Free Trade, Free Labour, and Slave Sugar in Victorian Britain

Huzzey, Richard

doi:10.1017/s0018246x10000051

Cited by 51 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The prosperous British West Indies had been wrecked, while all that the abolition of slavery seemed to have done was to shift the places where Britain purchased slave-grown sugar from its own colonies to the flourishing slave colonies of Cuba and Brazil. 88 Events interpreted in this way suggested the folly of adopting twin attacks on the protection of the economy and the protection of slaves. But the timid emancipation settlement of 1833-38 and the seeming failure of emancipation schemes in the older West India colonies of Jamaica and Barbados disenchanted British politicians with what abolition had wrought.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sir John Gladstone and the Debate over the Amelioration of Slavery in the British West Indies in the 1820s

Burnard¹,

Candlin²

2018

J. Br. Stud.

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Sir John Gladstone made a fortune as a Demerara sugar-planter and a key supporter of the British policy of amelioration in which slavery would be “improved” by making it more “humane.” Unlike resident planters in the British West Indies, who were firmly opposed to any alteration to the conditions of enslavement, and unlike abolitionists, who saw amelioration as a step toward abolition, Gladstone was a rare but influential metropolitan-based planter with an expansive imperial vision, prepared to work with British politicians to guarantee his investments in slavery through progressive slave reforms. This article intersects with recent historiography highlighting connections between metropole and colony but also insists on the influence of Demerara, including the effects of a large slave rebellion centered on Gladstone's estates (which illustrated that enslaved people were not happy with Gladstone's supposedly enlightened attitudes) on metropolitan sensibilities in the 1820s. Gladstone's strategies for an improved slavery, despite the contradictions inherent in championing such a policy while maintaining a fierce drive for profits, were a powerful counter to a renewed abolitionist thrust against slavery in the mid to late 1820s. Gladstone showed that that the logic of gradual emancipation still had force in imperial thinking in this decade.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sir John Gladstone and the Debate over the Amelioration of Slavery in the British West Indies in the 1820s

Burnard¹,

Candlin²

2018

J. Br. Stud.

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“…In 1846, the British government controversially decided to equalize the duties on British colonial and foreign (i.e., slave-grown) sugar (Green 1991 , p. 232; Schuyler 1918 , p. 72). The government did so on the grounds that allowing cheaper slave-produced sugar into the British market would be good for consumers (Huzzey 2010 ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historicizing Modern Slavery: Free-Grown Sugar as an Ethics-Driven Market Category in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Smith

Johns

2019

J Bus Ethics

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The modern slavery literature engages with history in an extremely limited fashion. Our paper demonstrates to the utility of historical research to modern slavery researchers by explaining the rise and fall of the ethics-driven market category of "free-grown sugar" in nineteenth-century Britain. In the first decades of the century, the market category of "free-grown sugar" enabled consumers who were opposed to slavery to pay a premium for a more ethical product. After circa 1840, this market category disappeared, even though considerable quantities of slave-grown sugar continued to arrive into the UK. We explain the disappearance of the market category. Our paper contributes to the ongoing debates about slavery in management by historicizing and thus problematizing the concept of "slavery". The paper challenges those modern slavery scholars who argue that lack of consumer knowledge about product provenance is the main barrier to the elimination of slavery from today's international supply chains. The historical research presented in this paper suggests that consumer indifference, rather than simply ignorance, may be the more fundamental problem. The paper challenges the optimistic historical metanarrative that pervades much of the research on ethical consumption. It highlights the fragility of ethics-driven market categories, offering lessons for researchers and practitioners seeking to tackle modern slavery.

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“…In general, free traders vilified emancipated black Britons as undeserving of special protection, resisting the claims of protectionists that the illegal slave trade would prosper from the measure. 70 This question exposed differing views of the moral geography of Britain's anti-slavery responsibilities. While Bishop Samuel Wilberforce suggested that the consumption of slave-grown commerce would 'plunge this country again into the guilt of this great crime', he was soon disappointed to discover that the rest of the country did not feel the same way.…”

Section: Anti-slavery In One Country?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Moral Geography of British Anti-Slavery Responsibilities

Huzzey¹

2012

Trans. R. Hist. Soc.

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By examining British anti-slavery debates across a longue durée – before and after West Indian emancipation – the basis of moral responsibility for political action may be reassessed. Recent interest in humanitarian or transnational compassion may have underappreciated the geographical limitations of the moral responsibility Britons assumed for slavery and the slave trade. The notion of national complicity was crucial in mobilising individual Britons to petition, abstain from slave-grown produce or otherwise pressure parliament. While the peculiar aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars created a British responsibility for other nations’ slave trading, there was little comparable appetite for the internationalising responsibility for the slave-labour origins of traded goods. This meant that transnational obligations to police the slave trade did not translate into concern about the slave production behind overseas trade. By tracing these national debates over time, it is possible to discern the dominant and recessive arguments for how and when moral revulsion should translate into political action by Britons and the British state. This suggests a need to revisit scholarly conclusions about abolitionist campaigning, the basis of moral responsibility for slavery, and the antecedents of modern consumer responsibility.

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Free Trade, Free Labour, and Slave Sugar in Victorian Britain

Cited by 51 publications

References 14 publications

Sir John Gladstone and the Debate over the Amelioration of Slavery in the British West Indies in the 1820s

Sir John Gladstone and the Debate over the Amelioration of Slavery in the British West Indies in the 1820s

Historicizing Modern Slavery: Free-Grown Sugar as an Ethics-Driven Market Category in Nineteenth-Century Britain

The Moral Geography of British Anti-Slavery Responsibilities

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