Slavery: histories, fictions, memory. 1760-2007 9788820759537, 9788820759544

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Romanticismo e dintorni (nuova serie) Collana diretta da Lilla Maria Crisafulli

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Slavery: Histories, Fictions, Memory 1760-2007 edited by Franca Dellarosa

Liguori Editore

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Comitato scientifico: Lia Guerra (Università degli Studi di Pavia), Nicholas R. Havely (The University of York), Albert Meier (Christian Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel), Diego Saglia (Università degli Studi di Parma), Annamaria Sportelli (Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”).

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Questo volume è pubblicato con un contributo del Dipartimento di Studi Anglo-Germanici e dell’Europa Orientale, Università degli Studi di Bari.

Questa opera è protetta dalla Legge sul diritto d’autore (http://www.liguori.it/areadownload/LeggeDirittoAutore.pdf). Tutti i diritti, in particolare quelli relativi alla traduzione, alla citazione, alla riproduzione in qualsiasi forma, all’uso delle illustrazioni, delle tabelle e del materiale software a corredo, alla trasmissione radiofonica o televisiva, alla registrazione analogica o digitale, alla pubblicazione e diffusione attraverso la rete Internet sono riservati. La riproduzione di questa opera, anche se parziale o in copia digitale, fatte salve le eccezioni di legge, è vietata senza l’autorizzazione scritta dell’Editore. Il regolamento per l’uso dei contenuti e dei servizi presenti sul sito della Casa editrice Liguori è disponibile all’indirizzo http://www.liguori.it/politiche_contatti/default.asp?c=contatta#Politiche Liguori Editore Via Posillipo 394 - I 80123 Napoli NA http://www.liguori.it/ © 2012 by Liguori Editore, S.r.l. Tutti i diritti sono riservati Prima edizione italiana Dicembre 2012 Stampato in Italia da Liguori Editore, Napoli Dellarosa, Franca (a cura di): Slavery: Histories, Fictions, Memory 1760-2007/Franca Dellarosa (a cura di) Romanticismo e dintorni Napoli : Liguori, 2012 ISBN 978 - 88 - 207 - 5953 - 7 (a stampa) eISBN 978 - 88 - 207 - 5954 - 4 (eBook) 1. Abolition 2. Legacy

I. Titolo

II. Collana III. Serie

Ristampe: ————————————————————————————————————————— 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 La carta utilizzata per la stampa di questo volume è inalterabile, priva di acidi , a ph neutro, conforme alle norme UNI EN Iso 9706 , realizzata con materie prime fibrose vergini provenienti da piantagioni rinnovabili e prodotti ausiliari assolutamente naturali, non inquinanti e totalmente biodegradabili (FSC, PEFC, ISO 14001, Paper Profile, EMAS)

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CONTENTS

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IX 1

Acknowledgments Introduction: Restoring Legacies Franca Dellarosa PART I TRANSATLANTIC TRANSACTIONS

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Transatlantic Interchange in the Age of Revolution: the Caribbean Residence of James Stephen and British Abolitionism, 1783-1807 Alex Robinson

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Sugar, Slavery and National Identity: Eighteenth-Century British Abolitionist Discourse and the Politics of Consumption Rosemary Tate

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Transfigurations of Plantation Life in Colonial Writing, 1760s-1790s Filomena Pannarale

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‘Yet you are a slave holder’: Washington, Rushton, Garrison, and the Transatlantic Tides of History Franca Dellarosa PART II SLAVERY

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IN THE

THEATRE

OF

EMPIRE

Laughing Bravely in Illegitimate Theatre: The Comic Spirit in Romantic-Era Slavery Plays Gioia Angeletti

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CONTENTS

127

Slavery and Abolitionism on Stage: Late Eighteenth-Century British Women Dramatists and the Debate on Colonialism Marianna D’Ezio

151

‘It is this country which is to me a land of savages’: Contrasting Group Identities in Paul and Virginia Ulrich Pallua

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PART III THE LONG JOURNEY OF ANTISLAVERY: NORMATIVE AND CULTURAL ISSUES 169

Anti-slavery in International Law and Relations Eşref Aksu

193

Transforming Sites of Human Wrongs into Centres for Human Rights: The Birth of the Campaigning Museum Alex Robinson

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The Theatre ‘Has Power – The Power to Move’: Aspects of Social Change in George Colman’s and Paul Leigh’s Inkle and Yarico Adrian Knapp

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Afterword: Vessels Annamaria Sportelli

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Index

265

Notes on Contributors

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An edited collection of essays is by definition the product of collaborative work; this truism is applicable to the present volume in a very special way, since the book has developed over the course of the last four years as the outcome of various cross-connecting conversations, at times continuing for years, nourished by common research interests and affinities; in other cases, shared in the loci of intellectual exchange par excellence which are conferences. Along with my grateful appreciation to all contributors for their commitment, I would also like to offer my special thanks to some whose support, for different reasons, has been particularly significant in the making of this volume. Annamaria Sportelli’s ever generous advice and constant encouragement have made this project an integral part of the intense research work and keen intellectual exchange we have shared for many years, which I consider essential to my academic and personal experience. Alex Robinson has contributed her expertise as historian and field researcher with great intellectual generosity, which has made her the ideal interlocutor in the matters dealt with in the volume. Along with her I am pleased to thank Richard Benjamin, Director, International Slavery Museum at Liverpool, as well as Benedetta Rossi, former Co-Director, Centre for the Study of International Slavery, and Eve Rosenhaft, Director, Eighteenth-Century Worlds Research Centre, both based at the University of Liverpool, for inviting me to do a lecture on the topic of Edward Rushton’s “Rebellious Poetics” (Liverpool, January 2011), part of which now forms the foundation of my own contribution in the volume. I am also grateful to the organisers of a number of international conferences, which turned out to be the occasions for fruitful encounters relatively to this book. Among them, Lilla Maria Crisafulli, as the host of the 2008 CISR-NASSR joint Conference “Transnational Identities/Reimagining Communities” at the University of Bologna; Brycchan Carey, academic organiser of the 36° BSECS Conference,

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AKNOWLEDGMENTS

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St. Hugh’s College, Oxford (2007); Diego Saglia and all the colleagues who organised the one-day conference “Laughing on Stage: Comic Genres and British Romantic-Period Theatre” at the University of Parma (2007). As always, I am indebted to Kathleen Flynn for her patient and generous commitment, and the high professional quality of her support in editing the book. Thanks, finally, to Filomena Pannarale for her assistance in preparing the copy for the publisher and proofreading.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Mor Diop, Stephen Lawrence, Modou Samb, and Anthony Walker, four men of different age and personal history, all killed by criminal racist violence in Britain and Italy between 1993 and 2011.

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INTRODUCTION RESTORING LEGACIES

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Franca Dellarosa This book is an international cross-disciplinary collection of essays, engaging critically in the historical and contemporary discourses of slavery. History, literary criticism, cultural and museum studies and international relations constitute the main disciplinary fields and perspectives from which experienced academics and younger scholars from a number of countries and academic backgrounds have contributed to constructing a prismatic and trans-historical investigation, interrogating both a wide time-span – two and a half centuries long – as well as complex and often thorny conceptual and/or historical nodes. As the post-2007 critical scenery records the significant expansion of research in the plural fields of slavery-related studies, this volume proposes to add to the present discussion, in the wake of the new critical directions suggested by recent scholarship in diverse disciplines1. The sheer variety of approaches and analytical instruments incorporated is offered to the reader as one special asset of this study, providing as it does a sort of metonymic arrangement of the multifaceted relevance of its object, which is historical and geopolitical no less than sociological, cultural, and literary. 1

See, amongst others, the edited collections by Brycchan Carey and Peter Kitson Slavery and the Cultures of Abolition: Essays Marking the Bicentennial of the British Abolition Act of 1807, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007; and by Cora Kaplan and J. R. Oldfield, Imagining Transatlantic Slavery, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. See also, by J. R. Oldfield, Chords of Freedom: Commemoration, Ritual and British Transatlantic Slavery, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. In the domain of historical research proper, I shall only mention Robin Blackburn’s very recent book, which culminates his outstanding work in the field investigating the transnational – as well as trans-historical – character of slavery and the struggle for emancipation. The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights, London-New York: Verso, 2011.

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INTRODUCTION

As the title of the volume suggests, the essays included explore three main directions of research; these roughly – but not exclusively – correspond to the three sections into which the book is divided. Histories, fictions, and memory provide both discursive realms and modes of conceptualization within which cross-historical constructions of the slavery experience are found to be embedded, and historical reconstructions necessarily fixed. The essays included in Part One examine some relevant eighteenth-century case studies, where the dynamics of interchange across the Atlantic and between the metropolitan and colonial – or postcolonial, as is obviously the case with the Rushton-Washington connection – contexts are explored in terms of ‘transatlantic transactions’ between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’2, as exemplified in an interestingly mixed typology of writing forms. Alex Robinson’s opening chapter is a detailed, first-hand historical investigation of the eleven-year residence of British abolitionist James Stephen in the Caribbean (1783-1794) and his later political action, which draws attention to his connections with the slave community in St. Kitts no less than the mainstream abolitionist movement in London at a time of unprecedented disorder, flaring at the local, regional, and global levels. As a barrister in St. Kitts, Stephen counselled slaves and also free Blacks in various prosecutions, advocating the limitation of the planters’ rights with regard to their property in human beings, thus taking advantage of those legal interstices which began to surreptitiously open for some form of slave agency to be exerted. Robinson reconstructs some of those cases via the existing court records and the oral tradition, thus restoring to life the human factor underlying the recorded papers. In the final part of the essay the focus is moved to examine Stephen’s political action in the crucial span of time preceding abolition. His political insight and first-hand knowledge of the West Indian setting resulted in his support of the slave revolt 2

It should be pointed out that these space categories are far from identifying geopolitically and culturally discrete entities. Kathleen Wilson has shed light on the reticular character of their interrelations during the expansion age of empire: “[…] national and regional boundaries were easily transgressed by the systemic, if not systematic, nature of the empire itself. Despite the lack of coherence in central policy, the eighteenth-century ‘empire of the sea’ and the wars that threatened, maintained and extended it created a network that, halting and imperfect, was also remarkably efficient in allowing people, gossip, connections, ideas and identity to travel and be transformed.” See The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century, London-New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 15 ff (16).

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INTRODUCTION

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in St. Domingue, which he saw as a heaven-sent opportunity for Abolition, but which led to an early problematic relationship with William Wilberforce. With Rosemary Tate’s essay, attention shifts to a more impalpable and yet pervasive discursive network, as the contribution engages in a close examination of the multifaceted symbolic significance that a staple colonial product, sugar, assumed against a background in which the self-perception and representation of British national identity were being shaped by the crucial transformations in progress, of socio-economic, political and cultural order. These changes, which included the birth of a consumer society as a consequence of the expansion of trade and manufacture, as well as the increasingly complex relationships with the overseas colonies and the developing debate on slavery and abolition, were all contributing to defining the contours of British identity in the problematic balance between the metropolitan and colonial poles. Building on recent critical literature, which has intensely engaged in the reconstruction and interpretation of the ideological transactions investing material and symbolic structures across the Atlantic in the crucial decades of empire-building, Tate investigates an ample and cross-generic range of texts, that include examples of colonial writing chronicling aspects of plantation life, as is the case with Benjamin Moseley’s Treatise on Sugar, or the earlier example of Richard Ligon’s True and Exact History of Barbadoes, whose relevance for the cultural historian lies not only in its minute description of the processing of sugar cane into the precious product but also in its providing the earliest narrative nucleus for what would become a fascinating controversial landmark of abolitionist literature, i.e. the Inkle and Yarico story. Tate’s critical discussion of the metropolitan abolitionist perspective opens up the focus onto women’s central role in the boycott campaign, as epitomised in Mary Birkett’s 1792 “Poem on the African Slave Trade”, as well as onto the construction of assumed inclination of women to sugar consumption, as censured by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 1795 Bristol lecture “On Slave Trade”. Whether channelled into mainstream abolitionism as a pivotal item for consumption and therefore fetishized commodity, ideologically removed from slave labour in dawning global economy – as is the case with James Ramsay’s writings – or stigmatised in boycotts as blood sugar, the product of human suffering and exploitation, or still else, celebrated as the result of a complex economic process transfigured

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INTRODUCTION

by proslavery writers into an epic enterprise3, sugar retains a protean quality, aptly encapsulating the material and symbolic processes which revolved around its production and consumption at that specific historical conjuncture. Colonial writing constitutes Filomena Pannarale’s specific concern. Her essay investigates some defining traits of colonial representations of plantation life, as featured in a variety of writing forms. Historical discourse is one specific domain where the perspective of the West Indian white plantocracy emerged most powerfully, shaping the processes of West Indian identity formation in the contrastive relationship with the metropolitan centre. Recent scholarship has drawn attention to both the intrinsic interest of this literature and its dynamic positioning in the making of transatlantic slavery discourse. This complexity emerges in Pannarale’s examination of some specimens of historical discourse by planter-historians such as Edward Long and Bryan Edwards, where the method of descriptive narrative is directed to providing not only a comprehensive illustration of colonial «scenery and manners», as a contemporary review reads, but also a comprehensive account of the origins and potentialities of colonial wealth for an intended plural reading public across the Atlantic. On the other hand, these admittedly historical texts offer evidence of a process of aesthetic transmutation of the colonial landscape, which was to prove a recurring strategy aimed at orientating metropolitan perceptions within a recognisable set of visual and literary models belonging to the European tradition, while implicitly providing the ground for justifying slavery as the indisputable pillar4 for the very existence of the colonial system. The subjugated natural landscape of the colonies is 3 «Great beauties, and sublime objects, are still untouched by Europeans; and the SUGAR CANE, the heart of the solar world, has never been dissected. By the Planter, the SUGAR CANE has been no further considered, than as it relates to the engine, and the copper. In the precious fluid of its cells, he has found that, which philosophers have so long searched for in vain. Wrapt in the rich fancy of its all-powerful influence, his chief concern is in its transmutation: – but he gives the world the blessings of his alchemy. In the season of this great – this fascinating work, – a sugar-plantation represents the days of Saturn – Every animal seems to be a member of the golden age. At home, the merchant, from this transatlantic operation, supports legions of manufacturers. With pointed fingers on the globe, he follows the car of phoebus with anxious care, through the heavenly signs propitious to his views; collects his rays from equatorial climes; diffuses their genial warmth over the frigid regions of the earth, and makes the industrious world one great family». B. Moseley, A Treatise on Sugar. With Miscellaneous Medical Observations, 2nd ed., London: John Nichols for G. G. and J. Robinson, 1800, pp. 172-173. 4 M. Postlethwayt, The African Trade. The Great Pillar and Support of the British Plantation Trade in America, London: J. Robinson, 1745.

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INTRODUCTION

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thus subjected to symbolic overdetermination – as personified in the elusive image of the Sable Venus in Isaac Teale’s “Ode”, attached to Bryan Edwards’ History of the British Colonies, or conflated with Milton’s art in Long’s History of Jamaica. Such a strategy, as emerges in Pannarale’s reading, was to find diverse modulations in those topographical or locodescriptive texts, such as James Grainger’s experiment in the georgic form and William Beckford’s Descriptive Account, where the symbolic manipulation of the represented landscape is rendered even more explicitly instrumental to the ideological support of the imperial enterprise. An eccentric case study, chronologically located at the turn of the century, completes Part One of the book, as offered by the Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, on his Continuing to be a Proprietor of Slaves, which is the object of my own reading. This powerful piece of antislavery rhetoric by blind working-class Liverpool poet Edward Rushton stands out as testimony not simply of the most radical fringes of British abolitionist movement but also as a clear-sighted and at the same time visionary political appraisal of the global impact of the revolutionary upsurges on both sides of the Atlantic, and of the fundamental ethical and logical flaws of dawning human rights discourse, deriving from its failure to apply to subjects like the enslaved Africans. Apparently returned by his eminent addressee, the Letter became a «Liverpool Printed» pamphlet and was to have intense circulation in America, as proposed to generations of readers throughout most of the antislavery struggle. In 1797, at least two different editions appeared in different print media in the United States, practically simultaneous to the publication in Britain, including the New York newspaper «The Time-Piece, and Literary Companion», where the letter triggered an enflamed verse debate, and as a pamphlet printed at Lexington, Kentucky, i.e. a state where slavery was an ingrained institution, by democratic and abolitionist campaigner and politician John Bradford. Another key figure of American antislavery movement, William Lloyd Garrison, played a crucial role in the Letter’s later circulation. The document by «an eminent philanthropist in Liverpool», as the important editorial note to the 1831 Garrison & Knapp print version reads, was reprinted various times in antislavery publications, including Garrison’s own weekly paper «The Liberator» and his publication The Abolitionist. The interest of the document per se, no less than the entangled history of its dissemination, make Rushton’s Letter an exceptional case of transatlantic crossing and circulation of ideas,

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and its impact on transatlantic abolitionist and antislavery discourse is a topic for research and critical assessment to come. Part Two “Slavery in the Theatre of Empire” investigates the impact of the debate on slavery and abolition on a most politically-sensitive area of British culture and public life at the turn of the nineteenth century. Scholars like Jane Moody, David Worrall, Daniel O’Quinn, and many others have extensively explored, over the last ten or fifteen years, the discursive interchange between politics and theatre during the Georgian era; slavery made no exception, as Jeffrey Cox and others have shown5. The contested issue raged in parliamentary debates, newspapers and pamphlets, in coffee-houses and within intellectual circles; its intense topicality is testified just as clearly by the copious output in creative literature, including poetry and prose fiction – with theatre too, obviously though not unambiguously, in the frontline as an essential component in the formation of public opinion. The essays included in this section provide a comprehensive and multifaceted survey of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century theatrical constructions of slavery, investigating various genre- and gender-related issues that are crucial to the making of the theatrical culture of the age in the first place, but which also turn out to be relevant in discussing the specific impact of the slavery and abolition debate on the British stage. Gioia Angeletti engages in a wide-ranging critical examination of the modes and forms through which flourishing illegitimate thea5 J. Moody, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; D. Worrall, Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship, and Romantic Period Subcultures 1773-1832, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, and, by the same author, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, Basingstoke-NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; D. O’Quinn, Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. See also J. Swindells, Glorious Causes: The Grand Theatre of Political Change, 1789-1833, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; J. Cox, M. Gamer eds., Broadview Anthology of Romantic Drama, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003; G. Angeletti ed., Emancipation, Liberation, Freedom: Romantic Drama and Theatre (1760-1830), Parma: Monte Università Parma, 2010. On theatre and slavery, see J. Cox, “Introduction”, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, vol. 5: Drama, London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999, pp. vii-xxxiii; F. Nussbaum, “The Theatre of Empire: Racial Counterfeit, Racial Realism,” in K. Wilson ed., A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 71-90; D. Worrall, Harlequin Empire: Race, Ethnicity and the Drama of the Popular Enlightenment, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007; J. Carlson, “New Lows in Eighteenth-Century Theatre: The Rise of Mungo”, «European Romantic Review» 18, 2007/2, pp. 139-147; F. Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage: Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830, Bari: Edizioni dal Sud, 2009. A slightly different historical focus is given in Hazel Waters, Racism on the Victorian Stage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

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tre appropriated the comic black character, that predictably proved to be especially pliable to the inherent subversive inclination of the low forms constituting the spectacular supply of illegitimate drama on the London stages in the Georgian era. The comic opera and the harlequinade offer Angeletti effective case studies to discuss how genre conventions entered the construction of stereotyped comic but also, at times, subtly seditious representations of black characters – almost invariably servants. In this respect, the enormous and lasting success met with by The Padlock, Isaac Bickerstaff’s and Charles Dibdin’s 1768 comic opera, constitutes a significant litmus test of the taste and expectations of the late-eighteenth-century theatrical audience in relation to the staging of an increasingly sensitive issue, while the play itself provides an early paradigm of what would become a set of recurring features in the theatrical representation of the comic black character. Mungo’s comic power relies on a combination of heavily racialized traits, which are both physical and temperamental – his obvious laziness and double-dealing handling of his rapport with his master Don Diego; his love of dance and music; his idiosyncratic ungrammatical English – with a genuine streak of subversion that is directly related to his attempts to resist authority; as Angeletti remarks, this is a strategy that involves also other subaltern characters, and is evidently to be ascribed to the prevailing comic mode, subversively relishing in the desecration of power.6 Such a feature is not surprisingly even more radicalised in the pantomime, which can be described as constituting the fringe form in Angeletti’s investigation. The irresolvable ideological ambiguities The Padlock enacts are differently modulated and further complicated in the other comic opera Angeletti discusses, i.e. Henry Bate’s 1776 The Blackamoor Wash’d White. This play proved to be somewhat unsettling to the theatrical audience of the time, as race and class discourses more patently intertwine in the plot’s complications, where the staging of complexion is a rather unstable ideological signifier no less than a significant index of the “technicalities of the histrionic art”7. 6 See Carlson, “New Lows”, cit. On the mechanisms of comic lowering, see Mikhail Bakhtin’s classic study Rabelais and His World (1965), tr. H. Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. 7 L. T. Rede, The Road to the Stage; or, The Performer’s Preceptor. Containing Clear and Ample Instructions for Obtaining Theatrical Engagements; with a List of All the Provincial Theatres, the Names of the Managers and all Particulars as to Their Circuits, Salaries, &c. With a Description of the Things Necessary on an Outset of the Profession, Where to Obtain Them, and A Complete Explanation of all the Technicalities of the Histrionic Art!, London: Joseph Smith,

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INTRODUCTION

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With Marianna D’Ezio’s essay, the geographical space providing the setting of the plays under consideration widens to include the other end of the expanding empire, the East – where bonded labour took on distinctive traits, which responded to existing historical conditions8 – while the critical focus highlights the theatrical output of a specific segment of society, i.e., women. The vital contribution of women playwrights to the theatre of Romanticism has been the object of much scholarly interest in the last fifteen or twenty years, which has brought about nothing less than the writing of a missing chapter of the literary history of the Romantic age9. Women entered 1827. Ample commentary on the value of Rede’s instructions to actors regarding “how to colour the face for the representation of Moors, Negroes &c” (p. 38), both as testimony of the theatrical practices of the time and with respect to their ideological implications is given in Worrall, Harlequin Empire, cit., pp. 34-38. 8 On the impact of British colonial rule on existing slavery practices see T. R. Sareen, “Slavery in India under British Rule 1772-1843”, «The Indian Historical Review» 15, 1989/1-2, pp. 257-268. An extended study of how “colonial laws and policies” objectified “pre-modern subordination” of kamias (agricultural labourers) into “debt bondage” in the south Bihar region between the early 1800s to the 1930s is given in G. Prakash, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (1990), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002 (pp. 10-11). 9 Many important studies examining women’s place in and contribution to Romanticera drama and theatre have appeared over the last fifteen years. Amongst the most recent, the collection edited by Lilla M. Crisafulli and Keir Elam, Women’s Romantic Theatre and Drama: History, Agency, and Performance, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010. Monograph studies on individual authors include the collection edited by Thomas C. Crochunis, Joanna Baillie: Romantic Dramatist (New York-London: Routledge, 2004), as well as biographies, such as those by Judith Bailey Slagle, Joanna Baillie: A Literary Life (Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), and Annibel Jenkins, I’ll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2003). Ellen Donkin’s monograph, Getting Into the Act: Women Playwrights in London 1776-1823 (New York-London: Routledge, 1995), is one of the earliest studies which reconstructs the historical-cultural dynamics underlying women playwrights’ difficult careers within London male-centred theatrical culture. Catherine Burroughs’s study of Joanna Baillie’s dramatic theory and criticism, Closet Stages: Joanna Baillie and the Theater Theory of British Romantic Women Writers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), has had a significant impact on the current critical debate, together with important collections of essays on miscellaneous subjects, such as those edited by T.C. Davis and E. Donkin, Women and Playwriting in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and C. Burroughs, Women in British Romantic Theatre: Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), as well as individual monograph studies, such as Betsy Bolton’s Women, Nationalism and the Romantic Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). New scholarly editions – both in print and digital – of individual or collected works and letters (see in particular the website British Women Playwrights Around 1800, ed. T. C. Crochunis and M. Eberle-Sinatra, http://www.etang.umontreal.ca/bwp1800/), bear witness to the continuing intense critical interest of Romantic scholarship in women’s theatre. Scholarly interest has also been directed to investigating women’s acting experience, as testified by the recent ten-volume facsimile edition of Women’s Theatrical Memoirs, ed. by J. Batchelor, S. Mcpherson, S. M.

