The Unnatural Trade : Slavery, Abolition, and Environmental Writing, 1650-1807.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carey, Brycchan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Antislavery movements--Great Britain.

Antislavery movements.

Slavery in literature.

Slavery--Economic aspects--Great Britain.

Slavery.

Slavery--Great Britain--Colonies--History.

Slavery--Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (279 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, 2024.

Summary:

A look at the origins of British abolitionism as a problem of eighteenth-century science, as well as one of economics and humanitarian sensibilities How did late eighteenth-century British abolitionists come to view the slave trade and British colonial slavery as unnatural, a “dread perversion” of nature? Focusing on slavery in the Americas, and the Caribbean in particular, alongside travelers’ accounts of West Africa, Brycchan Carey shows that before the mid-eighteenth century, natural histories were a primary source of information about slavery for British and colonial readers. These natural histories were often ambivalent toward slavery, but they increasingly adopted a proslavery stance to accommodate the needs of planters by representing slavery as a “natural” phenomenon. From the mid-eighteenth century, abolitionists adapted the natural history form to their own writings, and many naturalists became associated with the antislavery movement. Carey draws on descriptions of slavery and the slave trade created by naturalists and other travelers with an interest in natural history, including Richard Ligon, Hans Sloane, Griffith Hughes, Samuel Martin, and James Grainger. These environmental writings were used by abolitionists such as Anthony Benezet, James Ramsay, Thomas Clarkson, and Olaudah Equiano to build a compelling case that slavery was unnatural, a case that was popularized by abolitionist poets such as Thomas Day, Edward Rushton, Hannah More, and William Cowper.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One BUILDING THE ARCHIVE

1 "The Cord that bindes up all": Richard Ligon and the Natural History of Barbados

2 "A very perverse Generation of People": Natural History in the Service of the Planters

3 "Negroes, cattle, mules, and horses": The Plantation in Theory and in Practice

4 "The purchase of slaves, teeth and dust": Natural Histories of the African Slave Trade

Part Two DEPLOYING THE ARCHIVE

5 "The groans, the dying groans, of this deeply afflicted and oppressed people": Anthony Benezet and the Natural History of Atlantic Slavery

6 "An unnatural state of oppression": Environmental Writing in the Abolitionist Essay

7 "But say, whence first th'unnatural trade arose?" Abolitionism's Environmental Poetics

Conclusion: "An inexhaustible mine of wealth"

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Carey, Brycchan The Unnatural Trade

ISBN:

9780300280241

OCLC:

1446098045