Slaves and Trade

Hye-Joon Yoon ()
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Hye-Joon Yoon: Yonsei University

Chapter Chapter 6 in Moral Discourses of the Economy in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 2025, pp 201-252 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter pays tribute to the moral crusade against the transatlantic slave trade and the slave labor in British West Indies. Early Abolitionists argued that slave trade and slavery were unjust in the eyes of God and God’s moral law, but purchase and ownership of African slaves were defended in the name of Britain’s national interests and as a constitutional right of free-born British subjects. Battling that stronghold of political and economic justification, therefore, called for an alignment of ethics, religion, politics, and economics. Claiming that slave trade and slavery were economically detrimental as well as morally reprehensible became the main strategy of the Abolitionists in the 1780s. The chapter also looks into the legality of considering slaves as property which was the central issue in the famous case of Somerset v. Stewart. Being the longest of all, this chapter reconstructing the language, argument, and rhetoric of the Abolitionists and their opponents is the high point of this book.

Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-95-0958-4_6

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-0958-4_6

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