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INTRODUCTION

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the theatrical culture of the age as playwrights, actresses and even critics – at times uniting the diverse professions in the same individual experience, as was especially the case with Elizabeth Inchbald. D’Ezio chooses a number of relevant examples from the dramatic output of women writers, including Hannah Cowley, Mariana Starke, Frances Burney and Inchbald herself, to explore the specificities of women’s worldview and response to the pressing events of the time. The historical-political context of the Hastings trial or the complicated international circumstances of the Russo-Turkish war turned out to provide the background and raw material for dramaturgical experiments on the part of women writers, which often challenged either genre or gender conventions, or both. An example that comes to mind is Hannah Cowley’s «mixed drama» A Day in Turkey or, The Russian Slaves (Covent Garden, 3/12/1791), where formal experimentation is central to the questioning of the construction of identity, whether racial, gender, or national, via the performance on stage of the «global politics of emergent forms of women’s historiography and cosmopolitanism»10. The symmetries in the forms of gender and race exclusion – which D’Ezio’s analysis highlights as often emerging from women playwrights’ representations of the colonial and slavery realities within the staging of female characters’ plight – entail a lucidly self-critical eye on women’s historical role and limitations as well as their ability to enact ingenious defence strategies. These often brought about forms of silently subversive empowerment – without necessarily implying, for that reason, an affirmatively progressive political stance. An examination of the different modes of conveying an ideologically charged content, as well as the challenges of genre and adaptation, underlie Ulrich Pallua’s contribution, which concludes Part Two of the volume. The English narrative text and theatrical version derived from the French source of Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s prose fiction Paul et Virginie – respectively translated by Helen Maria Williams and adapted for the stage by James Cobb – provide a particularly apt case study of cross-cultural and cross-generic manipulation, as significantly interacting at the intersection of crucial historical contingencies, such Setzer and J. Swindells (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007-2008). 10 See G. Kucich, “Women’s Cosmopolitanism and the Romantic Stage: Cowley’s A Day in Turkey, or The Russian Slaves”, in F. Dellarosa ed., Poetic and Dramatic Forms in British Romanticism, with an Introduction by Annamaria Sportelli, Roma-Bari: Università di Bari-Editori Laterza, University Press Online, 2006, pp. 79-98 (81). Online. www. universitypressonline.it

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INTRODUCTION

as the French Revolution and the abolition debate. Recent scholarship has emphasised the relevance of the forms of spectatorship, as related to both the nature of the medium – whether a book or a theatrical spectacle – and the historical and cultural context of their emergence, in determining textual interpretation as well as suggesting fluctuating models of citizenship and identity11. Paul and Virginia’s different textualities offer Pallua’s reading plural evidence in this sense, as exemplarily conveyed by Williams’s observations in her Preface regarding the reading process, which is significantly associated with national cultural habits. Her addition in the narrative texture of a number of sonnets – mediated by the narrator as the product of a character’s voice, but in fact subsumed by the authorial stance, which highlights their self-reflexive quality – consistently contributes to reinforcing the construction of a paradisiac and primitivist picture of Mauritius, as opposed to corrupted Europe, which is a fundamental aspect of the de Saint Pierre text. Cobb’s play, on the other hand, manipulates its source material to fit a rather open show of heavy-handed jingoism, where the obvious incongruity of introducing a British planter in the West Indies as the champion of freedom and philanthropy did not go unnoticed in later reviews. Pallua’s reading highlights these contradictory modulations of the source text, while emphasizing the significant absence, as occurring consistently throughout, of African agents – an unequivocal sign in the Paul and Virginia corpus of the historical process of erasure of the enslaved and/or colonised subjects, which would take on different forms at different historical/cultural phases and contexts, ranging from assimilation to downright annihilation. With Part Three “The Long Journey of Antislavery: Normative and Cultural Issues” the scope moves forward in time and expands in a number of different directions, offering evidence of the plural fields in which the historical memory of transatlantic slavery has prominent bearing. These include its impact on cultural practices and institutions worldwide – such as the increasing number of dedicated museums – as well as its enduring legacy as generative trope in creative writing. As the title itself of the section suggests, attention is also devoted to identifying the evolution of antislavery in the critical space of international law, where the changing notion and problem11 L. Calè, “Sympathy in Translation: Paul et Virginie on the London Stage”, «Romanticism on the Net» 46, 2007. Online. http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2007/v/n46/016135ar. html

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INTRODUCTION

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atic definitions of slavery and slavery-related practices have been a historically controversial political issue. International relations constitute the crucial arena where revision processes of institutionalised practices of individual nation-states are enacted, bringing about the continuous reconfiguration of an ever-changing international order. In this direction, Eşref Aksu contributes a wide-ranging diachronic investigation of the complex itinerary of antislavery in international law and relations, which sets out to explore «the normative space […] that the international community has carved out for the idea(l) of anti-slavery». Aksu’s detailed analysis reconstructs the intricate process that brought about the progressive emergence of international antislavery norm in the course of the nineteenth century. This is shown to be consequential to the establishment of domestic antislavery legislation and policies on the part of world powers in the first place, with Britain playing a fundamental part in the process. Aksu discusses Britain’s strategic role in the internationalisation of antislavery, as it relates to the endorsement of British interests in the West Indies, which required the maintenance of equal conditions for economic competition that unilateral abolition would undermine. The relevance of national antislavery policies as crucial elements in the international diplomatic interchange within the wider dynamics of global geopolitics fully emerges in Aksu’s account of the progression towards internationalisation throughout the nineteenth century. The twentieth-century development of antislavery international law is located and discussed within the expanded political space of universal organisations, starting from the 1926 Slavery Convention, promoted by the League of Nations. The compendium of rights framed by the 1948 Universal Declaration was to include slavery among the unfreedoms12 and human rights violations to be fought against, as encapsulated in the typically negative form enunciated in the first subsection of Article 4: «No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms». More recently, further transnational agencies and legal instruments have been appointed which, as Aksu concludes, problematically tackle the changing conditions of a polymorphous phenomenon. As «an essential social institution and a key agent in civil soci-

12

I am using the word unfreedom in the sense suggested by Amartya Sen in his Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. See pp. 1-7 ff.

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INTRODUCTION

ety»13, the museum has come to play an increasingly significant role in terms of public ethical commitment. In the words of Angela Melo, Director of the Division of Human Rights, Philosophy and Democracy for UNESCO, the museum provides «an ideal setting for raising awareness about past suffering and building therefore in the minds of people the defences of peace, justice and human rights»14. The essay contributed by Alex Robinson charts the terms of the transformation currently investing the ethos and practices of a growing number of museums worldwide, as testified, for instance, by the intense networking of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience since 1999, and, lately, the institution of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums in 2010, with the International Slavery Museum at Liverpool as leading centre. The essay gives a survey of new departures in museums’ representation of slavery, broadening to look at memorialisation of atrocities past and present and highlighting the impact and significance of the trend towards the «campaigning museum». In this direction, the Declaration of Museum Responsibility to Promote Human Rights has made museums’ ethical commitment significantly explicit15. The issue of processing historical experience via the work of (collective) memory – or, vice-versa, its indirect denial – appears as especially critical when referred to a trauma which has been the object of historical erasure, as is the case with transatlantic slavery. Elaborating the legacy of slavery and its continuing effects in the present implies either re-appropriating, or reassessing, one’s own past, as part of a process of identity formation which is far from being uncontroversial, as testimonies coming from Africa and the Caribbean show. On the other hand, persisting mythologised constructions of plantation life, 13 J. Carter, J. Orange, “The work of museums: The implications of a human rights museology.” Paper delivered at the second Federation of International Human Rights Museums Conference “Fighting for equality: social change through human rights activism”, Liverpool, 10-13 October 2011. Online. http://www.fihrm.org/conference/conference2011.html#papers 14 A. Melo, “Fighting for equality: social change through human rights activism - The role of UNESCO.” Keynote speech, FIHRM Conference 10-13 October 2011. Online. http://www.fihrm.org/conference/conference2011.html#papers 15 « [I]t is a fundamental responsibility of museums, wherever possible, to be active in promoting diversity and human rights, respect and equality for people of all origins, beliefs and background». Proclaimed in 2009 at the INTERCOM meeting in Torreon, Mexico. As stated in its mandate, «INTERCOM [International Committee for Management] focuses on ideas, issues and practices relating to the management of museums, within an international context. The principle actions in management are to plan, resource, implement, evaluate and adjust, based on an identified vision». See the webpages http://www.intercom. museum/TorreonDeclaration.html and http://www.intercom.museum/about.html

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INTRODUCTION

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as particularly occurring in a number of museums in the Southern States of the US located in the white mansions, are themselves evidence, as Robinson observes, of how the process of ‘silencing the past’ regarding slavery is still significantly current practice16. In the UK, the balance of the 2007 commemorations records both the intensification of the interchange involving the academic world, museums and their audiences17, and persisting issues with the ways in which memorialisation has been managed. A «struggle to remember», as Catherine Hall, in turn, suggests18, did take place in 2007, bringing to the fore new contesting narratives of Britain’s imperial past, alongside perfunctory celebrations of the most institutional hero of Abolition, William Wilberforce. The political and institutional policy-makers, no less than the producers of public history, including museums and the media, have been involved in the debate as to whose history is told: the picture, Robinson concludes, is «patchy, at best». Adrian Knapp’s contribution proposes an experiment in comparative analysis involving one of the most significant texts in the canon of abolitionist literature and a recent postmodern rewriting. George Colman the Younger’s comic opera Inkle and Yarico was a hit of the 1787 summer season at the Haymarket, offering a relevant exemplification of what Knapp discusses as theatre’s potential for «social change», channelling his historical-cultural focus within a theoretical framework that considers a range of perspectives in classical and recent social studies. Colman’s play has been the object of recent intense study, with respect to its role in the developing debate on abolition. David Worrall, in particular, has highlighted the impressive numbers of its successful staging record, as well as its impact on the network of discursive exchange between theatre and politics19. This clearly emerged in contemporary commentary, including Elizabeth Inchbald’s “Remarks” on the British Theatre post-abolition edition of the play, where the austere figure of William Wilberforce was obliquely evoked as potentially sensitized by theatre’s power for (moral) change, endorsed by a play like Inkle and Yarico. The inherent political consequence 16 See Michel-Rolph Truillot’s study Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. 17 On the experience of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, see D. Hamilton, “Representing Slavery in British Museums: The Challenges of 2007”, in C. Kaplan, J. Oldfield, Imagining Transatlantic Slavery, cit., pp. 127-144. 18 Catherine Hall, “Afterword: Britain 2007, Problematising Histories”, in Imagining Transatlantic Slavery, cit., pp. 191-201 (199). 19 David Worrall, Harlequin Empire, cit., Chapter 1 in particular.

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INTRODUCTION

of the play underlies Paul Leigh’s recent rewriting, first performed at the Holders Season, Barbados, and then at the 1999 Edinburgh Festival, with music by James McConnell. Here, Wilberforce is made one character in a play that deliberately blurs the boundaries between fiction and historical reality, where, in turn, Inkle and Yarico’s fictional lives are historicised in the dimension of the imagined world. A space of creative interaction involving multiple levels of fictional construction is thus established, implicitly questioning the status of historical writing, once the possibility for alternative narratives of the abolition process is evoked and enacted. Knapp offers a parallel, contrapuntal reading of the ways in which the two plays, consistently with their diverging historical perspectives, modulate the issue of «social change» in a variety of keys. The resulting constructions unfailingly endorse the mainstream value system in the Colman text, whereas Leigh’s, from his end-of-twentieth-century vantage point, allows for a critical rethinking of that past – or, in other words, a problematisation of history, to refer to Catherine Hall again, which is a fundamental aspect of today’s debate, entailing as it does the ‘de-silencing’ of tragedy past as a necessary step in the process of making sense of its legacy in the present. In this direction Annamaria Sportelli’s Afterword contributes a time-bound as well as trans-historical reflection that assumes the tragic historicity of the slave voyage as a revealing locus of abolitionist discourse, while proposing to highlight its inherent contradictoriness, as effectively epitomised in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lecture “On the Slave Trade”. Sportelli’s analysis is embedded within a wider interpretative pattern of the complex historical, political and cultural transactions that have led, over time, to the rise, consolidation and crisis of the nation state model. Drawing on and departing from Benedict Anderson’s «implied diegetic perspective», Sportelli offers a «stadial» articulation that considers old and new forms of social and political aggregation, such as the transplantable and global communities, as accounting for the tragic plights of peoples involved in the great fluxes of forced migration, in the past as well as in the present. […] that child who puts the shell’s howl to his ear, hears nothing, hears everything that the historians cannot hear, the howls all the races that crossed the water, the howls of grandfathers drowned in that intricately swivelled Babel,

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hears the fellaheen, the Madrasi, the Mandingo, the Ashanti, yes, and hears also the echoing green fissures of Canton […] (Derek Walcott, Another Life, 22.i)

The poet’s words call for an all-embracing perception and understanding, reaching beyond the boundaries of established history and into the single individual destinies of diverse peoples, speaking different languages and sharing the experience of oppression and death across numberless transatlantic – but also transoceanic or Mediterranean – routes. Still, it is the work of the historian that can be of help in the process. Again, Michel-Rolph Trouillot: «[…] the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past – or, more accurately, pastness – is a position» (p. 15). As scholars and human beings, we are called to respond to our responsibility and commitment, which is to both past, and present.

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PART I

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TRANSATLANTIC TRANSACTIONS

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1 TRANSATLANTIC INTERCHANGE IN THE AGE OF REVOLUTION: THE CARIBBEAN RESIDENCE OF JAMES STEPHEN AND BRITISH ABOLITIONISM, 1783-1807 Alex Robinson

1. Introduction Has the commemoration of the Abolition of the slave trade had much impact on the way Atlantic slavery has been perceived? How far we have moved on from Eric Williams’ claim1 that the subject and the ancestors of enslaved Africans have remained imprisoned by European perceptions which were perpetuated by historians: the Atlantic remained off stage and the metropolitan interpretation kept the centre. The commemoration remembered that slavery was ended, placing the focus back on the metropole, reinforcing the very views which Williams complained about in the 1960s. There have been, however, other outcomes; importantly, a year of conferences, discussion and new research: an interchange across the old triangle which could redress the balance. It is the interchange in the Age of Revolution which I wish to bring under sharp focus. The eleven year residence of James Stephen in St Kitts 1783-1794 reflects the impact of the periphery on the development of Abolitionism at an individual and a collective level. Stephen’s antislavery position was more than a simple antipathy to the institution of slavery. Stephen was influenced by the activism, resistance and

1

E. E. Williams, British Historians and the West Indies, London: Andre Deutsch, 1966, p. 12.

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SLAVERY: HISTORIES, FICTIONS, MEMORY

expectations of enslaved Africans and their descendants. This resistance helped break down the myth that the institution of slavery was benign and provoked some scrutiny of slaveholding societies, feeding into the antislavery discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Reports of abolitionist texts and organization then fuelled recourse to litigation, resistance and rebellion in the Caribbean in an age of revolution, where shifting relationships between colonies and metropolitan centres were closely observed and exploited by African activists. Stephen’s residence in St. Kitts spanned three revolutions – the peace negotiations which came at the end of the American Revolution, the outbreak of revolution in France, and the first three years of the revolution in Saint Domingue. He had come to the island of St. Kitts in 1783 to join his brother William, who had recently inherited his uncle’s medical practice on the island. According to the oral tradition James Stephen, a barrister, counselled slaves and free Blacks to pursue their rights and in doing so alienated the white community to such a degree that he withdrew to the hills. There he took refuge in a cave where he continued to advise enslaved Africans and wrote reports on conditions which he sent secretly to the Abolition Committee in London2. Using Court, Council and Assembly records in St. Kitts and his letters, papers and later publications, I have reconstructed his stay in the Caribbean and discovered the extent to which his thinking was shaped by conditions and events there. He made a close analysis of slave holding society which he described as a ‘social monster’ ridden with contradictions, not least the premise that the slave was property and a non-sentient being. He recognised the racial implications of chattel slavery, anticipating the writings of Fanon, Senghor, Césaire, Lamming and Said. His consideration of not only the practice, but the semantics of slavery lead him to recognise that the consequence is racism. It may, perhaps, seem a minute remark, but to reflecting minds may suggest some important considerations, that the term slave is not in the West Indies, as in other countries where private bondage has prevailed, a term of obloquy or colloquial reproach; but the bodily designation is substituted for such purposes in its stead. Amidst all the reviling epithets, used in anger towards these poor bondmen, ‘you slave’ is never heard; but Negro, pronounced with an angry 2

T. Kitwana, Lawyer Stephen’s Cave, Under the Banyan Tree, St. Kitts Ministry of Culture, 2004. Transcript.

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or contemptuous emphasis, is a word of superlative reproach. In the slavery of this country, the case was so different, that the words villain or and villainous have survived, as reproachful epithets, the condition that gave them birth3.

Stephen’s early life was quite remarkable and in its own right worthy of investigation, but it is not my intention to explore that here, except to say that he had experienced privation, spent some time with his parents in debtors’ prison and witnessed his father’s campaign to have imprisonment for debt prohibited. (Stephen senior led a prison outbreak with the intention of marching on Westminster to this end4.) Although his education was informal and entirely deficient in Latin and Greek, Stephen did finally attend Marischal College in Aberdeen and Lincolns Inn. In Aberdeen he came under the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment and the moral philosopher, James Beattie5. Unlike other members of the so-called ‘Clapham Sect’, Stephen always said he came to religion through abolitionism – rather than vice versa. Stephen’s opposition to slaveholding was based on justice: slavery was not consistent with English law, but an aberration without any legal foundation. He predicted that «...the slave, shut out from the chance of enfranchisement, has so little hope or fear in his life, that no human sanction can give him adequate motives for obedience… and can hope only in a revolution, the possible improvement of his state»6. On his return to Britain in 1794, Stephen supported the revolution in Saint Domingue; Wilberforce was embarrassed by Stephen’s radicalism, while Stephen could not forgive Wilberforce’s inaction and «improper silence»7 Stephen learned to temper his confrontational tendencies; it was his strategy to ban the foreign slave trade as a precursor to abolishing it altogether. Stephen’s close understanding of the trade, mercantile law and the practice of slavery itself were crucial to the success of the first ban. What was the context of his analysis? 3

J. Stephen, The Slavery of the British West Indian Colonies Delineated as it exists both in Law and in Practice and compared with the Slavery of other Countries Antient and Modern, Volume I, London: Butterworth & Son, 1824, p.31. Hereafter Slavery Delineated. 4 Annual Chronicle, November 19th 1770. 5 J. Beattie, An Essay on the Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism, Edinburgh: Printed for E. and C. Dilly, London and W. Creech, 1778. 6 Cit. J. Stephen, Slavery Delineated, Volume I, p. 375. 7 R. and S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce, Volume II, “James Stephen to William Wilberforce April 1798”, London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1838, p. 265. «I still clearly think you have been improperly silent…».

