol Lasser, "Voyeuristic Abolitionism: Sex, Gender, and the Transformation of Antislavery Rhetoric," Journal of the Early Republic 28 (2007): 83-114.
Martin A. Klein, "Slavery, the International Labour Market and the Emancipation of Slaves in the Nineteenth Century," Slavery and Abolition 15:2 (August 1994), pp. 197-200.
Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and Race in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca, 1998).
Suzanne Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade (New York, 1975).
Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (eds.), Anti-Slavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists (Baton Rouge, 1979).
W. Caleb McDaniel, "Repealing Unions: American Abolitionists, Irish Repeal, and the Origins of Garrisonian Disunionism," Journal of the Early Republic 28:2 (2008): 243-269.
Matthew E. Mason, "Slavery Overshadowed: Congress Debates Prohibiting the Atlantic Slave Trade to the United States," Journal of the Early Republic 20, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 59-83.
Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, 2002).
Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (eds.), Anti-Slavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists (Baton Rouge, 1979).
Benjamin Quarles, The Black Abolitionists (New York, 1969).
Rebecca J. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899 (Princeton, 1985).
Pamela Scully and Diana Paton, eds., Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World (Durham, 2005).
Timothy Shortell, "The Rhetoric of Black Abolitionism: An Exploratory Analysis of Antislavery Newspapers in New York State," Social Science History 28:1 (Spring 2004): 75-109.
John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge, 2001).
Ronald C. Walters, The Anti-Slavery Appeal: American Abolitionism after 1830 (Baltimore, 1976).
Iain White, Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838 (Edinburgh, 2006).
Shane White, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810 (Athens, 1988).
William and Mary Quarterly, October 2009, special issue on the British and American abolition of the slave trade.
Bertram Wyatt Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969).
Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North (Chicago, 1967).
|
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Anti&Emanci Antislavery Emancipation Atlantic World |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Paul Quigley
Tel: (0131 6)50 9963
Email: paul.quigley@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: Lindsay.Scott@ed.ac.uk |
|
|
University Homepage