Anti-Slavery Images, 1750-1860

The UK has the unenviable distinction of having been a global leader in the Atlantic slave trade, second only to Portugal. British ships transported more than three million Africans to the Americas between the 1600s and 1807. 

By the late 18th century, a movement to end this vile trade and eventually slavery itself began to gain momentum in Britain. Anti-slavery sentiment arose from both religious and secular sources. 

Religious sects like the Quakers had long opposed slavery. After mid-century, they were joined in Britain by members of Dissenting sects such as Methodists and some Anglicans. 

The influence of Enlightenment thinkers also played a role. The illustration below, from Voltaire's popular work Candide, shows Candide and his companion Cacambo encountering a slave who has had his hand destroyed in a mill and leg cut off for running away. The slave tells them, "This is the price of your eating sugar in Europe."

In the 1780's, the innovative potter Josiah Wedgwood, Darwin's grandfather, produced the famous medallion below on behalf of the movement to end the slave trade.

The image below, of "tight packing" aboard the slave ship Brookes, was published in Plymouth, England in 1788 and soon became an icon of the antislavery movement.

In the same year, British artist George Morland exhibited his sentimental genre painting "The Slave Trade," showing Africans being loaded into boats on the West African coast.

The painting below, by JMW Turner, depicts the infamous case of the slave ship Zong . The Zong Incident occurred in 1783, almost sixty years before Turner painted his take on it. 

When the Zong ran low on water, the captain ordered more than 100 Africans thrown overboard in order to save the rest. The captain claimed insurance on the "lost cargo." The insurance company refused to pay.

In the court case that followed, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield (pictured below), who had effectively declared slavery illegal under English law in 1772, denied the insurance claim. Many people thought the captain and his henchmen should have been tried for murder.

The shocking nature of the Zong "Massacre," as it is often called today, galvanized opponents of the slave trade. In its wake, they mounted a mass popular movement to end it, led by MP William Wilberforce. Parliament finally abolished the slave trade in 1807. 

Abolition of slavery itself in the empire followed in 1833, but the institution survived decades longer in many parts of the globe. Turner's painting the Zong Massacre in was done in 1840 for the International Conference on Abolition of Slavery, held in London.

The legal slave trade to the USA ended in 1808, but a clandestine trade and slavery itself lasted until the end of the Civil War. British artist Eyre Crowe produced a famous depiction of a slave sale in Charleston, South Carolina in 1856. 

During the Antebellum Era (1820-1860), abolitionists in the USA produced many anti-slavery images. They tended to focus on the brutality and violence of the slave system, in which slaveowners wielded tyrannical power over their human chattels. Below are a few examples.

Today, a new curriculum for US History in the Florida of Governor Ron DeSantis, emphasizes the "benefits" of slavery to the enslaved.  He is also at war with one of Florida's biggest economic powerhouses, Disney, Inc.  

There is a certain irony here. Disney famously produced a film that, inadvertently, perhaps, made slavery look like a Good Barbieland. I refer of course to Song of the South (1946), the movie based on the Uncle Remus Stories of Joel Chandler Harris. 

My, oh my, what a wonderful day!

Slavery, Disease, and Suffering

“offers an unparalleled look at the early history of Charleston and the economic region of which it was a part. Focusing on the close relationship between the pursuit of wealth and the risk of death, McCandless forces readers to reassess the economic, demographic, and moral foundations of South Carolina’s past. A riveting, if sobering, work by a masterful historian.”  
Peter Coclanis, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, author of Shadow of a Dream

“compassionate, compelling history ... Peter McCandless writes with wisdom and humanity, inspiring us not just to think differently about the past, but also to ask how similar forces are shaping the world today.”  
Elizabeth Fenn, Duke University, author of Pox Americana

“This meticulously researched and smoothly written book provides the first comprehensive history of the Carolina lowcountry’s ferocious disease environment. It navigates masterfully among social, economic, cultural, religious, demographic, military, and medical history, from the 1670s to the Civil War, exploring every aspect of the deadly struggles with malaria, yellow fever, and smallpox.” 
J. R. McNeill, Georgetown University, author of Mosquito Empires

“McCandless does more than provide sound and accessible medical history. He adds an important social and economic twist. The knot that he deftly ties between slavery, disease, and the Lowcountry environment has devastating and lasting implications that stretch far beyond South Carolina. McCandless is quick to absorb and ponder the irony that the continent’s least healthy place swiftly became its wealthiest. Rice, indigo, and then cotton yielded huge profits to a tiny minority of intermarried merchant and planter families, while “most of the population experienced pestilence without prosperity.” Peter Wood, Duke University, author of Black Majority. 

In Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry, Peter McCandless paints a startling portrait of the troubled and troubling history of disease in the South of the United States from the colonial period to the first half of the nineteenth century....Due to his impressive grasp of a variety of sources, McCandless uncovers the problematic reporting of disease and the convoluted ways that Southern physicians often misdiagnosed illness. This analytical move elevates his book from a mere survey of sickness in the South to a sophisticated evaluation of the representation of disease; Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry can thus serve as a primer on how to research the history of public health before the microbiological revolution." Jim Downs, Connecticut College, author of Sick from Freedom: African American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction 

Link: Slavery, Disease, and Suffering