Barbaric traffic : commerce and antislavery in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world / Philip Gould.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gould, Philip, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Antislavery movements--United States--History--18th century.

Antislavery movements.

Antislavery movements--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Slave trade in literature.

Antislavery movements in literature.

Slave trade--United States--History--18th century.

Slave trade.

Slave trade--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Slave trade--Africa--History--18th century.

Capitalism--Social aspects--History--18th century.

Capitalism.

Commerce.

History.

Capitalism--Social aspects.

United States--Commerce--History--18th century.

United States.

Great Britain--Commerce--History--18th century.

Great Britain.

Africa.

Physical Description:

viii, 258 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2003.

Summary:

Studying the rhetoric of various antislavery genres, Gould exposes the close relation between antislavery writings and commercial capitalism. By distinguishing between good commerce, or the importing of commodities that refined manners, and bad commerce, like the slave trade, the literature offered both a critique and an outline of acceptable forms of commercial capitalism. A challenge to the premise that objections to the slave trade were rooted in modern laissez-faire capitalism, Gould's work revises--and expands--our understanding of antislavery literature as a form of cultural criticism in its own right.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-252) and index.

ISBN:

067401166X

OCLC:

51878852