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Before he set out for the Caribbean he admitted that he believed slavery to be worse in theory rather than practice: «Of Negro slavery I had never thought and never enquired, but had imbibed the common ideas carefully propagated by West Indians here and fatally believed that the system was bad rather in theory than in practice»8. The West India lobby had successfully sustained this myth of the benign face of Atlantic slavery, but that myth was being undermined by events in the Caribbean and across the Empire. The 1760s had been a watershed in the settlement of the Caribbean, marked by an upward spiral of infectious greed, manifest in India as much as in the Caribbean, but producing in the Caribbean a mood of excessive exploitation and provoking a wave of resistance which would not abate until Emancipation was achieved.

2. Slavery and resistance: the global geopolitical context The West India lobby had relied on the dissonance which kept the Atlantic firmly off stage: the revolts in Jamaica, Surinam, Berbice, in the 1760s, in Tobago in the 1770s and of the Caribs in St Vincent in 1772-3, proved more than that revolt was endemic in the region: it was not simply the increased incidence of revolts, nor the increased number of the enslaved Africans involved; whether they were African or elite slave led they were no longer do or die affairs. The consequences of the revolutions in America and France would certainly be felt throughout the region but these outbreaks anticipated both these events. «Freedom is on the mind of all the slaves» the Tobago Assembly reported to George III in 1774, after a series of revolts which occurred 1771 -17759. Resistance during this period came on all fronts, from the enslaved Africans, the Maroons and the Caribs; resistance to a new and more acutely exploitative phase of settlement and plantation organisation. For some time before the American and French Revolutions, a strong military presence was seen as the only way of preventing slave rebellion, and naval supremacy in Caribbean waters the only way of guaranteeing the sugar trade and island provisions. These rebellions and 8 J. Stephen, An Autobiographical Memoir, Merle M. Bevington ed., London: 1954, p.166. BL Add MS 46443-46444, and in transcription. 9 Address of the Legislature of Tobago to the King 5 November 1774, CO 2881.

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wars were costly to suppress and resulted in questions in Parliament. They were calling into question the nature of imperial government and the practices of the colonials in the Americas – Pontiac’s War (1763), the Americans’ resistance to the Stamp Act (1765-1776): then the massacre of the Rohillas in Oudh (1774), which would be cited as part of the case laid against Warren Hastings in India - this all contributed to heightened criticism of Lord North’s government, but by implication, of Empire too. Slave revolts, Maroon and Carib rebellions often occurred during periods of European conflict and involved treating with the enemies of their oppressors in some cases: it is quite clear that the leaders were adept at reading international relations and their response shows some complexity. It was not the libertarian ideas championed by the North American colonials which attracted the majority of enslaved Africans who entered the field of conflict, but the British promise of freedom itself. 80-100,000 enslaved Africans left their plantations during the Revolutionary war, and some of those who fought for the British were taken to London, adding to the number of free blacks in Britain and to the profile of the anti-slavery argument. The American Revolution had a destabilising effect on the region as a whole. Christopher Leslie Brown’s recent work, Moral Capital, identifies the American Revolution not only as a crisis in imperial authority, but also a crisis for British liberty. He takes this further: the crisis «turned the slave system into a symbol, not just an institution, the source of self–examination as well as a fount of wealth»10. The crisis was empire wide. West Indian island Assemblies had many of the same complaints about Imperial government as the patriots in North America. The distributor of stamps, William Tuckett, faced riots in St. Kitts in October 1765, and was forced to resign11; in1784 a revenue officer was tarred and feathered there. At the end of the war the British islands were forced to observe a trade embargo on the United States - this caused real shortages.

10 C.L. Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2006, p. 27. 11 A.J. O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and British Caribbean, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, p.90-91.

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3. Slavery and resistance: the St. Kitts scenario The St. Kitts which James Stephen reached in 1783 was experiencing those shortages: it was just recovering from a French invasion of a year’s duration and was deeply divided. It was clear that the capitulation to the French was criticised by some. There had at least been a show of resistance in St. Kitts, but the planters of Nevis put their profits before loyalty and negotiated surrender without any resistance at all. The first Assembly meeting James Stephen attended in 1784 was caught up with acrimonious discussion regarding the failure of the militia and the defences of Brimstone Hill and the shortages which were the consequence of the trade embargo. A bullying political elite dominated the island’s offices and the enforcement of law, the latter having a tendency to break with the English norm. The Governor Generals of the Leeward Islands regularly refer to the recalcitrance of the St. Kitts Assembly – Governor Burt for example called it «a narrow parsimonious Gallo American assembly on whom the King’s instructions are not binding»12. In the previous decade of cut-throat politics, rivals had bankrupted their enemies and used any means to secure an Assembly majority (and thus a favourable interest rate) by arresting half the members. Ultimately, the President of the Assembly, John Stanley, refused to accept Parliament’s ruling, arguing that the assembly was answerable only to the King. It was no surprise when, in the late 1770s, James Ramsay, who dared to suggest that the Africans should be encouraged to attend church and their children educated, was subjected to a systematic campaign of abuse and vitriol conducted in anonymous letters to the St. Christopher Chronicle and intimidation in court. Ramsay would not be silenced; they hounded him off the island, and continued to persecute him in London. He obtained a living at Teston under the patronage of Sir Charles Middleton; Teston soon became a hub for the antislavery movement, and Ramsay published ‘An essay on the Conversion of Africans’ in 1785. A plantation owner James Tobin of Nevis replied with his own arguments13 and the affair raged on in letters and the newspapers. Under the strain, supposedly,

12

Governor Burt to Lord Germain, November 25 1778, CO/152/59. J. Tobin, Cursory Remarks upon the Revd. James Ramsay’s Essay, London: Printed for G. and T. Wilkie, 1785. 13

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Ramsay died, and one of the planters, Crisp Molyneux wrote home. «Ramsay is dead. I have killed him»14. This was the atmosphere in St. Kitts which Stephen encountered when in the mid-1780s he became involved in a series of prosecutions which sought to prove that a master’s rights to his property, in the case of a slave, was constrained by law. These cases precede both the Privy Council commission into conditions in the British West Indies of 1789 and the amelioration initiative which followed. Recourse to litigation, particularly in the form of manumission cases, was increasing, implying that enslaved Africans believed they had some rights, despite the fact that in the British Caribbean they did not exist before the law. Recourse to litigation was another form of resistance which undermined the myth that the slaves were contented; some of these cases became causes célèbres in the metropole, such as the case of Maria Calderon of Trinidad 1804 and the Huggins’ case in Nevis 1811. In St. Kitts, they used a law introduced during the French occupation, which was applied in the case of Wadham Strode and Jordan Burke (1785). We are in danger of viewing these developments without the human or African dimension – Burke had cut off one ear and slit the other of a female slave, Clarissa, and Strode the same mutilation on a male slave, Peter. It is clear that enslaved Africans, perceiving an action to be excessive, had aired their grievances and sought redress. In this case the prosecution had failed to have the French ruling allowed and had proceeded on an English custom used against individuals whose correction of their animals caused injury which was deemed to be ‘contra bonos mores’, against public morals. Burke was fined £50 and Strode £10015. After these two successful prosecutions there was now a case with a much higher profile which was to halt them in their tracks. This was King V Herbert, January 1786. The indictment named William Herbert, accused of gross cruelty «upon one Billy, a Negro Child of the Age of Six Years, the property of the said William Herbert, that he did gag inhumanely, immoderately, wantonly and cruelly […] beat,

14 Cit. R. and S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce, Volume 1, “Stephen to Wilberforce, May 21 1789”, p.236. 15 Cit. J. Stephen, Slavery Delineated, Volume I, Appendix1, p.339-445; House of Commons Accounts and Papers, Volume xxxvi (1789) No. 646a, Part III St. Kitts, Appendix A.

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SLAVERY: HISTORIES, FICTIONS, MEMORY

wound, bruise and ill treat the child so that of his life was greatly despaired»16. Again the prosecution case was not based on idea of the rights of the slave, nor the master’s cruelty, but that the injuries he caused were offensive to the sight of the public – they offended against public morals. There were in fact two mulatto children, aged six and eight, who had been subjected to a furious flogging with «a rope or belt or some other obtuse instrument of punishment»17, while a wooden hoop had been used to muffle their screams. Despite the judge’s very clear direction it took the jury considerable time to conclude and when they did it was conditional. «We find the defendant guilty subject to the opinion of the court, if immoderate correction of a slave by the master is a crime indictable»18. Herbert did not let the matter rest. He claimed the Deputy Provost Marshall had kidnapped his property and counter-sued for loss of earnings. The affair went on for a month. There was a second trial. The judge directed the jury to find for the Deputy Provost Marshall, but they remained divided after 48 hours. A third trial and new jury went against the judge’s direction and found for Herbert. Stephen then presented a motion for another trial. By this time, Stephen records, the island was bitterly divided and at this point pressure was brought to bear on the Herbert faction and a deal was done. Herbert would accept a nominal fine (40shillings) and drop his suit and the prosecution would drop their second charge which was the case of the mulatto boy Billy’s sister Jenny. There is no record of the case in St Kitts court records. The indictment is there in the Court of the King’s Bench in January 1786, Herbert is arraigned19, but the trial itself and the verdict were never entered in the book. A partial account of the case was made in response to the Privy Council Commission which was set up in 1788 to report on conditions in the West Indian Islands. This record would indicate that progress was being made in the protection of the rights of the slave which was hardly true. All progress made on that count was halted after this case.

16 17 18 19

Ibidem. Ibidem. Ibidem. Ibidem.

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4. Echoes of Revolution The consequences for Stephen, following in the wake of Ramsay, led, it is said, to his withdrawal from island affairs, from the Assembly and ultimately from anything but prosecutions in the Admiralty Courts. According to the oral tradition, Stephen’s involvement in the Herbert prosecution alienated him from his European compeers and drove him out of business and into refuge up in the cave in the hills above Olivees where he continued however to counsel the Black population. Two years later he returned to the UK where he met with Wilberforce and agreed to report from St Kitts on conditions for the enslaved Africans in the island. The cave itself is of interest. In a region where historical landmarks belong almost exclusively to the Amerindian or, in greater abundance, to the colonial past, the persistence of Stephen’s story and the cave site transmits agency to the island’s ancestors. The cave is man-made with two apertures and a smoke hole, well concealed on a small plateau below Olivees ridge, with an excellent view down to the capital. It is approximately two miles into the rainforest from the Olivees Great House which Stephen’s brother, William, a physician leased. There is evidence of a summer house referred to by the oral tradition and an archaeological survey conducted in the 1950’s by Brian King;20 it lies between the great house and the cave. About eighty feet below the cave, in the middle of the rainforest is a further curiosity, an oval plunge bath, nine feet long and four feet wide and with three steps down into it. It is made of dressed stone consistent with other late 18th century constructions. According to the oral version Stephen constructed the bath and for a period lived in the cave, walking down to attend the court sessions and returning up to the cave at the end of the day. It is interesting to note that according to Wilberforce, Stephen experienced a breakdown after the death of his first wife in 1796 and did not leave his house for two years. In Stephen’s memoirs which cover his early life up to the age of twenty five, it is clear that emotional disturbances, including the death of his mother, affected him deeply and the illnesses he describes sound psychosomatic. It is also worth mentioning that this strain of melancholy re-emerges in one of his descendants, Virginia Woolf.

20

Brian Rufus King, St. Christopher Heritage Society, 1950.

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Whatever the origin of the story, it is clear that Stephen was not paranoid when, after his return to St Kitts in 1789, the combination of privation caused by the trade embargo and a new wave of revolt provoked panic among plantation owners. Stephen had met with Wilberforce on two occasions during his stay in London over the winter of 1788-89. At this point, his involvement with abolition was clandestine. Conditions were certainly deteriorating, and Stephen was right to be cautious. In St Kitts they introduced security measures to search parcels and passengers for inflammatory material and set up a bay watch - this preceded the war with France. They introduced a news embargo to prevent information regarding rebellions reaching their own slaves: Resolved: That Customs should examine all persons arriving in this island on suspicion of importing any inflammatory books or materials […] To impose an embargo on reporting any accounts of slave disturbances or anything from England about (the Abolition of) the Slave Trade21.

The first outbreak of this period was the Maroon war in Dominica in 1785. In Martinique in July 1789, before the news of the fall of the Bastille, there was a slave revolt to which James Stephen referred in a letter to Spencer Perceval ten years later: I was at that revolutionary period in the neighbourhood of that island. I heard a report directly from Martinique that there had been a slave insurrection in St. Pierre. As far as I can piece it together, it began peaceably with an anonymous letter calling for freedom and signed by “Us Blacks.” Each day I heard of its bloody scenes but the truth is that the free coloured were the objects of, not the agents in the bloody massacres, unless they afterwards stood for their lives and retaliated on the murders of their brethren. They were butchered in the streets and hanged by the whole rabble of that town22.

In 1791 a rebellion in Dominica was preceded by a call by the enslaved for the exercise of their rights to three days to cultivate their own provision grounds. These were the rebellions which would ultimately lead to victory for the former slaves of St Domingue and the creation of the first Black republic of Haiti in 1804. 21

St. Kitts Assembly records, 5.7.1792 (A 1 Volume 1 (1788 - 1795). Spencer Percival Papers, BL Volume XI (ff196) 49183, Stephen to Percival, October 20 1810. 22

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This wave of revolt is rightly placed in the context of the French Revolution, but it would be wrong to think that it took the news of a revolution in France to provoke enslaved Africans to seek their own liberty. What would make large numbers of Africans and those referred to as Creole slaves make a choice not run away for their freedom, but to stand and fight for it? The idea that it would be more than a damaging wound in the system? That it could bring it down? The evidence is that revolt in the Caribbean took account of particular circumstances as well as shifts in the international situation. Following the opening of the French Revolutionary Wars the diplomatic position was to be, as Stephen later observed to Wilberforce in September 1797, «concerted in the cabinet of heaven to bring forth its long oppressed and degraded children… a heaven sent opportunity for anti-slavery»23. But the majority of abolitionists viewed the war and rebellion differently; fearing they could be blamed for the wave of revolt they were panicked by the results, Wilberforce writes that «People are panic-struck by the transactions in Santo Domingo»24. Stephen, however, continued to support the rebels. Anonymously he had replied to Lord Macartney’s Very new Pamphlet Indeed in 1792, denying the charge of association with Jacobins, indicting the inhumane conditions of the middle passage and exposing the severity of plantation labour25. Shortly after returning to Britain, he published Strictures on the Charges of Cannibalism on the African Race in 1795, which considered «the tendency to accept without evidence the charge against another […] enjoying the self-exaltation in the reproach and degradation of others»26. He also contributed to the Morning Chronicle Strictures (February –March 1797) much to Wilberforce’s consternation: he writes to Stephen, «I will be quite honest with you, I wish you had not informed me that you were the author of the strictures, […] scattered through the columns of a newspaper»27. 23 Cit. R. and S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce, Volume II, “James Stephen to Wilberforce September 28 1797”, p. 256. 24 Ivi, Volume I, “Wilberforce to T. Babington 1792“, p. 130. 25 Lord M’Cartney, A Very New Pamphlet Indeed! Being the Truth addressed to the people at large. Containing some strictures on the English Jacobins, London, 1792; J. Stephen’s anonymous reply, Old Truths and Established Facts, Being an Answer to a Very New Pamphlet Indeed, London, 1792. 26 J. Stephen, Strictures on the Charges of Cannibalism on the African Race, London: Printed by A. & R. Spottiswoode, 1795. BL 1609/3508. 27 Cit. R. and S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce, Volume II, “Wilberforce to Stephen, August 30 1797“, p. 230.

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While Stephen continued to rail against Wilberforce’s lack of progress, his argument now became more strategic: in 1802 he published The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies, originally penned as four letters to the then Prime Minister, Henry Addington. According to David Geggus it was «a systematic and learned piece of speculation, displaying Stephen’s powerful intellect and West Indian experience. It established his reputation as an expert on colonial affairs - he predicted black victory in Santo Domingo»28. Stephen anticipated Napoleon’s decision to reintroduce slavery and argued that the resistance of the former slaves to its reintroduction would be insurmountable. He also argued that Black victory in ‘Santo Domingo’ would be to the British advantage, undermining French colonial interests. In 1804 he takes this a step further, turning the anti-French mood of the country to the advantage of anti-slavery in The Opportunity. The defeat of the French and creation of the Republic of Haiti had borne out Stephen’s predictions: he now advised the government that this was, «[…] an opportunity of obtaining much good and averting great evils...»: namely by entering commercial relations with Haiti and obtaining a monopoly of their trade. «You ought, Sir, to acknowledge without delay, the liberty of the negroes of Santo Domingo and to enter federal engagements with them as a sovereign and independent people, and you ought further, not only to grant, but if necessary to volunteer a guarantee of their independency against the Republic of France»29. In the same year, he published the first biography of Toussaint L’Ouverture in English: entitled Buonaparte in the West Indies: or, the History of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the African Hero, Stephen takes the opportunity to vilify Napoleon the epitome of dishonour. The pamphlet, published anonymously, initially in three parts, went into four editions in 1804 and Stephen had found a popular audience. Still maintaining the anti-French basis of his argument in his next publication War in Disguise or the Frauds of Neutral Flags in 1805, he appeals to patriotism not principle; he lays the ground for the destruction of the slave trade (which is only mentioned once,

28 D. Geggus, “British Opinion and the Emergence of Haiti” in J. Walvin ed., Slavery and British Society 1776-1846, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987, p. 133. 29 J. Stephen, The opportunity: or, Reasons for an immediate Alliance with St. Domingo, London: printed for J. Hatchard Piccadilly, 1804, p.11. He continues «A new order of things has arisen in the West Indies to which former precedents are inapplicable. An unprecedented revolution has rent asunder the basis of our old colonial policy».

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obliquely, in the text30) arguing that Britain’s enemies had transferred their trade to and from the ports of their colonies to neutral vessels. They managed to keep their costs down because they were not charged the high rates of insurance which hit the British trade in time of war. It had become clear that many British traders had got wise to this practice and were also transferring to neutral flags. «The truth is that a large proportion, perhaps nearly all the ‘American’ slave ships that are now fitted out in our ports are owned by British subjects»31, Stephen wrote to Lord Grenville in 1806. He would reveal this to be disloyal. There could be no arguing against a ban on the ‘foreign trade’ in time of war. The association of abolitionism with a patriotic anti-French position was not Stephen’s only strategy; the other was to try to divide the West India lobby. Since the British acquisition of Trinidad in 1797 Stephen had been attacking the supply of new African slaves to the new territories. He vents his frustration on Wilberforce. «I still clearly think that you have been improperly silent; and when you see the government loading the bloody cutlass of commerce [...] with an increase of human victims […] you are bound to cry aloud. And to do so because those high priests of Moloch, Lord Liverpool and Mr. Dundas are your political, and Mr. Pitt your private, friends»32. The eventual ban on the future supply of new slaves to Trinidad was introduced by George Canning in 1802; it was not just a step in the right direction, it demonstrated that it was possible to drive a wedge between the slave traders and the West Indian planters. As Robin Blackburn points out, Canning had the support of a ‘West Indian’, C.R. Ellis: on this basis Canning argued, «It is not the slave trade and but the slave trade or the old West Indian that you must support – slave trade in all its naked charms, without the cloak of the pretended West Indian interest to hide them»33. With the opposition now losing ground, the next move was the Order in Council of 1805

30 Identified by A. M. Burton, British Evangelicals, Economic Warfare and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1794-1810 in J. Black ed, The Atlantic Slave Trade: Nineteenth Century, Volume IV, Ashgate: Aldershot, 2006, p. 75-76. 31 James Stephen to Lord Grenville May 10, 1806, Dropmore Papers, B.L. Add Ms 58998. 32 Cit. R. and S. Wilberforce, “Stephen to Wilberforce April 1798”, Volume II, p. 265. 33 R. Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848, London: Verso, 1988, p.304. Quoting George Canning.

