Capitalism and Slavery

Capitalism and Slavery

Author: Eric Williams

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2014-06-30

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1469619490

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.


The Making of New World Slavery

The Making of New World Slavery

Author: Robin Blackburn

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 1789600855

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Making of New World Slavery argues that independent commerce, geared to burgeoning consumer markets, was the driving force behind the rise of plantation slavery. The baroque state sought-successfully-to feed upon this commerce and-with markedly less success-to regulate slavery and racial relations. To illustrate this thesis, Blackburn examines the deployment of slaves in the colonial possessions of the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the English and the French. Plantation slavery is shown to have emerged from the impulses of civil society, not from the strategies of individual states. Robin Blackburn argues that the organization of slave plantations placed the West on a destructive path to modernity and that greatly preferable alternatives were both proposed and rejected. Finally, he shows that the surge of Atlantic trade, predicated on the murderous toil of the plantations, made a decisive contribution to both the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West.


Re-Thinking Kinship and Feudalism in Early Medieval Europe

Re-Thinking Kinship and Feudalism in Early Medieval Europe

Author: Stephen D. White

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-07-07

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1000939383

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is the second collection of studies by Stephen D. White to be published by Variorum (the first being Feuding and Peace-Making in Eleventh-Century France). The essays in this volume look principally at France and England from Merovingian and Anglo-Saxon times up to the 12th century. They analyze Latin and Old French discourses that medieval nobles used to construct their relationships with kin, lords, men, and friends, and investigate the political dimensions of such relationships with particular reference to patronage/clientage, the use of land as an item of exchange, and feuding. In so doing, the essays call into question the conventional practice of studying kinship and feudalism as independent systems of legal institutions and propose new strategies for studying them.


The Myth of 1648

The Myth of 1648

Author: Benno Teschke

Publisher: Verso

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9781859846933

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 is widely interpreted as the foundation of modern international relations. Benno Teschke exposes this as a myth. In the process he provides a fresh re-interpretation of the making of modern international relations from the eighth to the eighteenth century. Inspired by the groundbreaking historical work of Robert Brenner, Teschke argues that social property relations provide the key to unlocking the changing meaning of international across the medieval, early modern, and modern periods. He traces how the long-term interaction of class conflict, economic development, and international rivalry effected the formation of the modern system of states. Yet instead of identifying a breakthrough to interstate modernity in the so-called long sixteenth century or in the period of intensified geopolitical competition during the seventeenth century, Teschke shows that geopolitics remained governed by dynastic and absolutist political communities, rooted in feudal property regimes. The Myth of 1648 argues that the onset of specifically modern international relations only began with the conjunction of the rise of capitalism and modern state-formation in England. Thereafter, the English model caused the restructuring of the old regimes of the Continent. This was a long-term process of socially uneven development, not completed until World War I.


Sociology for the South

Sociology for the South

Author: George Fitzhugh

Publisher: Richmond, Virginia : [s.n.]

Published: 1854

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sociology for the South: Or, The Failure of Free Society by George Fitzhugh, first published in 1854, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.


Liberty, Slavery and the Law in Early Modern Western Europe

Liberty, Slavery and the Law in Early Modern Western Europe

Author: Filip Batselé

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-01-03

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 3030368556

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book investigates the legal evolution of the “free soil principle” in England, France and the Low Countries during the Early Modern period (ca. 1500–1800), which essentially stated that, as soon as slaves entered a certain country, they would immediately gain their freedom. This book synthesizes the existing literature on the origins and evolution of the principle, adds new insights by drawing on previously undiscussed primary sources on the development of free soil in the Low Countries and employs a pan-Western, European and comparative approach to identify and explain the differences and similarities in the application of this principle in France, England and the Low Countries. Divided into four sections, the book begins with a brief introduction to the subject matter, putting it in its historical context. Slavery is legally defined, using the established international law definition, and both the status of slavery in Europe before the Early Modern Period and the Atlantic slave trade are discussed. Secondly, the book assesses the legal origins of the free soil principle in England, France and the Low Countries during the period 1500–1650 and discusses the legal repercussions of slaves coming to England, France and the Low Countries from other countries, where the institution was legally recognized. Thirdly, it addresses the further development of the free soil principle during the period 1650–1800. In the fourth and last section, the book uses the insights gained to provide a pan-Western, European and comparative perspective on the origins and application of the free soil principle in Western Europe. In this regard, it compares the origins of free soil for the respective countries discussed, as well as its application during the heyday of the Atlantic slave trade. This perspective makes it possible to explain some of the divergences in approaches between the countries examined and represents the first-ever full-scale country comparison on this subject in a book.


From Slavery to Freedom

From Slavery to Freedom

Author: Seymour Drescher

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1999-05-17

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 1349148768

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The entries in this volume focus upon the rise and fall of the Atlantic slave system in comparative perspective. The subjects range from the rise of the slave trade in early modern Europe to a comparison of slave trade and the Holocaust of the twentieth century, dealing with both the history and historiography of slavery and abolition. They include essays on British, French, Dutch, and Brazilian abolition, as well as essays on the historiography of slavery and abolition since the publication of Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery more than fifty years ago.