(highlight:: The Abolition of Slavery was not an Inevitability
Key takeaways:
• The abolition of the slave trade and emancipation were not inevitable, and were actually very unlikely due to the economic strength of the Atlantic slave trade and the economic value of slavery in the 19th century.
• Slavery is as old as human history and took different shapes and different times in the past.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I've taken the view that the things that did happen that led to slave trade abolition and emancipation, given where the world had been in the 18th century, that the changes in the 19th Century were not only not inevitable, but they were actually very unlikely. And I ground that in the economic strength of the Atlantic slave trade and the economic value of slavery in the 19th century, even in the face of abolitionist and emancipationist movements, There is no record, at least that I'm aware of, of slave traders or slave-holding societies to saying that they had had enough and they weren't going to do this anymore. Slaving is as old as human history. And I think we tend to forget that it was a norm rather than an exception. It took different shapes and different times. And so what happens in the 19th century, but what happens in the 19th century, I really think is quite unusual. And I don't think it's the natural consequences of either economic forces or cultural forces.)
- Time 0:10:33
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(highlight:: Slavery and Fossil Fuel Use: Not a Bad Comparison
Key takeaways:
• Fossil fuels are a necessary part of our modern world, and will likely continue to be for some time.
• It was important for people to see fossil fuels as beneficial in order to make the transition away from them.
• Values and ideals are not enough to make a change, it needs to be beneficial to important people.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Obviously, this is changing now, but so much of the infrastructure of our lives take fossil fuels for granted. It's sort of premised on the existence and the exploitation of fossil fuels. You know, the same was true with slavery in the early modern era. I mean, it was kind of baked into the world that emerged in the Americas in the 1500s. And to get out of that world required a degree of imagination and commitment that, you know, was really kind of special. And I think the thing that, I mean, we'll get to this, but one thing I really want to try to make clear is that a certain kind of ideals or values are not enough to make that transition, that It needed to feel useful and beneficial to really important people for that change to take place. It wasn't enough to say, in the same way, it's not enough to say, oh, fossil fuels, you know, the exploitation of them is bad for the climate, bad for a lot of things, that there needed to Be other reasons for that change. But yeah, it's not a bad comparison, actually.)
- Time 0:12:34
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(highlight:: Slavery Was Not Just Forced Labor
Key takeaways:
• Slavery is a complex and varied practice, with different forms in different parts of the world.
• Slavery was used for a variety of purposes, including as forced laborers and as loyal servants to the head of state.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
One challenge, for example, that modern audiences sometimes have is the idea that slaves were used to generate wealth as, you know, forced laborers. Many societies, and this is especially true in the Middle East, in much of Islamic civilization, in large parts of South Asia, in parts of medieval early modern East Asia, comes Korea, China. Slaves were used for things that were employed in ways that were sometimes for sex, sometimes as the coerced loyal servants to the head of state. So, you know, the sort of the practices of slavery are so varied. What happens in the Americas is one really important iteration. And if we're looking for sort of common features, you know, in some ways it's the social and legal fact of being possessed by another person and utilized as if you are a thing, which is To say, as if you have no will of your own.)
- Time 0:16:33
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(highlight:: Who is and is not a Slave
Key takeaways:
• Slavery is a state that is regarded as a kind of a misfortune, rather than something that is natural and part of the human race.
• This is due to the fact that slavery is a creature of the laws of nations, and not of the natural order of things.
• This leads to the development of strong collective identities around who should be enslaved and who should not be enslaved, and this is especially important in the development of Christianity and Islam.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Sometimes the idea that enslaved person is naturally a slave that was, of course, was Aristotle's way of looking at the subject very famously. Some emphasize that's the body that's enslaved, but not the spirit. And there's a whole body of Roman thought among the Stoics that made that point. There's a very long tradition in the Latin legal tradition right down to the middle ages that regard slavery as against natural law, as a violation of natural law, but instead as a creature Of the laws of nations that it comes conventional in human civilizations, even though it's not part of, you know, the natural order of things. So, you know, then what the other thing that happens is that, and this is actually really important for this subject, is that slavery is a state that because it's regarded as a kind of A misfortune rather than, because in the, especially in the Mediterranean world, anybody can be enslaved, taken as captive. There's no races that are marked as slave races per se. There develops a very strong notion that, first of all, obviously, the status of slavery is something to avoid, but an identity, collective identities begin to establish around who Should be enslaved and who should not be enslaved. And this goes with the rise of Christendom and then with the development of Islam, where the taking of slaves is what you do to those who are not your religious of your, you know, religious World.)
- Time 0:19:06
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(highlight:: The Forces of Order in Any Society Are So Much More Powerful Than the Challengers
Key takeaways:
• An individual person can't overthrow the United States.
• The forces of order in any society are more powerful than challengers.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I think that this really goes to why anti-slavery movements are so important to imagine that the entire system could be destroyed, requires a degree of imagination and political power
Speaker 2
In capacity.
Speaker 1
That an individual person, I mean, if I decided that I wanted to overthrow the United States, I could go shoot up the Capitol, and I hope the Secret and D'Vervis is not listening to me right Now. But I'd be dead in a matter of seconds, right? You could get a thousand, you know, it's tried on January 6. You could get thousands of people together, right? The forces of order in any society are so much more powerful than the... Than its challengers. And so, you know, what enslaved men and women more often than not hoped to do was to escape, to get out from under slavery, and to free the people that they cared about. Their mothers, their fathers, their cousins, their kin, the people that they worked with.)
- Time 0:26:31
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(highlight:: The Distance Between Our Moral Intuitions, Commitments, and Actions
Key takeaways:
• There is a great distance between our moral intuitions and our moral commitments and our moral actions.