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banning the slave trade to recently acquired Guiana–drafted by James Stephen and the Attorney General, Spencer Perceval. The death of Pitt the Younger in January 1806 offered a further opportunity: in February 1806 Stephen proposed approaching the new government to win support for Abolition and on March 5th he persuaded Wilberforce to try this new strategy – instead of putting all his faith in another Abolition Bill, to look instead at a ban on the foreign slave trade. It is clear Stephen worked closely with the new Prime Minister, Lord Grenville, on this bill which had according to Stephen, three objectives: «to prohibit the supply of conquered countries with slaves; to prohibit the supply of foreign colonies by the British slave trade; to prohibit the carrying on or assisting in any foreign slave trade by British subjects, British capital or use of British ports».34 Stephen was able to furnish Grenville with evidence of contraventions of existing legislation. Presented as a war measure, the Foreign Slave Trade Act passed with little demur, although Banastre Tarleton did recognise its implications, remarking that the abolitionists «were now coming by a side wind on the planters»35. According to Roger Anstey, what it achieved was the prohibition of two thirds to three quarters of the British Slave Trade36. In 1807 War in Disguise went into its fourth edition, while Stephen further established his credentials with a blatantly chauvinistic polemic Dangers of the Country, which listed the consequences of French victory – «Yes Englishmen, your children would become in morals as well as allegiance, Frenchmen. I can say nothing worse».37 When the Bill to abolish the rest of the slave trade was introduced the outcome was no longer in doubt. The part played by Stephen in the achievement of the abolition of the slave trade was signally absent from Clarkson’s History38 and downplayed in the Wilberforce brothers’ life of their father. His value to the movement was born of his close knowledge of plantation slav-

34

Dropmore Papers, “Stephen to Grenville May 10th 1806”. PD. Series I Volume 6, column 919, cit. A. Hochschild, Bury the Chains: the British Struggle to abolish Slavery, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 36 R. Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760 -1810, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1975, p. 375. 37 J. Stephen, Dangers of the Country, London: J. Butterworth, J. Hatchard, 1804. Reprinted 1807, p. 43. 38 T. Clarkson, The History of the Rise and Progress and Accomplishment of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament, London: 1808. 35

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ery, his analysis of its economic and social implications and a strategic approach to bringing about its destruction. His observations were informed by his encounters with enslaved Africans and free Blacks, as David Geggus recognized, «He based his case on the nature of slavery itself and particularly on its mental dimension. Europeans, he argued, knew slavery only as a metaphor, and little understood how harsh it really was, and how fiercely, therefore, its re-imposition would be resisted»39. Via the oral tradition in the first instance, an appraisal of his residence in the Caribbean has afforded a clearer picture of the way events in the Americas affected the result. «The controversy is on one side of the Atlantic», Stephen said, «the facts on the other». He helped break down that dissonance, or as he put it, «the screen which distance and falsehood»40 had created and which protected slaveholding society since its inception. One possible outcome of the commemoration of 1807 is an increased dialogue between those who are trying to reconstruct the history of transatlantic slavery from all sides of the so-called triangle. It is to be hoped that through this dialogue the inheritors of the benefits of the slave trade will find there are ways to make some redress and, at least amongst historians and heritage workers, facilitate the descendants of enslaved Africans to gain control of their own patrimony and tell their own story.

Works cited Manuscript sources Annual Chronicle, November 19th 1770. C. O 152 –Correspondence with the Leeward Islands. Dropmore Papers, B.L. Add Ms 58998. Fulham Palace West Indian Collection. House of Commons Accounts and Papers Volume xxxvi(1789) No. 646a, Part III St. Kitts, Appendix A. Letters to Lord Liverpool BL Add Ms 21,254,256. Letters to Zachary Macaulay, Huntingdon BR MSS 1982. Papers of William Wilberforce 1772-1833, Bodleian. 39 40

Cit. D. Geggus, “British Opinion and the Emergence of Haiti”, p. 133. J. Stephen, Slavery Delineated, Volume II, p. 388.

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Spencer Percival Papers, BL Volume XI (ff196) 49183. St. Kitts Court Records A1 Volume I St. Kitts Assembly Records, 1784 -1791. James Stephen Publications: Old Truths and Established Facts, Being an Answer to a Very New Pamphlet Indeed, London: 1792 (attributed to J.S.) Strictures on the Charges of Cannibalism on the African Race, London: 1795. Crisis in the Sugar Industry, London: March 1802. History of Toussaint L’Ouverture, London: 1803 reprinted 1814 in The Pampheleteer, Volume IV. Dangers of the Country, London: 1804. The Opportunity, London: 1804. War in Disguise or the Frauds of Neutral Flags, London: 1805. Reason for Establishing a Registry of Slaves in the British Slave Colonies, London: 1815 An Inquiry into the Right and Duty of compelling Spain to Relinquish her Slave Trade, London: 1816. The Slavery of the British West Indian Colonies Delineated as it exists Both in law and in practice and compared with the slavery of other Countries Antient and Modern, 2 vols., London: Butterworth & Son,1824. England Enslaved by her Own Colonies, London: 1826. James Stephen – An Autobiographical Memoir, commenced June 6th 1819, in transcription by Merle M Bevington, London: 1954.

Family Accounts Sir George Stephen, Antislavery Recollections: A Series of Letters Addressed to Mrs Beecher Stowe, London: 1854 Sir George Stephen, The Life of the Late James Stephen, published privately 1875. Sir Alfred Stephen, Jottings From Memory, published privately 1889/91. Caroline Emelia Stephen, The Right Honourable Sir James Stephen, published privately 1906.

Secondary sources Anstey R., 1975, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760 -1810, Atlantic Highlands NJ. Beattie J., 1778, An Essay on the Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism, London. Black J. ed., 2006, The Atlantic Slave Trade: The Nineteenth Century, Volume IV, Aldershot: Ashgate.

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Blackburn R., 1988, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, London: Verso. Brown C. L., 2006, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press. Clarkson T., 1808, The History of the Rise and Progress and Accomplishment of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols., London: Longman, Hurst, Reese and Orme. Geggus D., 1987, “British Opinion and the Emergence of Haiti”, in J. Walvin ed., Slavery and British Society, 1776-1846, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 123-149. Hochschild A., 2005, Bury the Chains, London: Macmillan. King B. R., 1950, St. Christopher Heritage Society. Kitwana T., 2004, Transcript, Lawyer Stephen’s Cave, Under the Banyan Tree, St. Kitts Ministry of Culture. O’Shaughnessy A.J., 2000, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and British Caribbean, University of Pennsylvania Press. Tobin J., 1785, Cursory Remarks upon the Revd. James Ramsay’s Essay, London. Wilberforce R. and S., 1838, Life of William Wilberforce, London: John Murray. Williams E. E., 1966, British Historians and the West Indies, London: Deutsch.

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2 SUGAR, SLAVERY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH ABOLITIONIST DISCOURSE AND THE POLITICS OF CONSUMPTION Rosemary Tate There is a beauteous plant that grows In western India’s sultry clime, Which makes, alas! The Black man’s woes, And also makes the White man’s crime. For know, its tall gold stems contain A sweet rich juice, which White men prize; And that they may this sugar gain, The Negro toils, and bleeds, and dies1.

1. Introduction The British establishment of colonies in the West Indies brought about a powerful sense of otherness against which British national identity increasingly defined itself in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Geographical, cultural and racial differences were strong imperatives for the colonies to be separate from Britain in its cultural imagination, even though they were an important source of wealth and trade for the country. Eighteenth-century England had witnessed the birth of a consumer society, and during the course of the century a variety of new consumer goods became available, contributing to what Neil 1 A. Opie, 1826, “The Black Man’s Lament; or How to Make Sugar”, Slavery Abolition, Emancipation: Verse, vol. IV, P. J. Kitson and D. Lee eds., London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999, pp. 346-347.

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McKendrick, John Brewer and J.H. Plumb have identified as the first consumer «revolution»2. By the early eighteenth century a range of commodities were being imported into the country, including silk, calico, chocolate, tea and sugar. National identity, formulated on the idea of a unique and independent British culture, was being increasingly challenged by the nation’s growing dependence on these new colonial products. Consumerism also raised other questions about colonialism. Was it right to use slave labour to produce these items, and in doing so did the bodies of the slaves become commodified too? In a treatise originally written in 1799 but expanded in a second edition published in 1800, Benjamin Moseley justifies his interest in the controversial product, produced in the West Indies mainly through slave labour, in terms of his consumer rights. «In the republic of letters», Moseley advises, «it is admitted as a fundamental axiom, that every person has a right to treat a commodity he has purchased, as he pleases»3. The word commodity, as occurring in the phrase, by an immediate metaphorical shift is applicable to slave labour: in justifying the consumer’s right to enjoy sugar, Moseley implicitly defends that of the slave owner to operate his plantation. «The whole idea behind the Treatise», Debbie Lee has argued, «was that sugar was good for Europe», and by this Moseley meant economically as well as medically4. For the opposite intention politically, the epigraph above from Amelia Opie’s poem The Black Man’s Lament; or How to Make Sugar (1826) also uses a pun to draw out the economic basis of slavery. «And that they may this sugar gain», is a pun on «sugar cane». The incessant financial and material demands of a consumer society are, Opie infers, responsible for the slave’s «[toil]», suffering, and, ultimately, his death. British national identity in the Romantic period was significantly affected by the country’s relationship with its colonies, and the way in which this relationship implicated a consumerist discourse into questions of nationality. I am going to consider these issues in relation to sugar, a product which became strongly implicated in abolitionist 2

J. Brewer, N. McKendrick, J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society, London: Europa Publications, 1982. 3 B. Moseley, A Treatise on Sugar, with Miscellaneous Medical Observations, London: John Nicols, 1800, p. 5. 4 D. Lee, “Grave Dirt, Dried Toads, and the Blood of a Cat: How Aldridge Worked his Charms”, Obi: A Romantic Circles Praxis Volume, ed. by C. Rzepka, 2002. http://romantic. arhu.umd.edu/praxis/obi/lee/lee.html. Accessed on Saturday 28 November 2008.

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debates at the end of the eighteenth century. How did representations of Britain as a trading community interact with abolitionist criticisms of the slave trade? As Kathleen Wilson has pointed out, historians and postcolonial critics alike have long been aware that slavery and colonization were in many ways the starting point for a politics of identity, but in what ways does this contribute to the idea of national, as well as racial, identity? Wilson contends that such constructions were formulated on external, rather than internal factors in the eighteenth century, a time when behaviour, social position and reputation were privileged over notions of the self 5. The emergence of the colonies as important financial, yet also ideological, spaces reconfigured the concept of both British- and Englishness as it was understood at the time. Abolitionist discourse often uses sugar to introduce a sense of communal responsibility for slavery, but relies on a sense of separate communities in order to do this. In this way, as well as being influenced by colonial/imperial structures of identity, abolitionist discourse also helps to instigate them. Sugar had become an increasingly important commodity in the period immediately prior to these events. According to Sidney Mintz, a historian who has written extensively about the product, consumption more than doubled between 1700 and 17536. A potent symbol of industrial expansion and Britain’s imperial power, until the Romantic period there had been little criticism of sugar as a morally objectionable product, however between 1787 and 1792 a deluge of antislavery literature appeared much of which objected to the commodity as a means of resisting the trade in slaves. As Charlotte Sussman has argued, in the last decade of the eighteenth century West Indian sugar became an important symbol of what she calls «the proliferating chains of interdependence» between England and her Caribbean colonies. «Grown in the farthest reaches of the British Empire, sugar was eaten in the intimacy of British homes», she explains, arguing that the ability of the product to represent both the colonial sites of production and the domestic sites of their consumption made it a powerful symbol of their connection in the period7. Timothy Mor5 K. Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century, London; New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 2. 6 S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, New York: Viking, 1985, p. 39. 7 C. Sussman, Consuming Anxieties: Consumer Protest, Gender & British Slavery, 17131833, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000, p. 110.

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ton also attributes to sugar a powerful role in shaping the imperial identity of Britain. «Produced by slaves, consumed and discussed in diverse ways by the British, sugar is the locus of connections between colonialism and representation», Morton argues8. For both writers, the basis of sugar’s representative potential originates from its status as a product. Sussman has connected the status of sugar and other colonial produce, such as tea, to an implicit threat of violence ascribed to them due to the conditions of their production and in relation to sugar, she argues, such anxiety emerged in the late 1780s and early 1790s as abolitionist rhetoric developed and intensified9. This rhetoric imagined the sweat, tears and blood of slaves invading the sugar itself, connecting the suffering body of the slave with the pleasured body of the consumer and making it difficult for consumers to ignore the fact that their enjoyment relied on the exploitation of millions of slaves thousands of miles away in the West Indies. Popular pamphlets, such as William Fox’s “An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Utility of Refraining from the Use of West India [sic] Sugar and Rum”, published in 1791, directly implicated British consumers of sugar in the practice of slavery. «The slave dealer, the slave holder, and the slave driver, are virtually the agents of the consumer», Fox protests, reasoning, «if we purchase the commodity, we participate in the crime»10. This image of sugar as a tainted commodity, stained with the guilt of the cruelty by which it was produced, was persistent in antislavery rhetoric throughout the 1790s. One writer for the Scot’s Magazine in 1788 asked «Are drops of blood the horrible manure / That fills the teeming cane?»11 Both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey referred to sugar in this period in terms in which the blood of slaves who produced the sugar is ideologically aligned with their suffering. In Southey’s imagination sweetened tea is a «blood-sweeten’d beverage»12. And, «will God bless the food», Coleridge likewise asks, «which 8

T. Morton, The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 172. 9 Ivi, p. 112. 10 W. Fox, “An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the utility of refraining from the use of West India Sugar and Rum” (p.3). The version I have looked out is an original from 1791. Published in Political Tracts 1791-1846 (Bodleian Collection), vol. I, No. 2861, compiled by G. Pamph. 11 R. Merry, “The Slaves. An Elergy”, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. IV, cit., p. 102. 12 R. Southey, Poems, Bristol: Joseph Cottle, 1797, p. 31.

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is polluted with the Blood of his own innocent children?»13 However, although these examples are motivated by a desire to criticise the morally objectionable circumstances in which sugar was produced, the underlying discourse nevertheless acknowledges the possibilities of global and international trade the product represents through the way in which it implicates British consumers in wider processes of production, connecting their consumption to the production of sugar in the colonies. Despite the anxieties connected to their manufacture and use, the new commodities which became available at the beginning of the century opened up new imaginative possibilities for consumers. Sugar in particular contained and domesticated a wider set of global and oriental fantasies and acted as a potent reminder of the strong connection to the colonies which Britain had forged by the end of the century.

2. The symbolic economies of sugar Sugar began to be imported to Britain from the West Indies around the middle of the seventeenth century. In Richard Ligon’s A True and Exact History of Barbadoes, the first major comment by a British writer about sugar production on the islands, a sense of the product’s transformative power is conveyed. Written and published in 1657, Ligon had seen first-hand the rapid expansion of the sugar industry in Barbados, where he had arrived in 1647. Although the majority of the book is a straightforward account of conditions on the island – from the different types of wildlife to the treatment of African slaves – it acquires a more purposeful direction when Ligon begins to advise his audience in detail about how to move to Barbados and get started in the sugar trade. Earlier information is re-contextualised in the new scenario of a practical manual: But one will say, why should any man that has 14000l in his purse, need to run so long a risk, as from hence to the Barbadoes: when he may live with ease and plenty at home; to such a one I answer, that every drone can sit and eat the Honey of his own Hive: But he that can by his own Industry, and activity, (having youth and strength, or friends),

13

S. T. Coleridge, 1795, “On the Slave Trade”, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. II, cit., p. 218.

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raise his fortune, from a small beginning to a very great one […] and this to be accomplished in a few years, deserves more commendation and applause14.

Ligon sets up a strong contrast between the possibilities of wealth creation in the colonies and the option of staying at home. In an earlier example he had compared West Indian slaves to worker bees: «the one fetching honey, the other sugar»15. Such drone-like labour is connected to the taste of honey, a natural product, but contrasted to the activities of the industrious sugar plantation owner, who «shall find his bread, gotton by his painful and honest labour and industry […] sweeter by much, than his that only minds his ease, and his belly»16. Sweetness – imaginatively aligned with sugar in this example – has become involved in a discourse by which the fetishized commodity is representative of both industrial expansion and imperial domination. The possibilities represented by the production of sugar are an opportunity for young British men (who have the capital) to exploit commercial opportunities in the British West Indies. As Keith Sandiford has adeptly shown, there was an ulterior motive to what amounts to Ligon’s advertisement of the plantation owner’s lifestyle in the text. The History of Barbadoes, he contends, negotiates within itself the publicity that emerging Creole interests can expect to receive from a British audience17. The role of sugar within this exchange is vital to Ligon in terms of the symbolic economy it opens up for him. Sandiford contends that he uses the imaginative connection sugar creates between colony and metropole to assist in other negotiations within the text, through which a separate Creole identity – which would be politically as well as economically damaging to Britain – becomes unfeasible. As he argues: Sugar offers Ligon a complex signifying system that assimilates both the imagery and material facts of the enterprise, novelty and plenitude of a creolizing locality into the corpus of European symbolic consciousness and imaginative economy. In this aspect, negotiation may be seen as a mode whose function is to infiltrate (to colonize) the familiar episte-

14 R. Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados, London: Humphrey Moseley, 1657, p. 108. 15 Ivi, p. 89. 16 Ivi, p. 108. 17 K. A. Sandiford, The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 25.

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mologies of the metropole with those very features of novelty, exoticism and plenitude particular to the colony18.

It was due to sugar’s very ability to represent not either of these spaces, but the links between them, that makes its symbolism such a very powerful negotiating technique for Ligon. James Grainger’s The Sugar Cane, a two thousand five hundred and sixty line poem dedicated to the plant first published in 1764 also develops an expression of the way in which sugar is able to represent a non-geographically specific global space in a way which commodifies this space for the consumption of domestic Britain. According to him, the cane, «Wafted to every quarter of the globe, / Makes the vast produce of the world your own»19. The West Indies are «Cane ocean-isles, / Isles on which Britain for their all depend»; an image in which the representation of both colonial and domestic spaces is dominated by the fetishized commodity20. In fact, the best type of sugar, Grainger professes, is that which has been excessively refined: the «hardest, whitest sugar, thrice refined», is the only type of sugar which «dilates» the poet’s soul, «with genuine joy»21. The whitened and purified sugar crystals are a blank space, free to provide the pleasure of this exotic taste to the British domestic consumer refined of reminders of the unpleasant conditions attached to its production. Sugar’s ability to make «the vast produce of the world your own» – or in other words represent the whole world – also makes the product at home anywhere, and it is just as much homeless. In the poem, this idea of a generic home which is represented by the sugar becomes displaced onto the idea of sweetness: thus Grainger’s «native land» (i.e. Britain) is in the poem a «sweet idea» which «rushes» on his mind22. The association of sweetness with domestic happiness is reinforced by Grainger’s use of this terminology in relation to multiple countries. Africa, the slaves «native land, is a place where the bonded workers once enjoyed «Mild government, with every sweet of life»23. As much as early advocates of sugar like Ligon and Grainger refined the product from its unpleasant colonial setting, critics of sugar 18 19

Ivi, p. 32. J. Grainger, The Sugar Cane: A Poem, Dublin: William Sleater, 1766, line 621-2, p.

112. 20

21 22 23

Ivi, Ivi, Ivi, Ivi,

p. p. p. p.

152, line 675-7. 105 line 148-9. 23 line 301-2. 127, line 186.

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looked to these same credentials in order to launch their attack. To one anonymous writer from 1777, sugar was a «pernicious Foreigner» and ought to be disused in English homes, since not only «inflamed the poor man’s expences, but his blood and vitals also»24. In his Treatise On Sugar, Moseley quotes the work of Theophilus de Garencières, a French doctor who spent most of his working life in England where he came to prominence in 1647 for claiming that sugar was injurious to the health. According to Moseley’s interpretation, De Garencières locates sugar’s potential to be harmful in the context of its foreign origins. «It is therefore clearer than the light», he records De Garencières as having said, «that sugar is not a nourishment, but an evil; not a preservative, but a destroyer; and should be sent back to the Indies»25. Interestingly, both these examples originate from a discussion about the use of sugar within a domestic context: domestic in a national sense but also in terms of the domestic sphere, a space resided over and controlled by women. The more positive possibilities for global representation which Ligon and Grainger ascribe to the idea of sweetness rely on a masculine and public understanding of the world, one in which travel offers new and exciting entrepreneurial possibilities to the intrepid young man willing to try his luck, probably in the colonies. Such a public understanding of the world ceases to represent the same possibilities when applied to women and the domestic sphere; instead, it becomes a worrying threat. In her “Poem on the African Slave Trade” (1792) Mary Birkett addresses her appeal to abstain from West Indian sugar exclusively «to her own sex»26. As women were – economically speaking – traditionally the managers of the domestic sphere at this time (i.e. it was generally their job to make the necessary domestic purchases) an appeal to them would seem to make sense. However, Birkett’s decision also acknowledges a further set of assumptions about women’s role in the home and also in terms of national ideology, and how this was changing. Nancy Armstrong has argued persuasively that during the course of the eighteenth-century a change took place in the way men desired women. No longer prized for their looks alone, women came to be valued for their ability to be a spiritual influence, a change which

24

S. Mintz, Tasting Food Tasting Freedom, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996, p. 77. B. Moseley, A Treatise on Sugar, with Miscellaneous Medical Observations, cit., p. 91. 26 M. Birkett, 1792, “Poem on the African Slave Trade”, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. IV, cit., p. 197. 25

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coincided with the development of the domestic sphere: a private realm immune to the fickle and insubstantial demands of the public world, and which could provide some greater kind of moral stability, it was assumed27. Birkett’s poem acknowledges this new authority, presenting women as the leaders in decisions concerning domestic consumption that would have a wider impact on the world at large. Her appeal to women to boycott sugar – to «Push far away the plant for which they die, / And in this one small thing out taste deny» – is couched entirely in terms which assert women’s political role and stress the independence of their actions28. Birkett acknowledges the way in which women’s moral choices enabled them to have a political voice in the period, however by singling out female consumers the poem also threatens to undermine such a role. Appealed to on the basis of their domestic authority, the appeal is simultaneously challenged by the assumption that the female desire for luxury is primarily responsible for the high national levels of sugar consumption in the first place. A lecture which Samuel Taylor Coleridge gave in Bristol in 1796, in which he urges consumers to boycott West Indian sugar and rum, quickly converts from addressing a generic audience of consumers to seeming to address women in particular, singling them out through their consumption of sweetened drinks such as tea. The «fine lady’s nerves», he argues, «Are not flattered by the shrieks! She sips a beverage sweetened with human blood, even while she is weeping over the refined sorrows of Werther»29. The «Werther» that Coleridge refers to is of course the main character in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, first published in 1774 and which later enjoyed huge literary success throughout Europe. The novel is now widely believed to have sparked a spate of copycat suicides due to its highly emotive and sentimental theme. However, Coleridge’s assumption that women would be more susceptible to literature of sensibility is used to highlight the way in which their apparently greater moral capacity is lacking – or, in fact, actively misdirected in the passage. The women may weep for Werther, a fictional character, but are unable to connect their role as consumers – whether it is of literature or sugar – with the real suffering involved 27

N. Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. M. Birkett, 1792, “Poem on the African Slave Trade”, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. IV, cit., p. 211-2. 29 S. T. Coleridge, 1795, “On the Slave Trade”, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. II, cit., p. 219. 28

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in the processes by which some consumer goods (such as sugar) are produced. In aligning sugar consumption with activities such as reading sentimental fiction, which were criticised throughout the century for being a waste of time since they were not morally improving and in fact actively deprived women of time that – the implication was – could have been better spent on domestic duties, Coleridge also connects sugar to the idea of bad domestic economy, confidently declaring the commodity «useless»30 – both cost and time wise. This connection was a popular one at the time. In 1792 the artist James Gillray produced a cartoon for Punch featuring the royal princesses being urged by Queen Charlotte to leave off taking their tea with sugar for reasons which were moral but which valued economic imperatives more highly. «O my dear Creatures», the Queen proclaims, «do but Taste it! You can’t think how nice it is without Sugar: – and then, consider how much Work you’ll save the poor Blackamoors by leaving off the use of it! – and, above all, remember how much expence it will save your poor Papa!»31 In Thomas Love Peacock’s Melincourt (1817) anti-saccharine campaigner Mr Forrester, a parody of Shelley, addresses the company at an Anti-Saccharine fete with a speech which criticises the product primarily for financial reasons. «Sugar […] is economically superfluous, nay, worse than superfluous», he proclaims, adding that: «in the middling classes of life it is a formidable addition to the expenses of a large family, and for no benefit, for no addition to the stock of domestic comfort»32. The positive ideology surrounding sugar in the period, and connected to its potential to represent global commercial opportunities, seems not to apply to the domestic realm, where questions of consumption are complicated by the physical history of sugar production and the implications of bad national domestic housekeeping this contains. The humourous stance of Gillray and Peacock has obviously a very different tone to Coleridge’s earnest complaint, but demonstrates the extent to which domestic criticism of sugar enfranchised political satire on the topic. At the same time as this satire commented on colonialism, however, its focus was domestic and economic. Despite the complex and by no means univocal figurative potentialities of sugar as a trope,

30

Ivi, p. 218. C. Midgley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns 1780-1870, London: Routledge, 1992, p. 36. 32 T. Love-Peacock, Melincourt, London: Chapman & Hall, 1856, p. 201. 31

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moving as it does between different contexts and discursive realms, the significance of this imagery above all to economic questions consolidates the position of sugar as a consumer product and the issue of slavery as a consumer issue.

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3. James Ramsay and the mainstream abolitionist campaign In two works by James Ramsay, both published in 1784, the representation of sugar as a fetishized commodity, separate from the social history of the West Indies, ideologically aligns them with the tradition of representing sugar as had been explored by Ligon and Grainger in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In An Inquiry into the Effects of Putting a Stop to the African Slave Trade, Ramsay categorically absolves the sugar trade from any responsibility for slavery, simultaneously insisting upon its position of importance to the country in terms purely based on its economic and political value. «I am seriously of the opinion», he declares, «that the sugar trade, with which that for slaves is connected at present, is of the utmost importance to the state»33. Crucially, what differentiates Ramsay from these earlier works is his role in an organised campaign of abolition. Trained as a surgeon, Ramsay entered the navy in 1757 and encountered, while in service off the West Indies, a horrifying scene of extreme degradation amongst captive slaves on a British slave-ship. The incident had a profound effect on him, and when he was later urged by friends to record his experiences (which were also the result of living in the West Indies for more than twenty years) he produced the Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies and An Inquiry into the Effects of Putting a Stop to the African Slave Trade within the year. The history of these works is in many ways representative of the developing discourse of mainstream abolitionism in the later part of the eighteenth century. Both were published by James Phillips, a Quaker publisher closely connected to the antislavery campaign in England and who issued most of the eighteenth-century British and American antislavery tracts that appeared in London. Phillips was a member of 33 J. Ramsay, An Inquiry into the Effects of Putting a Stop to the African Slave Trade, and of Granting Liberty to the Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies, London: James Phillips, 1784, p. 11.

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the Abolition Committee set up by the Quakers in 1784, and which was to be the basis for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. When this latter group was founded in London, in April 1787, nine of its twelve members came from the Quaker Abolition Committee. The Society was led, however, by an evangelical Christian: Granville Sharp, who had himself already found notoriety in the period as a prominent antislavery campaigner. In 1767 he had become involved in the case of Jonathan Strong, an enslaved African man whose owner wanted to remove him from the country. In this case it was decided that a slave must remain at his master’s will even on English soil, but Sharp’s involvement in a later case of a similar vein – that of another slave, James Somerset – managed to reverse this decision. Sharp wanted the new committee to press for the emancipation of slaves throughout the empire, but they eventually decided to focus on the abolition of the slave trade only, as a more realistic initial goal. Such a compromise was suited to the cautious and moderate approach to reform which was in keeping with the Quaker religion. Ramsay, an Anglican, was one of the Abolition Society’s founding members, in large part due to the influence of his Essay and Inquiry in helping to define a moderate and realistic approach to abolition. Advocating a gradual course of reform, Ramsay’s advice aims not to disrupt Britain’s profitable connection with the sugar trade, but simply to remove the «staple of Britain» from its more worrying connotations with brutal imperial colonisation. In order to do this, he recommends (in the Inquiry) giving Africans (Ramsay does not differentiate between Africans and African slaves) the opportunity to continue producing sugar independently in their own countries, a situation which would perpetuate African subservience to Britain but without retaining what Ramsay felt to be the morally abhorrent taint of slavery. «In its highest probable state of culture», Ramsay argues, Africa «could not possibly interfere with the staple of Britain, so as to hinder an extensive and mutually advantageous trade from being carried on between the countries»34. He attempts to negotiate a means by which the economic connections between Britain and her colonies may be profitably pursued in a moral, as well as financial, sense. Europe must be for ever dependent on the West Indies or Africa for this now necessary of life, sugar, and it must be the interest of the 34

Ivi, p. 15.

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planter to have a particular country in Europe, where he can lodge his produce, till he can send it to the place of consumption. And where trade is freest, and the merchants have the most money, and give the longest credit (in all which Britain hath the advantage) will be the best spot for fixing their staple35.

Ramsay’s discourse, which fetishizes sugar (as a «necessary of life» and «staple») also fetishizes an idea of Britain as part of this transaction – as a place where trade is «freest» and merchants «have the most money». The economic success of Britain and the expansion of its overseas trade are connected to the success of sugar as a capitalist product in the image. Ramsay also develops an aesthetic idea of sweetness in his work in which it symbolises domestic comfort and the material trappings of a successful economy. The conclusion of the Essay argues for the gradual extension of opportunities to slaves, so that they might eventually be able to live compliantly within the laws of western society, privileges which Ramsay metaphorically connects to the idea of sweetness. «If our slaves were accustomed to taste only a few of the sweets of society», he writes, «a little of the security of being judged by known laws, they would double their application to procure the comforts and conveniences of life; and, with other additional property, they would naturally rise in their rank in society»36. The «sweets of society» symbolise the rewards of a «civilised» and industrially advanced environment which is presumably enhanced by the «comforts and conveniences» of a novel new range of commodities. Such a vision necessarily promotes the ideology of an industrialised, consumer society, where the way to «rise […] in rank «is through «additional property». In supporting this idea of consumer culture Ramsay necessarily supports the position of sugar in this economy. The image of «the sweets of society» secures a role for sugar in the domestic sphere which is beyond reproach. As symbolic of new global and economic networks sugar is connected with the forward trend of civilisation, and alienated from backward practices such as slavery, the image of which haunts the idea of its production. The imagery thus successfully manages to extricate sugar from the worrying moral conundrums of the slave trade. The image of «the sweets of society» 35

Ivi, p. 30. J. Ramsay, Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies, cit., p. 291-292. 36

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describes a quality by which all people, including slaves if they are freed, can improve their lives. Ramsay’s connection to a history of parliamentary abolitionism helps to place his works within the context of a mainstream, authoritative, and above all exclusively white male form of antislavery protest. The formation of the Abolition Society in 1787 represented a major event in the history of abolitionism both in Britain and abroad. In England, it effectively became the official body for antislavery protest, and was the basis on which the slave trade eventually came to be abolished. William Wilberforce was appointed to lead the Society’s campaign in parliament. After introducing his first bill against slavery in April 1791, Wilberforce took every opportunity to raise the campaign in parliament, moving other bills for abolition in every year between 1792 and 1797 (with the exception of 1794) and also in 1804 and 1805, until the trade was finally abolished in 1807. During the course of its history the Abolition Society became increasingly resistant to modes of protest aside from parliamentary reform, such as consumer boycotts of sugar or other attempts to raise awareness of the cause. As Claire Midgley has put it, «The potential effectiveness of abstention was […] seriously undermined when it ceased to be publicly promoted by the Abolition Society after 1792 as part of the Society’s general wariness of any extra-Parliamentary campaigning which might be viewed as subversive in the reactionary climate of the period»37. However, the impact of the abstention movement as a whole should not be underestimated. Thomas Clarkson, another founding member of the Abolition Society who toured the country gathering information for their records, estimated that following his 1792 tour of the country there were approximately 300,000 abstainers from sugar nationwide38. Elsewhere he recorded that at the height of the boycotting movement in 1791 the government’s revenue fell by £200,000 as a result39.

37

C. Midgeley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns 1780-1870, cit., p. 40. Ibidem. 39 D. Coleman, “Conspicuous Consumption: White Abolitionism and English Women’s Protest Writing in the 1790s”, «ELH» 61, 1994/2, (Summer), pp. 341-361 (p. 344). 38

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4. Conclusion The Abolition Society, in many ways effectively the «official» representative of the abolitionist campaign (at the very least its representatives in parliament), were sympathetic to the demands of a consumer society, both in terms of the economic importance of sugar as a product and also in terms of their recognition of the economic value of slavery. Yet less mainstream forms of protest, including the campaign to abstain from sugar, implicated the product in questions of consumption in no less powerful ways despite their different political approach to the issue. Abolitionist campaigns were the first consumer protests to use sugar as a way of resisting slavery due to its powerful symbolic resonance as a colonial product. To remember sugar, then, in the context of abolitionist debates about slavery is to remember the politics of consumption. Abolitionist writing transformed the issue of slavery from a concern over production methods to an issue of consumption instead, whose effects, displaced onto the product itself, made the issue a problem for the consumer, and one that was domestic – in a national as well as private sense – in nature. In The Negro’s Complaint, published in 1788, William Cowper inverts the same imagery Ramsay uses in the Essay when he refers to «the sweets of society» in order to heighten the reader’s sympathy for slaves. «Think how many backs have smarted», he appeals, «for the sweets your Cane affords!»40 The interesting thing about this image is the ambiguity concerning what the «sweets» are that Cowper refers to. Does he mean sugary food and drink? Or is he referring to an aesthetic idea of sweetness as representative of positive opportunities and domestic pleasures, as some other writers discussed in this paper have employed the term? Ultimately, the power of Cowper’s image resides in the fact that it does both. Unable to separate the «sweets» of domestic comfort from the actual sweet things infiltrating British life and homes at the time, Cowper cleverly identifies how the new colonial commodities, while contributing to a higher standard of living in Britain, are still connected to the suffering of the West Indian slaves who produced them. While in terms of national identity Britain defined itself increasingly through a sense of separateness from the colonies in the Romantic era, British people were nevertheless constantly reminded of the legacies which tied the two places together. 40

W. Cowper, 1788, “The Negro’s Complaint”, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. IV, cit., p. 76.

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Works cited Armstrong N., 1987, Desire and Domestic Fiction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brewer J., McKendrick N., Plumb J. H, 1982, The Birth of a Consumer Society, London: Europa Publications. Coleman D., 1994, “Conspicuous Consumption: White Abolitionism and English Women’s Protest Writing in the 1790s”, «ELH» 2, 1994, pp. 341-361. Fox W., 1791, “An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the utility of refraining from the use of West India [sic] Sugar and Rum”, Political Tracts 1791-1846 (Bodleian Collection), G. Pamph., vol. I, No. 2861. Grainger J., 1766, The Sugar Cane: A Poem, Dublin: William Sleater. Kitson P. J., Lee D., eds., 1999, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, vol. II, London: Pickering & Chatto. Kitson P. J., Lee D., eds., 1999, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, vol. IV, London: Pickering & Chatto. Lee D., “Grave Dirt, Dried Toads, and the Blood of a Cat: How Aldridge Worked his Charms”, Obi: A Romantic Circles Praxis Volume, ed. by C. Rzepka, 2002. http://romantic.arhu.umd.edu/praxis/obi/lee/lee.html. Accessed on Saturday 28 November 2008. Ligon R., 1657, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados, London: Humphrey Moseley. Love-Peacock T., 1856, Melincourt, London: Chapman & Hall. Midgley C., 1992, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns 1780-1870, London: Routledge. Mintz S., 1985, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, New York: Viking. Mintz S., 1996, Tasting Food Tasting Freedom, Boston: Beacon Press. Morton T., 2000, The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moseley B., 1800, A Treatise on Sugar, with Miscellaneous Medical Observations, London: John Nicols. Ramsay J., 1784, An Inquiry into the Effects of Putting a Stop to the African Slave Trade, and of Granting Liberty to the Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies, London: James Phillips. Ramsay J., 1784, Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies, London: James Phillips. Sandiford K. A., 2000, The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Southey R., 1797, Poems, Bristol: Joseph Cottle. Sussman C., 2000, Consuming Anxieties: Consumer Protest, Gender & British Slavery, 1713-1833, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Wilson K., 2003, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century, London; New York: Routledge.

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TRANSFIGURATIONS OF PLANTATION LIFE IN COLONIAL WRITING, 1760s-1790s Filomena Pannarale

1. Introduction The historical interpretation of the socio-economic, political and cultural milieu of the West Indian colonies became a dominant trait of colonial writing during the expansion age of tropical agriculture. A number of historians of the eighteenth century, of whom Edward Long and Bryan Edwards are notable examples, along with «locodescriptive» writers such as James Grainger and William Beckford, offered a firsthand experience of the West Indian affairs, the African trade and the institution of slavery. Although economic and political circumstances in the colonies directly affected the enslaved and then emancipated people as well, the perspective emerging from this corpus of Caribbean literature, which is the object of this essay, was obviously that of the white plantocracy. West Indian historical discourse requires complex analytical tools, which take into consideration the multiple variables of a colonial history shaped by «the imperatives of redefinition and subjectification».1 Nana Wilson-Tagoe argues that the process of writing West Indian history involved a «paradoxical perspective», which was shaped by the coexistence in the planter-historians’ hybrid individuality of both colonial and metropolitan points of view: «[t]he age gave birth to the planter historian, the West Indian “Creole”, frequently conscious of the distinctiveness of his society but, ironically, also aware, of the 1

N. Wilson-Tagoe, Historical Thought and Literary Representation in West Indian Literature, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998, p. 2.

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metropolis as the bigger, more real world. It is an irony that also informed the tenor of the historical writing and gave eighteenth-century West Indian historiography its paradoxical perspective»2. Continually engaged with the «quest for self-formation»3, they were sympathetic to the West Indian planter’s condition, focusing on the dangers of life in the colonies and perpetuating public anxieties caused by the fluctuations of colonial politics and the idea that the enslaved population were particularly violent. This body of colonial literature appears to be shaped by a dialogic relationship: on the one hand, Eurocentric picturesque descriptions of the colonies tended to mystify certain aspects of colonial life and its protagonists, as in Grainger’s and Beckford’s «locodescriptive» writings; on the other hand, uncontaminated colonial nature and pictures of rich tropical landscapes in the planter-historians texts conveyed the advantages of man’s contact with an uncorrupted environment4. Inscriptions of cultivation methods and pictures of rich tropical landscapes in the colonial texts made them subservient to the interests of the plantocracy to reinforce their identity in relation to motherland. Kathleen Wilson has argued for the necessity to re-think the spaces in which colonial relations unfolded, emphasizing the crucial role of a temporal and social realignment of mankind in the imperial configuration: «By the mid-eighteenth century, History itself had emerged as a primary vehicle of national self-understanding and identity as well as philosophical reflection, promoting a cosmopolitan perspective and a deeply grounded sense of national specificity»5. The authors of the colonial writings under consideration had experienced conditions of cultural and social displacement, consequently they tried to defend the validity of their institutions. In his Main Currents in the Caribbean Thought (2004), Gordon K. Lewis focuses on the definition of the settler historians’ writings as a defensive literature and on the tendency of the motherland to exclude the colonial periphery and its institutions from the mainstream of metropolitan British history.

2

Ivi, p. 17. Ibidem. 4 See K. A. Sandiford, The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. p. 3-4. 5 K. Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century, London and New York: Routledge, 2003,. p. 9. 3

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As early «local» historians, they wrote openly as apologists, mainly addressing British public opinion in defence of the West Indian social order. Their essentially paternalistic and favourable view of the planter society was complemented by their tendency to regard the stability of the slave system as a vital element in the continued viability of the political and social structure of the British colonial empire in the region as a whole6.

In this context, the form of the historical account became a valuable vehicle for the interplay between historiography and colonial writing: following the structures of a descriptive narrative, this form of historical discourse provided a presentation of the complex creation of a new society in the colonies, reproducing not merely a chronological enumeration of the contemporary historical events, but also an examination of the limits and meanings of colonial identity, created by and through a number of historical individual discourses. In Wilson-Tagoe’s words, The historical methodology was still the descriptive narrative, but the understanding of the scope and possibilities of history were considerable, because the historical narrative did more than record the characteristics of a new society. It created a historical world where landscape, manners, and customs stood in comparative relationships to each other, promising an analysis of the forces at work in a new colonial society. Because their authors attempted to mirror, explain, and elucidate the development of a whole society, these historical writings tended to be all-embracing and comprehensive, touching on all aspects of man in society as well as on the problems of human relationships7.

2. The planter-historians: Edward Long and Bryan Edwards Edward Long (1734-1813), one of the most influential Jamaican planter-historians, in his three-volume History of Jamaica (1774) provides an extensive account, covering the history of the island from the year of the English conquest (1655) to the first phase of the British public debate on slave trade. Long’s family was well known for its engagement in the island’s politics: his grandfather had been Speaker 6 G. K. Lewis, A. P. Maingot, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolution of Caribbean Society in its Ideological Aspects, 1492-1900, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004, p. 103. 7 N. Wilson-Tagoe, Historical Thought and Literary Representation in West Indian Literature, cit., pp. 16-17.

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of the Jamaican Assembly and his father, Samuel, was a member of the Council, owning the rich sugar plantation Lucky Valley in Clarendon Parish. After his father’s death in 1757, Long left England and moved to Jamaica, where he inherited nearly 20,000 acres8 and became a member of the Jamaican Assembly for St. Ann Parish. Discussing the profits of the rapid economic growth of the island of Jamaica, Long gives a substantial contribution in terms of economic analysis and the best available contemporary estimates, which disentangle the reception of his volumes from the sole evaluation of its racist point of view. While the body of criticism surrounding Long’s work has often been concerned with the question of race and the justification of slavery as colonial institution, Kenneth Morgan offers a thoroughgoing evaluation of its significance. His analysis of Long’s manuscripts, which include articles for London newspapers and pamphlets on various subjects, is intended to reconstruct the making of his work retrospectively. As Morgan reveals, the genesis of Long’s History is complex and entails an intertextual relationship with the above-mentioned texts, including unpublished accounts of the island9 and also other authentic political and economic documents, to which Long had access thanks to his brother-in-law Sir Henry Moore, who was appointed Lieutenant-governor of the Island10. The attempt at reconstructing the genesis of Long’s project on the basis of manuscript sources highlights the meticulous work of the author, who faced the task of piecing together a plurality of texts and a multitude of voices and experiences, which he had registered during the years spent in Jamaica. The main purpose of The History of Jamaica is explained in the “Introduction” to the first volume of the work, where the efforts the author made to compile his survey on the island are described. A complete history, which should omit nothing worthy of notice, either in the frame of constitution, the government, laws, manners, commerce,

8 R. M. Martin, History of the British Colonies, vol. II, London: J. Cochrane and co., 1834, p. 149. 9 Henry Barham’s The Civil History of Jamaica, James Knight’s The Natural, Moral and Political History of Jamaica and the Territories thereon depending, from the earliest account of time to the year 1742 and Thomas Dancer’s works on Jamaica’s bath waters and on the medical condition of slaves. 10 K. Morgan, Materials on the History of Jamaica in the Edward Long Papers held at the British Library, Wakefield, West Yorkshire UK: Microform Academic Publishers, 2006, pp. 7-8 http://www.microform.co.uk/guides/R50027.pdf

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climate, diseases, and natural history, can only be formed upon a regular course of strict enquiry, vast application, and very long experience or, perhaps, from the united endeavours of several persons; for these various materials can neither be well collected, nor digested, by one man, especially in a place where such subjecs of enquiry are very little attended to.11

As he was aware of the mistakes and repetitions which occurred in the first edition of his huge plan, Long intended to publish a new edition of the work, despite the difficulties in dealing with such a variety of arguments. In their Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (1814), John Nichols and Samuel Bentley testify that he was obsessively engaged in revising his opus for a second edition, which he never published. It is much to be regretted that this work, which contains a large mass of valuable information, much just reasoning, and many spirited delineations of colonial scenery and manners, was in the first instance, too hastily committed to the press, and afterwards too fastidiously condemned by its author. […] The work had long been materially corrected and improved for a new edition; but, unfortunately, the Author, wishing to render it every way complete, would not consent to reprint it previous to a final decision of the question on the Slave-Trade, at which period the infirmities of life prevented him from continuing the History up to that period12.