• It is often difficult to act on our moral intuitions.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You know, just coming into my office in New York City today, I walked by homeless people on the street. It's cold, lying on warm grates. This is true for most days in the winter in New York. I see people on the streets, you know, struggling in this way. And we walk by them or I walk by them. I think most New Yorkers walk by them. Often with sometimes with the thought of, that's really awful. That's really sad. It shouldn't be this way. Maybe I should do something. But then I'm late for work. My child is calling me. You know, I'm thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch today. And then we go back to sleep at the end of the day, and we wake up and do the same thing. And so I think there's really a great distance between our moral intuitions and even our moral commitments and then our moral actions. And I really, I think that is something that in the writing about, in the thinking about anti-slavery, there had been, and sometimes still is, a too easy equation of, well, once people Saw the problem, once they realized the humanity of Africans once they understood the cruelty of slavery, then of course they would organize and do something about it. And not only did it not happen that way, but it almost never happens that way. And so when the other thing happens, when there is a movement of some kind, when there's a commitment, when there's a collective effort, that's the thing that we should regard as strange And try to make sense of, rather than the routine forms of man's inhumanity to man, which unfortunately is all too typical)
- Time 1:06:31
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(highlight:: The Role of Slavery the 19th Century Feminist Movement
Key takeaways:
• The campaign against slavery served as a precursor to the movement for women's rights in the 19th century.
• The campaign against slavery helped to galvanize and learn from the movement for women's rights.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The whole idea of gender equality in the 19th century and women's rights comes directly out of the campaign against slavery, right? And so again, I think anti-slavery serves as a progenitor of new ideas of equality, as much as it is a product of them. And it would be interesting to think about, and here's a counterfactual for you, what does the movement for women's rights look like in the 19th century, if the campaign against slavery Had never existed? And I would argue that it's actually, that there's, I think there would have been a movement, or there would have been a movement towards greater equality, but it was certainly galvanized And learned a lot of lessons from the anti-slavery movement.)
- Time 2:15:06
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(highlight:: The Abolition of Slavery had no Precedent
Key takeaways:
• Slavery was a controversial and target for intervention issue in the 18th century, which made it end in the 19th century.
• The development of antislavery campaigns in the 18th century was contingent on particular circumstances that were unique to that time.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
To me, the reason why I think about the emergence of anti-slavery campaigns is contingent is because there's no real precedent and there's no real comparison at the time. So there's not anything it's not building on anything else that's like it. And not only that, it was largely unimaginable before it occurred, right? So that's the first part of it. The second part of it is that the circumstances are circumstances that were very particular to that moment that enabled it. I really believe and I really think that slavery is a institution as a set of practices, so normal in human civilizations down to the 18th century, that it took something special for It to become controversial and a target for intervention. And so I don't think that everything is, every movement is equally contingent. I mean, I would say, for example, that I think, you know, manufacturing, the sort of industrial development is less surprising retrospectively than the challenge to slavery in the End of slavery is. Let's put it that way. Yeah. I think the development of a women's rights movement in the 19th century is less surprising given the development of an anti-slavery movement in the decades before. You know, you might say this is hardly my field, but you might say that World War II is not terribly surprising given how the settlement of World War I. I'm sure there are people who get into the contingencies of that, but I don't think that we'll even put it another way. The grounds that folks have offered for thinking that slavery in one way or another was going to end in the 19th century because of 18th century's trends are just not convincing.)
- Time 2:24:58
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(highlight:: History Helps Us Recognize Modern Day Harms
Key takeaways:
• It is not easy to talk about the history of slavery and the slave trade, not only for what it was, but also for its legacies in the modern day.
• We need to be sober when looking at history in order to identify the things that matter to us and try to leave them better than we found them.
• There is a cause for hope, a cause for action, that comes from thinking about these stories.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
It's not easy to talk about the history of slavery and the slave trade, not only for what it was, but also for its legacies in the modern day. I are wrestling with the legacies in the modern day. Don't become easier by refusing to look at the history by avoiding it or having complacent notions about how the world changed. You know, I think we we need to watch ourselves individually and watch our the worlds that we live in and the people that we elect and think about what harms we do or what harms we authorize Or permit because they just seem basic to the world in which we live. And I think that's one of the, you know, lessons of these histories. But I also want to come back to something I said, you know, a few minutes ago about if you take away the notion of inevitable cultural progress, then what you put in is the necessity of human Action, individual and collectively, right, that the world gets, to put a crudely better or worse on the choices we make individually and collectively, not because things are just Trending in the right direction. So sober look at that history, I think is in some ways a call to get to work in whatever, you know, sphere we inhabit, whatever our resources are, to find ways to identify the things that Matter to us and try to leave them better than we found them. I mean, that's how we got to the extent that things are better now than they were before. That's how we got here. And so I think there's a if not a cause for hope, a cause for action that comes out of thinking about these stories.)
- Time 2:39:12
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(highlight:: The Necessity of Human Action to Prevent Harm
Key takeaways:
• We need to be careful about what we allow to happen in the world, as it can have serious consequences.
• We can hope for a better future if we remember the past and work to make things better now.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If you take away the notion of inevitable cultural progress, then what you put in is the necessity of human action, individual and collectively, right, that the world gets, to put a Crudely better or worse on the choices we make individually and collectively, not because things are just trending in the right direction. So sober look at that history, I think is in some ways a call to get to work in whatever, you know, sphere we inhabit, whatever our resources are, to find ways to identify the things that Matter to us and try to leave them better than we found them. I mean, that's how we got to the extent that things are better now than they were before. That's how we got here. And so I think there's a if not a cause for hope, a cause for action that comes out of thinking about these stories.)
- Time 2:40:05
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