An important concern, on Long’s part, was to arouse the interest of the metropolitan readers in the colonial resources. To this purpose, he strategically emphasizes the role of colonial economy and commerce in the creation of wealth for the motherland. […] every thing that comes from these plantations are bulky commodities; they require and employ an immense quantity of shipping, the freights of which, outward and homeward, insurance, commissions, and petit charges, are all paid by the inhabitants of these islands, and are 11

E. Long, The History of Jamaica: Or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of the Island: with Reflections on its Situation Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws, and Government, vol. I, London: Printed for T. Lowndes, in Fleet-Street, 1774, p. 6. 12 J. Nichols, S. Bentley, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century: Comprizing Biographical Memoirs of William Bowyer, Printer, F.S.A., and Many of his Learned Friends, an Incidental View of the Progress and Advancement of Literature in this Kingdom During the Last Century, and Biographical Anecdotes of a considerable Number of Eminent Writers and Ingeniuos Artists, vol. VIII, London: Printed for the author, by Nichols, Son, and Bentley, at Cicero’s Head, Red-Lion-Passage, Fleet-Street, 1814, pp. 433-434.

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all received by British merchants and factors. We must also take into this account the very large revenue which annually arises from this commerce to the crown13.

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This passage emphasizes the dynamics of the economic control over Jamaica with great opportunities for the accumulation of capital by the British crown. Long’s criticism of the colonial economy predates what John Stuart Mill, a central figure in the liberal political economy of the nineteenth century, posited in his Principles of Political Economy in 1848. These are hardly to be looked upon as countries, carrying on an exchange of commodities with other countries, but more properly as outlying agricultural and manufacturing estates belonging to a larger community. Our West Indian colonies, for example, cannot be regarded as countries with productive capital of their own. [...]The West-Indies are the place where England finds it convenient to carry on the production of sugar, coffee and a few other tropical commodities14.

In his History Long recognises the need for the colony to end its dependence on the economic British system, diversifying the internal economy and giving a greater impulse to a self-sufficient agricultural economy. The production of «minutes articles»15 for the Jamaican inhabitants’ consumption, rather than only the export stables, constitutes for Long one of the priorities of his proposals for improving the commerce of the island. As Elizabeth A. Bohls has argued, the transfigurations of the colonial locus according to an aesthetic code became a typical feature in the planter-historians writing of the eighteenth century16. In this direction, Long proposes an iconological method of interpreting the colonial landscape in terms of aesthetic values, contributing to recreating a familiar image of the Jamaican land in the eyes of metropolitan readers. Proceeding parish by parish, the second volume of his treatise

13

E. Long, The History of Jamaica, vol. I, cit., p. 493. J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy: with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1866, pp. 414-415. I am grateful to Alexandra Robinson for suggesting this connection to me. 15 E. Long, The History of Jamaica, vol. 3, cit., p. 723. 16 E. A. Bohls, “The gentlemen planter and the metropole: Long’s History of Jamaica (1774)”, The Country and the City revisited: England and the Politics of Culture, 1550-1850, editors R. Williams, G. M. MacLean, D. Landry, J. P. Ward, New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 180. 14

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conjures up a range of colonial scenes, presented by means of endlessly repeated commonplaces, including healthful air and water quality and the presence in loco of either well-cultivated or available wild lands for further cultivation. For instance, in reference to St. John parish, Long writes:

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The soil in general is fertile, even on the highest ridges. It abounds with fine timber; and the vales are particularly prolific; […] The cherry, apple, quince, and peach tree, thrive and bear fruit in this vale; a sure indication of the cool temperature of the climate, and that of surrounding mountains would be found on experiment to produce them in still higher perfection. The air of this parish is consequently very healthful, and has proved entirely agreeable to the European constitutions17.

Underlining the beneficial effects of Jamaican nature, he composes portraits of the colonial landscape, directly drawn from longstanding visual and literary themes of Western culture. In the section devoted to Trelawny parish, Long enumerates some trees which are the objects of gardening and agriculture in the colonial environment, and adopts style and genre as inherited from the classics of the European tradition. The beauty of these spicy groves, which are likewise interspersed with the orange, limon, star-apple, avogato pear, wild cinnamon, and other favourite trees, among which some impetuous river rolls his foaming flood, or babbling rivulet, gently trails along in glittering meanders, furnishes a subject worthy some darling of the Muses. Even paradise itself, described by the pen of Milton, exhibits but a faint representation of them […]18

The mixed entanglement of indigenous tree species with transplanted ones evokes an idea of colonial landscape as quintessential earthly paradise, such that surpasses the scenes described by Milton in Paradise Lost, which are «but a faint representation». On the other hand, the pure non-European elements are identified and relocated in the category of exoticism as local peripheral peculiarities. Alongside this attitude and the pro-slavery sympathies of the Jamaican planterhistorian, Bohls suggests that a paradox pervades Long’s work, that of «imposing metropolitan sameness on the very different place that

17 18

E. Long, The History of Jamaica, vol. II, cit. pp., 50-51. Ivi, p. 222.

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is the colony for the purpose of defending that place’s indispensable local difference, the institution of slavery»19. Bryan Edwards (1743-1800), author of two major works The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, first published in 1793, and Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo (1797), contributed significantly to the rise of a pro-slavery literature and answered the demands for information on the part of the reading public living in the motherland. On the other hand, colonies seemed to have little power to draw people’s attention away from domestic problems: in the Preface to his History (1793) Edwards asserts that people in Great Britain are amazingly ignorant about the agricultural system in use in the West Indies and chiefly of the significance of the West Indian property and trade to Great Britain. The system of agriculture practiced in the West Indies, is almost as much unknown to the people of Great Britain as that of Japan. They know, indeed, that sugar, and indigo, and coffee and cotton, are raised and produced there; but they are very generally, and to a surprising degree, uninformed concerning the method by which those and other valuable commodities are cultivated and brought to perfection20.

Edwards’ History (1793) also includes biographical information of the author, written by himself shortly before a disease rendered him incapable of completing his great design of colonial literature21. Edwards spent several years in Jamaica under the protection of his uncle, Zachary Bayly, who taught him the sugar business and fostered his interest in literature, science and cultivation. In 1769 Bayly died and Edwards inherited his plantations, becoming the richest man in Jamaica. Edwards declares himself to be grateful to his uncle for the possibility he was given to improve his education and cultivate his passion for books. Bayly, indeed, engaged a mentor for his nephew, Isaac Teale, who assisted him «in the learned languages»: «Mr. Teale had been master of a free grammar school, and besides being a most accomplished scholar, possessed an exquisite taste for poetry […]»22. The 19

E. A. Bohls, “The gentlemen planter and the metropole: Long’s History of Jamaica (1774)”, The Country and the City revisited, cit., p. 193. 20 B. Edwards, “Preface to the first edition”, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, vol.1, Philadelphia 1805, pp. XXII. 21 B. Edwards, “Sketch of Life of the Author, written by Himself a Short Time before his Death”, The History, Civil and Commercial, vol.1, cit., pp. IX-XIV. 22 Ibidem. p. XIV.

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precepts and the instructions of the «revered and lamented friend»23, Isaac Teale, led the author to add as epilogue of the First Chapter in Book IV a composition written by his mentor, “The Sable Venus: an Ode” (1765), which glosses the engraving by W. Grainger, after Thomas Stothard The Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies:

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I shall therefore conclude the present chapter by presenting to my readers, a performance of a deceased friend, in which the character of the sable and saffron beauties of the West Indies, and the folly paramounts, are portrayed with the delicacy and dexterity of wit, and the fancy and elegance of genuine poetry24.

The ode celebrates black beauty and the interest of white merchants in the exotic charms of African women, reflecting the common trend to idealize colonial subjects and enlarging the gap between literary representation and colonial reality. In keeping with the interpretation of imperial discourses proposed by Jill H. Casid in terms of hybridization and appropriation, the recurring trope of the Black Venus as emblem of the hybridized conquered landscape, and the subsequent identification with the island of Jamaica, would seem to find its reversal in Teale’s poem: the Black Venus, routinely considered as symbol of a subordinated being, now appears as «the conqueror and the island of Jamaica as her dominion»25 while, at the same time, remaining «out at sea, never represented to contact, much less vanquish the anthropomorphised island landscape of the poem»26. When thou this large domain to view, JAMAICA’s isle, thy conquest new, First left thy native shore, Bright was the morn, soft the breeze, With wanton joy the curling seas The beauteous burthen bore27.

The interpretation of the Black Venus image within the eighteenth-century pro-slavery texts is deeply entangled with the crucial 23

Ivi p. 260. Ivi p. 226. 25 J. H. Casid, Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, p. 26. 26 Ibidem. 27 B. Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, vol. 2, Philadelphia: Printed and sold by J. Humphreys, at the Corner of Second and Walnut-streets, 1806, p. 229. 24

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theme of racial difference and black women’s supposed licentiousness. In particular the power of transfiguration in Teale’s poem shows its purpose in strengthening a white male defence against the threat of miscegenation28. Another common trope developed in the eighteenth century in both pro and anti-slavery texts is the portrait of the slave as a martyr, facing death with dignity and courage and dying in the name of freedom. Edwards’ poem “The Negro’s Dying Speech on his being executed for Rebellion in the Island of Jamaica”, published in an English Magazine in 1777 and later in a collection of poems titled Poems, written chiefly in the West Indies (1792) is representative of this tendency and shows the slave’s heroism presented by a member of the white plantocracy. According to Karina Williamson the poem is thus the embodiment of «an irresolvable hermeneutic ambiguity»29 in the West-Indian plantocracy, which also emerges in Edwards’ reflections upon the legitimacy of the Slave Trade system as appeared later in his masterpiece The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. Although he is against an immediate abolition of the Slave trade, he is aware that «nothing is more certain than that Slave Trade may be very wicked, and the planters in general very innocent»30. Edwards’ History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies was favourably reviewed: The Monthly Review (1794) published an extensive survey of the two-volume edition, emphasizing the author’s skills as scientist, politician and merchant. The author investigates the various topics that successively rise for examination, with the spirit of a philosopher and the enlarged ideas of a true patriot; occasionally displaying the blended knowledge of the naturalist, the politician, and the merchant31.

In discussing the geography and the natural history of the West Indies, Edwards displays not only his erudition in science, but also his individuality, which emerges in the descriptions of tropical landscapes as, 28

See J. H. Casid, Sowing Empire, cit., p. 24. K. Williamson, “‘The desponding Negro’, and Other Impersonifications”, «The Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers», edited by S. Courtman, Vol. 4, 2003, p. 9 http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk/papers/2002/olv3p4.PDF 30 B. Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, vol. 2, cit., p. 41. 31 “Art. IX. The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. By B. Edwards, Esq. Of the Island of Jamaica. Stockdale. 1793”, «The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, enlarged: from May to August», London: Printed for Griffiths, 1794, p. 158. 29

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for instance, the nocturnal sky that contributes to «harmoniz[ing] the mind, and produce[s] the most calm and delightful sensations»32. Edwards wrote his History just two years after the uprising of French slaves on St. Domingo. A few years later he published The Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo (1797). In the Preface to this historical account, the author introduces information about his expedition to St. Domingo during the horrors of the Haitian upheaval, in order to confer some degree of authenticity to his work. The present publication, therefore, is confined wholly to St. Domingo; concerning which, having personally visited that unhappy country soon after the revolt of the Negroes in 1791, and formed connections there, which have supplied me with regular communications ever since, I possess a mass of evidence, and important documents33.

When he arrived in St. Domingo, and precisely in the city of Cap François on the 26th September 1791, saw a «dreadful scene of devastation by fire». At the sight of those atrocities, the author, strongly upset, declares his noble intention to recreate an image of the Haitian Revolution for a British audience in order to avoid in the future similar devastation in the British colonies. In her essay Bryan Edwards and the Haitian Revolution, Olwyn M. Blouet offers further investigation with respect to Edwards’ considerations about this striking event and the main aim of his intellectual and political commitment. […] he articulated the planter view point concerning the value of West Indian colonies to Great Britain. In his Survey of Saint-Domingue he told how an idyllic island environment was transformed into a savage wasteland. As author he was a leading interpreter of the Haitian Revolution and helped to construct an image of that revolution for a British audience34.

Describing this island before the 1791 slave revolt, Edwards emphasizes the favourable features of the colonial landscape not only 32

B. Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, vol. 1, cit., p. 8 B. Edwards, “The Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo: Comprehending an Account of the Revolt of the Negroes in the Year 1791 and a Detail of the Military Transactions of the British Army in that Island in the Years 1793 & 1794”, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, vol. IV, cit., p. V. 34 O. M. Blouet, “Bryan Edwards and the Haitian Revolution”, The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, ed. by D. P. Geggus, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001, p. 44. 33

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from the aesthetic point of view, but also in relation to the suitability of the land for the development of an agriculture based on the plantation system and imposed by European settlers. The author’s study of the landscape is, in fact, oriented towards specific qualities of the St. Domingo area: island extension, fertility of the soil, water and vegetation. The island extends about one hundred and forty miles in the broadest part, from north to south, and three hundred and ninety from east to west. In a country of such magnitude, diversify with plains of vast extent, and mountains of prodigious height, is probably to be found every species of soil which nature has assigned to all the tropical parts of the earth. In general, it is fertile in the highest degree; every where well watered, and producing almost every variety of vegetable nature, for use and beauty, for food and luxury, which the lavish hand of a bountiful Providence has bestowed on the richest portion of the globe; and the liberality of nature was laudably seconded by the industry of the inhabitants35.

In brief, St. Domingo offered a perfect productive environment, which suited the expectations of French planters until the wake of slave rebellion destroyed the «Paradise of the New World».36 This image of the island of St. Domingo provides the opportunity for associating the «Edenic georgic garden» to the «plantation machine» as proposed by Jill H. Casid37.

3. Locodescriptive planters’ writings: James Grainger and William Beckford James Grainger’s georgic poem The Sugar-Cane (1764) contributes to the development of a wider aestheticizing vision of colonial landscape. Starting from detailed descriptions of plantation life on St. Christopher, Grainger expresses his educated literary taste for pastoral sceneries and re-shapes the places of his colonial experience in relation to Mediterranean scenes. Sicily, for instance, represents the location that 35

B. Edwards, “The Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo: Comprehending an Account of the Revolt of the Negroes in the Year 1791 and a Detail of the Military Transactions of the British Army in that Island in the Years 1793 & 1794”, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, vol. IV, cit., p. 126 36 Ivi, p. 127 37 J. H. Casid, Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization, cit., p. 126

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Grainger and later William Beckford chose as a Mediterranean prototype exotic place, showing aesthetic elements in common with the island of Jamaica. At the same time this poem offers a valuable document, providing all the information for the medical care of slaves and the management of a sugar plantation. Grainger adopted the georgic form for his composition to describe the grandeur of the British Empire immediately after the end of the Seven Years War (1763), when British colonial possessions saw a period of great colonial expansion and prosperity. His «West-India Georgic» evokes the classical tropes of the simplicity of rural life and the virtue of the agricultural labourers, as proposed in Virgil’s Georgics and praises the colonial landscapes, and in particular the island where he was resident, as a site of productive virtue and comfortable living. The poem is rich in information about St. Christopher’s island: weather, soil, vegetation and sugar production, including also extensive notes explicitly directed to the European readers, as Grainger announces in the Preface to his poem. Such words as are not common in Europe, I have briefly explained: because an obscure poem affords both less pleasure and profit to the reader. For the same reason, some notes have been added, which, it is presumed, will not be disagreeable to those who have never been in the West-Indies38.

Although he wrote in the West Indies and the poem’s contents are offered to farmers and planters of the colonies, Grainger never forgot the literary taste of his ‘Johnson’s circle wits’. In his study on the paradigm of ‘negotiation’, Keith A. Sandiford identifies all the factors that led the poet to use the georgic form. […] georgic becomes the perfect instrumentality of negotiation: it must oscillate between the desire for truth in representing the world of natural objects and the desire to exchange these natural constituents for economic and cultural value. And above all it must be adaptable to those coercions imposed by the author’s divided allegiances to the clubbable ethos of Johnsonian politics and Creole ethos of bourgeois capitalism39.

While Sandiford’s approach to the georgic genres is strictly correlated to the dialogism proposed by the term negotium itself, Markman 38 J. Grainger, The Sugar-Cane. A poem in Four Books with Notes, London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1764, p. VII. 39 K. A. Sandiford, The Cultural Politics of Sugar, cit. p., 70

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Ellis articulates his reading of Grainger’s poem encompassing it within the category of the «locodescriptive» poems, focusing on the role of the island as major link between nation and empire40. Grainger, on his return to England, submitted the manuscript of his poem to Johnson’s circle, seeking the support, advice and encouragement of his literary friends. He claimed also the allegiance of European readers, rendering the colonial locus familiar to the audience, emphasizing the elements which made Christopher’s island more fertile than its Mediterranean models, such as the valley of Tempé in Greece and the fortress of Enna in Sicily. A binding element between St. Christopher, as the new Paradise in the British colonies and Sicilian classical scenes is offered by sugar itself, which «had become in that island [Sicily] a considerable agricultural object in 1166»41. Since ancient times it had functioned as a magic object, making peripheral voice heard in all the corners of the World. Such, green St. Christopher, thy happy soil! Not Grecian Tempé, where Arcadian Pan, Knit with the Graces, tur’n his sylvan pipe, While mute Attention hush’d each charmed rill; Not purple Enna, whose irriguous lap, Strow’d with each fruit of taste, each flower of smell, Sicilian Proserpine, delighted, sought; Can vie, blest Isle, with thee. Tho’ no soft sound Of pastoral stop thine echoes e’er awak’d; (Book I, lines 60-68)

In the 26 years between the publication of Grainger’s The SugarCane and William Beckford’s A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica (1790) the colonial locus is re-imagined according to the aesthetic of the picturesque, proposed by Beckford. In the advertisement he declares that the depiction of the colonial landscape and the process of sugar production will be «chiefly considered in a picturesque point of view», revealing his desire to offer a painterly perspective of the colonial sceneries. Beckford inscribes his Descriptive Account into the literary category of georgic works and presents to the reader ample instructions about the agricultural activities in Jamaica. As in 40 M. Ellis, “‘The cane-land isles’: commerce and empire in late eighteenth-century georgic and pastoral poetry”, Islands in History and Representation, R. Edmond, V. Smith editors, London: Routledge, 2003, p. 50. 41 T. S. Traill, “On the Cultivation of the Sugar Cane in Spain”, «The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal», v. 32, Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1842, p. 260.

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Grainger’s georgic, Beckford’s work reflects feelings of incertitude and oscillation, with a profound anxiety intimately connected with the author’s personal condition and partly mitigated by the aesthetic of the picturesque. He wrote his two-volume work during the years spent in the Fleet Prison for debt, probably due to the failure of his plantation in Jamaica caused by the 1780 hurricane. In the first volume Beckford presents a striking description of the hurricane and the effects of its destructive power:

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[…] not a single house was left undamaged in the parish, not a single set of works, trash-house, or other subordinate building, that was not greatly injured, or entirely destroyed. Not a single wharf, store-house, or shed, for the deposit of goods, was left standing; […]42.

The depiction of the hurricane, together with the enumeration of all the dangers of the colonial life for planters and their families and the hardships caused by slave rebellions, wars, droughts and the abolition campaign, reinforces the Leit Motiv of Beckford’s work, suggesting that planters had to face problems unknown to the English landlords. A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica enjoyed great prestige among the critics of the time not only due to its reasoned defence of slavery, but also its descriptive potentialities, as emerges in an article published in The Monthly Review of 1790. Descriptive writing is frequently attempted by this author, and frequently with some success. He finds many picturesque views for the purpose, in the land, the ocean, the heavens, and the different kinds of employments which are here prosecuted: some of these scenes are of a pleasing and entertaining nature, some are grand, awful, and terrific: the author wishes for the hand of an artist, who could make them glow on the canvas; […]43.

Beckford’s text enacts what may be described as a promotional advertising process to attract aesthetically educated travellers in search of a wider range of images and ideas, in order to reshape the conventional representational patterns based on the European pictorial tradition. 42 W. Beckford, A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica, vol. I, London: Printed for T. and J. Egerton, Whitehall, 1790 pp. 105-106 43 “Art. XI. A descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica: by W. Beckford Esq; Author of Remarks on the situation of Negroes in Jamaica, in two volumes. 8 vo. Egertons, 1790”, «The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, enlarged: from September to December», vol. III, London: printed for Griffiths, 1790, p. 292.

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The views of the islands of the West Indies may give scope to a new expantion of picturesque ideas; may inspire his [Beckford’s] fancy, provoke his imitation, and reward his genius […]44.

Beckford’s aesthetic design culminates in a series of engravings of his Jamaican properties, which he committed to George Robertson (1748-1788). The artist, landscapist and engraver, cultivated his taste for drawings and art in Italy and then moved to Jamaica, under the protection of Mr. Beckford, where he finally found the suitable source of inspiration for his artistic production45. The artistically ambitious planter invited the artist to follow him to Jamaica for the express purpose of painting scenes of his properties, individuating in the landscape an element of connection as well as discontinuity between metropolis and colony. According to Geoff Quilley, the colonial environment and its representation become not only a locus of cultural linkage, but also a strategic means of defending the colonial identity of the plantocratic class from the metropolitan threats: «Robertson’s views of Jamaica […] present a Creolised landscape, which may be offered as an environment for the full realization of the identity of the independent, indigenous, white Creole planter»46. Keith A. Sandiford, on the other hand, moves the focus on Beckford’s comparison between the Jamaican landscape and the Roman countryside, laying a strong emphasis on the positive effects of the new colonial sceneries on the artist’s mind. Throughout the two volumes, Beckford invokes the presence of a «picturesque painter-tourist» or better a «migrated painter-tourist», who embodies the cultural and aesthetic negotiation between centre and imperial peripheries, going beyond the restricted imitative boundaries of the Tivoli, Albano, and Frascati views47. The scenes of Tivoli, of Frascati, and Albano, have furnished for years the same ideas and imitations. Their beauties and varieties have been too frequently copied, and are hence been too generally known to promise 44

Ivi p. 271 “Robertson (George)”, A New and General Biographical Dictionary: Containing an Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the most Eminent Persons in every Nation, vol. XIII, edited by W. Tooke, W. Beloe, R. Nares, London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson [etc.], 1798, pp. 92-93. 46 G. Quilley, “Pastoral plantations: the British Slave Trade and the Representation of Colonial Landscape in the late Eighteenth Century”, An Economy of Colour: Visual Culture and the Atlantic World, 1660-1830, G. Quilley and K. D. Kriz editors, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003, p. 107. 47 K. A. Sandiford, The Cultural Politics of Sugar, cit., p. 133. 45

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to the artist any further charms of novelty, or to awaken his enthusiasm and fix his surprise […]48.

Jill H. Casid offers a valuable study upon this theme, focusing on the transformation of Jamaica «into a colonial hybrid of Italy and the Caribbean, that is into a condensed picture of succeeding empires»49. In Beckford’s words, «There are many parts of the country that are not much unlike to, nor less romantic than, the most wild and beautiful situations of the Frescati, Tivoli, and Albano[…]»50. In the Descriptive Account, the insistent recourse to Italian locations is intended as a sign of hybridization of colonial places according to universal aesthetic conventions, to the purpose of carrying out a complete erasure of spatial and cultural differences. Beckford’s aestheticizing approach to the New World entails a renewed use of existing models, which erase local peculiarities, through a continuous dialogism between the novelty of Jamaican nature and long-standing European cultural paradigms. The issues underlying the visual cultural construction of colonial identity, proposed by the experience of each author, turn these tropical colonies into objects of fascinated inquiry: Long, Edwards, Grainger and Beckford, as dramatis personae of the plantation scenes, display various ways of looking back to specific imperial spaces, transfiguring landscapes and behaviours into images which existed only in the planters’ minds.

Works cited “Art.20 A Speech delivered at a free Conference between the Council and Assembly of Jamaica, held on the 25th November 1789, on the Subject of Wilberforce’s Propositions in the House of Commons, concerning the Slave Trade. By Bryan Edwards, esq. Member of the Assembly of the said Island. 1790”, «The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, enlarged: from May to August», London: Printed for Griffiths, 1790. “Art. XI. A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica: by William Beckford Esq; Author of Remarks on the situation of Negroes in Jamaica, in two volumes. 8 vo. Egertons, 1790”, «The Monthly Review; or, Literary

48 49 50

W. Beckford, A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica, vol. I, cit., p. 270. J. H. Casid, Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization, cit., pp. 60-61. W. Beckford, A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica, vol. I, cit., pp. 8-9,

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Journal, enlarged: from September to December», vol. III, London: printed for Griffiths, 1790. “Art. IX. The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. By Bryan Edwards, Esq. of the Island of Jamaica. Stockdale. 1793”, «The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, enlarged: from May to August», London: Printed for Griffiths, 1794. Casid J. H., 2005, Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Beckford W., 1790, A Descriptive Account of The Island Of Jamaica, vol. I-II, London: Printed for T. and J. Egerton, Whitehall. Bohls E. A., 1999, “The gentlemen planter and the metropole: Long’s History of Jamaica (1774)” in The Country and the City Revisited: England and the Politics of Culture, 1550-1850, edited by R. Williams, G. M. MacLean, D. Landry, J. P. Ward, New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 180-196. Burnard T., 1998, “Sexual Life of a Jamaican Slave Overseer” in Sex and Sexuality in Early America, ed. by Merril D. Smith, New York: NYU Press, pp. 163-189. Edwards B., 1805, “Preface to the first edition”, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, vol.1, Philadelphia. Edwards B., 1806, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, vol. I-II-III-IV, Philadelphia: Printed and sold by James Humphreys, at the Corner of Second and Walnut-streets. Edwards B., 1806, “The Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo: Comprehending an Account of the Revolt of the Negroes in the Year 1791 and a Detail of the Military Transactions of the British Army in that Island in the Years 1793 & 1794”, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, vol. IV, Philadelphia. Ellis M., 2003, “‘The cane-land isles’: commerce and empire in late eighteenth-century georgic and pastoral poetry”, Islands in History and Representation, R. Edmond, V. Smith editors, London: Routledge, pp. 4362. Geggus D. P., 2001, The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Geggus D. P., 2005, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Grainger J., 1764, The Sugar-Cane. A poem in Four Books with Notes, London: R. and J. Dodsley. Higman B. W., 2001, Jamaica Surveyed: Plantation Maps and Plans of the Eighteenth, University of the West Indies Press. Hudson B. J., 2001, Waterfalls of Jamaica: Sublime and Beautiful Objects, University of the West Indies.

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Lambert D., 2005, White Creole Culture, Politics and Identity in the Age of Abolition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis G. K., Maingot A. P., 2004, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolution of Caribbean Society in its Ideological Aspects, 14921900, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska. Long E., 1774, The History of Jamaica: Or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of the Island: with Reflections on its Situation Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws, and Government ..., vol. I-II-III, London: Printed for T. Lowndes, in Fleet-Street. Mancke E., Shammas C., 2005, The Creation of the British Atlantic World, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Martin R. M., 1834, History of the British Colonies, vol. I-II, London: J. Cochrane and co. Morgan K., 2006, Materials on the History of Jamaica in the Edward Long Papers held at the British Library, Wakefield, West Yorkshire UK: Microform Academic Publishers, pp. 7-8. http://www.microform.co.uk/ guides/R50027.pdf Nichols J., Bentley S., 1814, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century: Comprizing Biographical Memoirs of William Bowyer, Printer, F.S.A., and Many of His Learned Friends, an Incidental View of the Progress and Advancement of Literature in this Kingdom During the Last Century, and Biographical Anecdotes of a considerable Number of Eminent Writers and Ingeniuos Artists, vol. VIII, London: Printed for the author, by Nichols, Son, and Bentley, at Cicero’s Head, Red-Lion-Passage, Fleet-Street. O’Brien K., 1999, “Imperial Georgic, 1660-1789”, The Country and the City Revisited: England and the Politics of Culture 1550-1850, edited by G. Maclean, D. Landry and J. P. Ward, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 160-179. Ogborn M., Whithers C. W. J., 2004, Georgian Geographies. Essays on Space, Place and Landscape in the Eighteenth Century, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Quilley G., 2003, “Pastoral plantations: the British Slave Trade and the Representation of Colonial Landscape in the late Eighteenth Century”, An Economy of Colour: Visual Culture and the Atlantic World, 1660-1830, G. Quilley and K. D. Kriz editors, Manchester University Press, pp. 106-128. “Robertson (George)”, 1798, A New and General Biographical Dictionary: Containing an Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the most Eminent Persons in every Nation, vol. XIII, edited by W. Tooke, W. Beloe, R. Nares, London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson [etc.]. Sandiford K. A., 2000, The Cultural Politics of Sugar: Caribbean Slavery and Narratives of Colonialism Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Traill, T. S., 1842, “On the Cultivation of the Sugar Cane in Spain”, «The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal» v. 32, Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, pp. 256-269. Wilson K., 2003, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century, London and New York: Routledge. Wilson-Tagoe N., 1998, Historical Thought and Literary Representation in West Indian Literature, Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

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«YET YOU ARE A SLAVE-HOLDER»: WASHINGTON, RUSHTON, GARRISON, AND THE TRANSATLANTIC TIDES OF HISTORY * Franca Dellarosa

1. Introduction In the words of historian Paul Finkelman, the «tension between the professed ideals of America, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and the reality of early national America» – the reality of a slaveholding nation – is a «central issue of the American founding»1. This essay investigates a document which strikes at the heart of that tension, as epitomised in the very symbol of the American Revolution and new nation, i.e. the addressee of Edward Rushton’s Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, of Mount Vernon, in Virginia, on His Continuing to Be a Proprietor of Slaves 2. The powerful rhetoric of the Liverpool writer’s indictment encapsulates many of the most fundamental issues underlying abolitionist and emerging * This essay was originally presented at the 2007 BARS/NASSR Conference Emancipation, Liberation, Freedom (University of Bristol, 26-29 July 2007), in the panel devoted to “Transatlantic Agitation” (Session Convenors: Robert Anderson and Jeff Insko, Oakland University), and has since developed as part of a book project in progress on Edward Rushton in the context of Liverpool as the leading European slaving port during the Age of Revolution. I would like to thank the Centre for the Study of International Slavery and the Eighteenth-Century Worlds Research Centre at the University of Liverpool, and Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, for inviting me to give a talk in January 2011 on “Rebellious Poetics: Slavery, Oppression, and Agency in Edward Rushton’s Writings (1787-1814)”, where the Letter was the topic for intense discussion and exchange. 1 P. Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson, 2nd ed., New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001, p. ix. 2 Edward Rushton, Expostulatory to George Washington, of Mount Vernon, in Virginia, on His Continuing to Be a Proprietor of Slaves, Liverpool Printed, 1797.

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transnational human rights discourse, while the circumstances of its composition and dissemination make the Letter a compelling case study of eighteenth-century cultural practices, due to its circulation in a number of different print media. Accordingly, this chapter will sketch the socio-political and cultural framework of late eighteenthcentury Liverpool in which Rushton enacted his radical experience, as a preliminary to the close reading of the document, while, in the final part, the focus will move to an examination of the Letter’s enthralling American afterlife.

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2. «Written near one of the Docks of Liverpool» By the time of the composition of the Letter, July 17963, Edward Rushton’s radical affiliation had emerged on a variety of occasions. A citizen of the town that had «waxed fat on the slave-trade», as Karl Marx portrays Liverpool in his Capital4, he had briefly served as officer on a slave ship and, according to many biographical accounts, had lost his sight in the attempt to aid the enslaved Africans during an epidemic ocular infection.5 As a blind destitute ex-sailor he engaged in early relentless civil commitment against slavery and all forms of social and political injustice, which took on an explicitly political value in his later public activity as co-editor of a paper first and then bookseller. 3 To date, there seems to be no available trace of an ALS (Autographed Letter Signed) of the document. However, external evidence seems to be consistently positive as to whether the letter was actually sent to its addressee and returned – rather than being the product of a clever rhetorical strategy – even though with some uncertainty as to dating. See the two main biographical sources, the “Biographical Sketch” by Rushton’s son Edward, published as obituary in «The Belfast Monthly Magazine» Dec. 1814, pp. 474-485 (476), and W. Shepherd, “A Sketch of the Life of the Author”, in Poems and Other Writings by the Late Edward Rushton, London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1824, pp. ix-xxviii (xxii-xxiii). Both documents date its writing to 1797 rather than 1796, as declared in the opening note. A manuscript version of the Letter is located at the Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, R.I., «which looks […] like a copy made from the pamphlet». I thank David Hoth, Associate Editor, The Papers of George Washington, for providing this piece of information. 4 Quoted in S. Engerman, S. Drescher, and R. Paquette, Robert eds., Slavery, OxfordNew York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 392. 5 William Shepherd’s ample biographical note attached to Rushton’s posthumous edition of collected writings set the scene for a number of later elaborations, which appeared in various nineteenth-century anthologies and periodical publications. However, the fact that the otherwise detailed “Biographical Sketch” by his son does not mention Rushton’s humanitarian act as the occasion of the disease which made him blind for some twenty years casts some doubt on the historicity of the episode.

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His political passion is transmitted into and testified by his writing, mainly poetry, whose protagonists are mostly victims of some form of oppression, either social or political, or both. The hostile context of the city is the obvious necessary background against which any reading of Rushton’s poetic/political experience must be set: «I have a poor opinion of my countrymen in general, and my townsmen in particular», he was to write in a letter dated November 20, 18066. The pervasiveness of the city’s involvement in the «African trade» finds accurate expression in the words of contemporary local historian James Wallace: This great annual return of wealth, may be said to pervade the whole town, increasing the fortunes of the principal adventurers, and contributing to the support of the majority of its inhabitants; […] almost every order of people is interested in a Guinea cargo […] many of the small vessels that import about an hundred slaves are fitted out by attornies, drapers, ropers, grocers, tallow-chandlers, barbers, tailors, &c. some have one eighth, some a fifteenth, and some a thirty-second7.

The commodification of the humane, whereby «the sooty sons of Africa […] remain the staple support of the trade and town of Liverpool»8, is candidly asserted and naturalised in the passage, which aptly epitomises the related discursive texture of speeches and petitions, pamphlets and poems celebrating the glory of «the town and trade»9. As is well known, Thomas Clarkson, in his 1808 History of Abolition, was to comment on the general, habit-induced unconcern of the Liverpool inhabitant about the atrocities of the trade in human beings, whose dismal material signifiers were exposed to the public gaze in shop windows, with iron shackles, handcuffs, thumb-screws and the chilling specula oris being bought and sold10. 6

“Biographical Sketch”, p. 479. J. Wallace, A General and Descriptive History of the Antient and Present State of the Town of Liverpool […] Together with a Circumstantial Account of the True Causes of Its Extensive African Trade (1795), Liverpool: Crane and Jones, 2nd ed., 1797, 229, 229n. 8 Ivi, p. 221. 9 A convincing examination of the local debate on slavery and abolition is offered in F. E. Sanderson, “The Liverpool Abolitionists”, in R. Anstey, P. E. H. Hair, eds., Liverpool, the African Slave Trade and Abolition: Essays to Illustrate Current Knowledge and Research, Liverpool: Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1976, pp. 196-238. For a perceptive analysis of Liverpool’s «laboring-class writers», see T. Burke, “‘Humanity is now the pop’lar cry’: laboring-class writers and the Liverpool slave trade, 1787-1789”, «The Eighteenth Century» 42, 3/2001, pp. 245-263. 10 T. Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the 7

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[…] Sweet are thy notes, yet minds intent On life’s prime object – cent. per cent. Heed not thy soft delicious strain, Nor any notes, save notes of gain; Oh, Ruddock! Couldst thou name some shore By Britains trade uncursed before, Where Afric’s injured race would come, In crowds, for half the present sum, Or couldst thou aid the speculating throng, The great commercial few would pause, and praise thy song.

Indifference to beauty equals the renunciation of one’s humanity: in the lines dedicated “To a Redbreast in November, Written near one of the Docks of Liverpool”, which are amongst Rushton’s best known, the unheeded singing bird is converted into the objective correlative for the loss of the faculty to feel – and to feel for the other, as the etymology and cultural history of sympathy have it and as the oblique reference to the African victims suggests – in favour of a fetishizing of capital that entails expunction or reification of all value which is not material, as both the sombre sarcastic reminder of «life’s prime object», and the pun on the meaning of «notes» imply. The poetic I’s unmistakably Romantic ability to listen to the bird’s singing, despite the «crash of trade», and the «dire and deafening din of men» – which may seem to echo the «din of towns and cities» surrounding in that case the interior quest and isolation in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” – in other words, the poet’s ability to hear that which is unheard, or ignored, and grant it the mediation of his voice, marks the essential diversity of his perception of the «one discordant roar» of busy Liverpool city life, and his consequent, fundamental seclusion. In this sense, “To a Redbreast in November”, included as the opening poem in Rushton’s 1806 collection, is offered to the responsive reader as a paradoxically indirect manifesto, a paradigm of commitment which is no less aesthetic than ethic – providing a key to a fuller comprehension of the poet’s stance, particularly in relation to the pieces centred on enslaved protagonists.

African Slave Trade by the British Parliament, London: Longman, Hurst, Reese and Orme, 1808, vol. 1, pp. 375-378.

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3. Expostulation and (no) reply The ardent, radical questioning of the tumultuous processes of history in-the-making, their interpretation and modes of transmission – whose perspective is being shown to whom – constitute Rushton’s privileged material being moulded into poetic form. That same material and mindset – that poet’s fire, also, which John Thelwall would recognise as peculiarly his own in the “Ode” he dedicated to “Edward Rushton of Liverpool, on His Restoration of Sight”11 – shape the Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, a key document of a very different nature in Rushton’s corpus, which was to have a most significant and riveting transatlantic afterlife. An apparently failed attempt at establishing private interchange on a sensitive topic with the hero of the American Revolution is turned by a clever manoeuvre into a public fiction of communication, involving Liverpool citizen and activist Edward Rushton and the unresponsive addressee of his correspondence George Washington, while in fact obliquely appealing to the intended reading audience of the «Liverpool Printed» document. The transition away from the realm of the private to the public sphere is sanctioned in the opening note to the print edition, where the letter is reported to have been «returned under cover, without a syllable in reply» – thus eliciting publication. In July last, the following letter was transmitted to the person to whom it is addressed, and a few weeks ago it was returned under cover, without a syllable in reply. As children who are crammed with confectionery have no relish for plain and wholesome food, so men in power, who are seldom addressed but in the sweet tones of adulation, are apt to be disgusted with the plain and salutary language of truth. To offend was not the intention of the writer; yet, the President has evidently been irritated; this, however, is not a bad symptom, for irritation, causelessly excited, will frequently subside into shame; and to use the language of the moralist, «Where there is shame, there may in time be virtue»12.

While seemingly failing to establish communication, the addresser has evidently achieved his goal, as the authorial comment makes clear.

11 J. Thelwall, “Ode to Edward Rushton, of Liverpool, on his Restoration to Sight”, in The Poetical Register, and Repository of Fugitive Poetry, for 1810-1811, London: printed for F. C. and J. Rivington, 1814, pp. 510-512 (512). 12 E. Rushton, Expostulatory Letter, cit., p. 1. Hereafter, page numbers will be given in the text.

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The very act of returning the paper is itself a reply, a token of the addressee’s response to its content, which is described as likely to produce disgust and irritation in a member of the category of «men of power» such as the «president» is. A relational paradigm between addresser and addressee is established in this piece of paratext, challenging common-sense power relation patterns, whereby a foreign citizen addressing the head of a great, although young nation, is expected to show respect and compliance, if not awe or adulation13. Here, instead, power, as embodied in the figure of the president, is overtly challenged and mocked, through a rhetorical strategy that builds on the diminishing simile associating men of power with spoiled children, «crammed with confectionary». The overall subversive effect is intensified where shame is evoked as a beneficial feeling – in a sort of educational attitude toward the man of power, whose paradoxical childishness may still find room for atonement. Conversely, the speaking voice is endowed with the integrity deriving from compliance with the moral norm, as talking «the plain and salutary language of truth». Its stance is assimilated to the moral authoritativeness of Samuel Johnson, whose quote from his 1775 Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland closes the piece appropriately conjuring up shame, and thus setting the scene for the text that follows. The transfer from the private to the public realm obviously magnifies the shaming effect, as implied in the very qualification of the printed letter as expostulation: after all, even with children, public correction would add shame to the trespass that was being punished. The body of the Letter stands out as a powerful political attack and a fascinating piece of radical writing, which fully exploits the rhetorical potentialities entailed in the laying bare of the basic contradiction underlying the foundation of the new nation. The text can be described as broadly organised into three parts, where the opening address, while focusing on General Washington’s high merits and public virtues, prepares the unrelenting questioning that follows his private behaviour as proprietor of the estate of «Mount Vernon, in Virginia», who holds «hundreds of his fellow beings in a state of abject bondage» [9]. In the brief closing part, the shadow of «lurking pecuniary considerations» 13 As Dorothy Twohig notes, the Letter, from «a prominent English antislavery advocate [,] […] was hardly the polite, respectful missive that the president of the United States normally received». “«That Species of Property»: Washington’s Role in the Controversy over Slavery”, in D. Higginbotham ed., George Washington Reconsidered, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001, p. 115.

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[24] is cast over the president’s motivations, thus taking up and bringing full circle the shaming effect of the opening note. The «American memorable contest», in which General George Washington played a key role, is conjured up in the very opening paragraph of the Letter as a «blood-stained tragedy», and the arena where the man’s «military abilities» as well as «public virtues» were exalted: It will generally be admitted, sir, and perhaps with justice, that the great family of mankind were never more benefited by the military abilities of any individual, than by those which you displayed during the memorable American contest. Your country was injured; your services were called for; you immediately arose, and after performing the most conspicuous part in that bloodstained tragedy, you again became a private citizen, and unambitiously retired to your farm. There was more true greatness in this procedure than the modern world at least had ever beheld; and while public virtue is venerated by your countrymen, a conduct so exalted will not be forgotten. The effects which your revolution will have upon the world are incalculable. By the flame which you have kindled, every oppressed nation will be enabled to perceive its fetters; and when man once knows that he is enslaved, the business of emancipation is half performed. France has already burst her shackles; neighbouring nations will in time prepare, and another half century may behold the present besotted Europe without a peer, without a hierarchy, and without a despot. If men were enlightened, revolutions would be bloodless; but how are men to be enlightened, when it is the interests of governors to keep the governed in ignorance? «To enlighten men», says your old correspondent, Arthur Young, «is to make them bad subjects». Hurricanes spread devastation; yet hurricanes are not only transient, but give salubrity to the torrid regions, and are quickly followed by azure skies and calm sunshine. Revolutions, too, for a time, may produce turbulence; yet revolutions clear the political atmosphere, and contribute greatly to the comfort and happiness of the human race. (5-6)

Thus, the American Revolution – George Washington’s revolution, «your revolution», in the addresser’s remark – is discussed as the first cause and beginning of a global dissemination of revolutionary trouble-spots, that, like a flame «which you have kindled», are apocalyptically foreseen as bound to flare up throughout Europe, with revolutionary France representing the outpost of this global movement of liberation. A forthcoming age in the near future is thus envisioned, in which Europe, presently besotted (presumably at the spectacle she is witnessing) will be «without a peer, without a hierarchy, and without a despot». The disquieting radical quality of

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Rushton’s rhetoric was evident to the eyes of a contemporary reviewer: «[i]f we did not know that, with such writers, despot means even the most limited King, we should heartily unite with Mr. Rushton in the third article of his wish; but, as it is, we hope that he will be no more a prophet, than he is a genuine Englishman»14. Rushton’s formulation seems indeed to evoke Burke’s defence of established hierarchies and hereditary power in his Reflections on the Revolution in France15, only to turn it upside down. The passage is interspersed with nouns and verbs belonging to the semantic field of slavery: oppressed, fetters, enslaved, emancipation, shackles. The rhetorical connection of the offspring of the American Revolution with the countless, silent victims of the slave policy of the nation that the Revolution generated, exposes contradiction and paves the way for the argument that follows. Rushton’s discussion displays the writer’s remoulding of the arguments and tropes permeating the ideological debate in the age of the French Revolution, where the need to «enlighten» men in order to counteract «the interest of governors to keep the governed in ignorance» resonates with echoes of Richard Price’s Discourse on the Love of Our Country16, but also with a politically subversive use of Burke’s aesthetic categories of the sublime and the beautiful, which 14 “Art. 59. Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, of Mount Vernon, in Virginia, on His Continuing to Be a Proprietor of Slaves. By Edmund [sic] Rushton. 12mo. 24 pp. Liverpool printed. No Printer’s Name. 1797.” The British Critic, A New Review, for January, February, March, April, May, and June M DCC XCVIII, vol. XI, London: Printed for F. and C. Rivington, 1798, p. 216. 15 «[…] an inheritable line […] was to be continued in the future […] in order that the monarchy might preserve an unbroken unity through all ages, and might be preserved (with safety to our religion) in the old approved mode by descent […]. No experience has taught us, than in any other course or method than that of an hereditary crown, our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary right». E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), C. C. O’Brien ed., Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, p. 109. Emphasis in the original. 16 «Our first concern, as lovers of our country, must be to enlighten it. – Why are the nations of the world so patient under despotism? – Why do they crouch to tyrants, and submit to be treated as if they were a herd of cattle? Is it not because they are kept in darkness, and want knowledge? Enlighten them and you will elevate them. Shew them they are men, and they will act like men. Give them just ideas of civil government, and let them know that it is an expedient for gaining protection against injury and defending their rights, and it will be impossible for them to submit to governments which, like most of those now in the world, are usurpations on the rights of men, and little better than our contrivances for enabling the few to oppress the many». R. Price, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, London: T. Cadell, 1789, pp. 11-13 (emphasis in the original). For this reference, I am indebted to L. M. Crisafulli, “Il dibattito ideologico in Inghilterra negli anni della Rivoluzione francese”, in L. M. Crisafulli ed., La Rivoluzione francese in Inghilterra, Napoli: Liguori, 1990, pp. 15 ff.

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shape the movement of history towards a revolutionary upheaval into the image of the hurricane, spreading a «devastation» that foreshadows renewal and the triumph of the beauty of «azure skies and calm sunshine» (7). The letter’s addressee is summoned as witness and initiator of the epic transformation in progress. The passage from the first to the second part – preparation and attack – is signalled by the shift from the public to the private sphere, which is the dimension where the addressee’s «inconsistency» (15) and «shameless dereliction of principle» (10), i.e. his incapacity to live up to his professed ideals, become apparent. In a sense, the whole text may be described as revolving around the laying bare of the irredeemable distance separating the public figure of the statesman from his private side as a «proprietor of human flesh and blood» (10). This, in turn, points to a more general incongruity, regarding the nation as a whole: as argued in Henry Wiencek’s study on Washington and slavery, «his wrenching private conflict over race and slavery was a microcosm of the national struggle».17 The questioning of the sacredness of the right of property as applied to human beings, with the consequent diminishing of the humane to mere economic worth, which is even quantified – «from fifteen to twenty thousand pounds» (23) – is a key concept underlying Rushton’s critique, to the extent that it shapes the very rhetorical organisation of the text, providing the lexico-semantic texture that connects all other threads into a consistent and tightly-woven whole. Thus, whereas the «Liverpool merchant» appears as an ironically fitting term of comparison regarding such «business» (9), it is the concept itself of property in «human flesh and blood» that is laid bare as morally and politically untenable, building on the cumulative effect that the incessant, almost obsessive repetition of the epithet slave-holder and its synonyms entails: For seven years you bravely fought the battles of your country, and contributed greatly to the establishment of her liberties; yet you are a slave-holder! You have been raised by your fellow-citizens to one of the most exalted situations upon earth, the first magistrate of a free people; yet you are a slave-holder! A majority of your countrymen have recently discovered that slavery is injustice, and are gradually abolishing the wrong, yet you continue to be a slave-holder! You are a firm believer 17

H. Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003, p. 11.

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too, and your letters and speeches are replete with pious reflections on the divine being, providence, &c. yet you are a slave-holder! (21-22)

Both the levels of argumentation and a careful rhetorical modulation are engaged, and writing takes on the pace of a speech meant for oral delivery. The inexorable progression of Rushton’s indictment, quoted here at its very climax, has been prepared by a stringent succession of connected segments. The reasoning proceeds almost syllogistically: «You took arms in defence of the rights of man – Your negroes are men – Where then are the rights of your negroes?» (12-13) Thus, while the contradiction between professed ideals and factual policy is repeatedly exposed, the charge is further aggravated by the very moral stature of the figure involved. The «callous-hearted planter», in the same way as the Liverpool merchant, is less reproachable than the hero of the revolution, who is supposed to be aware of the «atrociousness» of slavery, and still «continues to be a proprietor of slaves» (10, 14): «the force of an example» like the president’s, Rushton argues, is culpably steered in the wrong direction, offering support to the justification of slavery by the very power of Washington’s moral authority, which makes him all the more morally responsible. This, however, is a charge that is extended to include the nation of the United States as a whole, in relation to her own recent history of ‘enslavement’ and liberation: «what the British were at that period, you are in a great degree at this – you are boastful of your own rights – you are violators of the rights of others» (17). Here the discussion is brought a step forward, with the silent and almost absent protagonists of his pleading finally in the foreground. At a first analysis, Rushton would not seem to depart from the recognisable set of tropes and formal features that Brycchan Carey has identified as defining the domain of the antislavery genus of the ‘rhetoric of sensibility’18. His relatively few references to the enslaved African people are obviously meant to inspire sympathy and pity towards the victims, variously described as «unfortunate negroes» (14), «[members] of the sable race now […] pining in bondage» (14), «sable brethren» (15), «the unhappy objects of your tyranny» (17), «poor and unoffending negroes» (23). Still, at closer look Rushton’s argumentation appears as potentially seditious as rigorously logical. On the basis of 18

B. Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760-1807, Basingstoke-New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 18-45.

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a provocative invitation to consistency, moral justification to prospective slave revolt is provided – which, it should be added, makes a veritable isotopy, a constant occurrence in his poetic corpus19. Thus slaves, who supposedly do not have «the power of resistance», may well wish to emulate their masters, and choose to «resolve on liberty or death» (17) – which had been the catchphrase of the on-going Haitian insurrection. Washington’s own rhetoric is at this stage both evoked and undermined; his very words of liberty, quoted extensively from the address he gave on January 1, 1796, to the ambassador of the French republic, are exposed as empty signifiers, mere simulacra of the values they stand for, once their applicability is tested against the prevailing interests at stake: «…possessed of these energetic sentiments, […] would you have the virtue to applaud so just and animating a movement as a revolt of your southern Negroes? No! I fear both you and your countrymen would rather imitate the cold-blooded British cabinet […] and scatter […] terror, desolation and death». (18-19) The political, as well as moral, responsibility for the defence of what «the truly republican laws of [the] country are pleased to call […] property» (19) is ultimately both individual and collective, as appropriately distilled in the image of the president blurring into the southern planter, «with the state constitutions in one hand, and the cow skin in the other».

4. The American afterlife In the course of 1797, the document was to appear in the United States in no less than three different editions, each adding elements of interest to the history of its dissemination. Friday, May 26th, 1797. Barely three months after its appearance in Britain, Rushton’s Letter is published on the front page of «The Time-Piece and Literary Companion», the Anti-Federalist newspaper edited by Philip Freneau, who had issued the first number on March 19

See for instance The West Indian Eclogues (1787) or “Toussaint to His Troops” (publ. 1806). I have dealt with these issues extensively elsewhere. See “Questioning the ‘Enterprising Spirit of the People’: Abolitionist Poetry in Liverpool, 1784-1788”, «La Questione Romantica» 2005/18-19, pp. 17-31; “Re-Constructing Toussaint in the Romantic Era: History, Agency and the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)”, in U. Pallua, A. Knapp, A. Exenberger eds., (Re)Figuring Human Enslavement: Images of Power, Violence and Resistance, Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press, 2009, pp. 67-83.

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13 in that same year20. As with entire works of Paine and Rousseau, Rushton’s piece was thus rendered immediately available to a selected American reading public. An editorial note in the column headed «New York» in the same issue describes Rushton’s address as an «aweful Appeal to the moral sentiment of the world», and «a lesson, which cannot be soon forgot», in a country – thus taking up Rushton’s main point – «which prides itself in having given the first spring to a universal emancipation from the fangs of tyrants»21. The comment, which also contains an exhortation to «the patriotic Washington» to help move the country towards the «grand object», the emancipation of slaves, lays emphasis on the «accumulation of exorbitant wealth» as a moving force in the perpetuation of the «miseries of the far greater part of our species», which makes the piece clearly akin to Rushton’s condemnation of profit as the heart of the matter. This testifies to the affinity between the American poet-journalist, he himself author of some antislavery poems, and the British. Rushton contributed poetic compositions regularly in the year and a half life of the paper, including a small group of poems, such as “Written for the 14th July, 1794”, and “On Negro Slavery”, which do not appear in any of the two main editions of his poetry22. The issues immediately following the publication of the Letter bear witness to the heated debate that it raised. One of its protagonists was a woman poet, who signed a “Vindication to Edward Rushton”, that appeared on Monday, 29th under the pseudonym of ‘Matilda’. Matilda was actually Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin, of Quaker ascendancy, and the wife of Jacob Schieffelin, a wealthy New York City merchant of German origin, and founder of a long-lasting wholesale drug business23. Her solid background probably helps explain the lurking fear that accompanies her defence of the President from Rushton’s «sacrilegious pen»: But, grant the event succeed thy favourite theme, Incautious Justice should complete thy scheme; Fly, hapless WHITES! to dens and sheltering caves, 20

F. Smith, “Philip Freneau and «The Time-Piece and Literary Companion»”, «American Literature» 4, 3/1932 (November), p. 273. 21 «The Time-Piece and Literary Companion», 26th May, 1797, p. 131. 22 «The Time-Piece and Literary Companion,» I, 54 (Fri, July 1797), p. 214; I, 66 (Fri, August 11, 1797), p. 262. 23 Schieffelin Family Papers, 1756-1907, The New York Public Library, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York: John D. Stinson, 1990.

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Fly, from the vengeance and the wants of slaves! Freed from restraints, a rude unletter’d band, Start into force, and desolate the land Prone to each vice that slavery inspires, Fix’d indolence, and uncontroul’d desires; Fly, hapless WHITES! to woods and sheltering caves, Or toil to feed emancipated slaves!

An indignant answer, signed “The Slave” (a pseudonym I haven’t been able to identify) followed on May 30th, which, while blaming the «Songstress» for her implicit pleading for slavery, calls up Virtue as weeping at Washington’s future grave, because of the «one stain», resting on «his Glory» (p. 142). The verse debate went on from issue to issue for weeks, as a testimony of the topicality of Rushton’s text. At least another American edition of the Letter can be tracked in 1797, and is most interestingly located at Lexington. Kentucky was one of the states where slaves were «legally recognised as chattel property» but where, as historians Harrison and Klotter point out, «antislavery sentiment existed from early days»24, making slavery an issue at stake during the 1790s debate on state constitution. The publisher and editor of the «Kentucky Gazette» John Bradford was an eminent advocate of abolition, the founder of the Democratic Society of Kentucky in 179325 and later a Kentucky delegate in 1802. The dissemination of the letter continued in the following decades26. On January 1st, 1831 William Lloyd Garrison, in partnership with Isaac Knapp, launched in Boston «The Liberator», the weekly paper that would accompany and substantiate the antislavery campaign through the end of the Civil War. In that same year, a new edition of the Letter appeared, published as a separate pamphlet by «Garrison and Knapp, Printers, Office of the Liberator, Boston». The editor’s introductory note, while laying emphasis on the inherent value of «the most judicious and faithful appeal» by the «eminent philanthropist in

24 L. H. Harrison., J. C. Klotter, A New History of Kentucky, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997, p. 174. 25 M. Sioli, “Lexington, Kentucky: la memoria della Rivoluzione sulla Wilderness Road”, «Storia Urbana» 25, 94/2001, pp. 27-31. 26 A broadside edition is also recorded in New York, whose dating is uncertain. The Houghton Library Catalogue entry for the record amends the assumed 1797 dating to the early 1830s, due to its typography: «[i]t is likely that the broadside is contemporary with the pamphlet edition published by Garrison & Knapp at Boston in 1831, rather than with the original edition published at Liverpool in 1997».

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Liverpool»27, establishes a network of references that locate Rushton’s text within contemporary radical, abolitionist and revolutionary discourse. Washington’s «great sin», his posthumous manumission of his slaves, the potential moral impact of his actions, the risk of having «public admiration of his career run into idolatry» (1), are discussed in the light of the document’s current topicality. The opportunity of its «republication at the present time» is stated, in that «a great multitude of southern oppressors are trying to hide themselves behind the example of Washington» (3). Garrison draws on the enflamed rhetoric of Daniel O’Connell, the ‘Irish Liberator’, and quotes extensively from some of his speeches, delivered at various Anti-slavery meetings, presumably between 1829 and 183128, to reconstruct/deconstruct this «dark trait» (2) in the president’s biography, as a way of introduction to the calm and plain rebuke, which is the text of the Letter itself. The ghost of Simon Bolivar, who had died in December 1830, appears, conjured up in O’Connell’s words, as the contrastive example of «the purest of patriots», who freed his slaves while alive, in a sort of mise en abyme construction, whereby Garrison, introducing Rushton, quotes O’Connell who refers to Bolivar. Garrison’s republication was evidently crucial in determining the history of the American response to Rushton’s text. The Letter was further reprinted by Garrison in the Abolitionist: or Record of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and in the Liberator in the same year29, as further evidence of the political relevance attached to the document. An article on “Liverpool Fifty Years Ago”, published in the Liberty Bell anti-slavery gift-book for 1849, was to devote twelve full pages to a critical-biographical note on the blind poet of Liverpool, where extended reference was made to the «famous letter sowell known to Anti-Slavery readers»30. In closing his “Introductory 27 E. Rushton, Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, Boston: Garrison & Knapp, Printers, Office of the Liberator, 1831, p. 3. Further references in parentheses in the text. 28 See D. O’Connell, Upon American Slavery: with Other Irish Testimonies, 1860, AntiSlavery Tracts, No. 5, N.S., New York: Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Samuel J. May Antislavery Collection, Cornell University Library. Online. http://ebooks. library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=mayantislavery;idno=38921706;view=imag e;seq=1 29 The Abolitionist: or Record of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, edited by a Committee, Boston: Garrison & Knapp, 1833, pp. 11-14; «The Liberator», 3, 2 (Sat. Jan 12, 1833). 30 R. D. Webb, “Liverpool Fifty Years Ago”, The Liberty Bell. By Friends of Freedom, Boston: National Anti-Slavery Bazaar, 1849, pp. 135-136.

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Remarks”, Garrison hypothesises that the letter may have had some role in Washington’s final determination, as stated in his last will. This is clearly a problem for historians to ascertain. What matters, here, however, is the record – which the very juxtaposition of the names involved, as occurring in the closing page of the Garrison edition, renders powerfully visual – of a compelling case of transatlantic double crossing, with the failed personal exchange that became the source and the starting point for the Letter’s powerful American afterlife of its own. The traces as are being reconstructed chart a complex process of dissemination, which involved various media available for public circulation in the print culture of the age: as a separate pamphlet, an article in the front-page of a quality periodical, or a broadside, the Letter evidently appealed to a variety of reading publics, and its relevance in the making of transatlantic abolitionist discourse still requires full investigation.

Works cited “Art. 59. Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, of Mount Vernon, in Virginia, on His Continuing to Be a Proprietor of Slaves. By Edmund [sic] Rushton. 12mo. 24 pp. Liverpool printed. No Printer’s Name. 1797.” The British Critic, A New Review, for January, February, March, April, May, and June M DCC XCVIII, vol. XI, London: Printed for F. and C. Rivington, 1798, p. 216. “Biographical Sketch of Edward Rushton, Written by his Son”, 1814, «The Belfast Monthly Magazine» Dec. 1814, pp. 474-485. Burke E., 1968, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), ed. C. C. O’ Brien, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Burke T., 2001, “‘Humanity is now the pop’lar cry’: laboring-class writers and the Liverpool slave trade, 1787-1789,” «The Eighteenth Century» 42, 3/2001, pp. 245-263. Carey B., 2005, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760-1807, Basingstoke-New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Clarkson T., 1808, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Reese and Orme. Crisafulli, L. M., 1990, “Il dibattito ideologico in Inghilterra negli anni della Rivoluzione francese”, in L. M. Crisafulli ed., La Rivoluzione francese in Inghilterra, Napoli: Liguori, pp. 11-27.

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Dellarosa F., 2005, “Questioning the ‘Enterprising Spirit of the People’: Abolitionist Poetry in Liverpool, 1784-1788”, «La Questione Romantica» 2005/18-19, pp. 17-31. Dellarosa F., 2009, “Re-Constructing Toussaint in the Romantic Era: History, Agency and the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)”, in U. Pallua, A. Knapp, A. Exenberger eds., (Re)Figuring Human Enslavement: Images of Power, Violence and Resistance, Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press, pp. 67-83. Engerman S., Drescher S., Paquette R., eds., 2001, Slavery, Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press. Finkelman P., 2001, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson, 2nd ed., New York: M. E. Sharpe. Johnson S., 1775, Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, London. O’Connell D., Upon American Slavery: with Other Irish Testimonies, 1860, Anti-Slavery Tracts, No. 5, N.S., New York: Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Samuel J. May Antislavery Collection, Cornell University Library. Online. http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/ pageviewer-idx?c=mayantislavery;idno=38921706;view=image;seq=1 Price R., 1789, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, London: T. Cadell. Rushton E., 1797, Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, of Mount Vernon, in Virginia, on His Continuing to Be a Proprietor of Slaves, Liverpool Printed. Rushton E., 1806, Poems, London: T. Ostell. Rushton E., 1824, Poems and Other Writings, to Which is Added, a Sketch of the Life of the Author by the Rev. William Shepherd, London: Effingham Wilson. Rushton E., 1831, Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, Boston: Garrison & Knapp, Printers, Office of the Liberator. Sanderson F. E., 1976, “The Liverpool Abolitionists”, in R. Anstey, P. E. H. Hair, eds., Liverpool, the African Slave Trade and Abolition: Essays to Illustrate Current Knowledge and Research, Liverpool: Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, pp. 196-238. Schieffelin Family Papers, 1756-1907, 1990, The New York Public Library, Manuscript and Archives Division, New York: John D. Stinson. Shepherd W., 1824, “A Sketch of the Life of the Author,” in Poems and Other Writings by the Late Edward Rushton, London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, pp. ix-xxviii. Sioli M., 2001, “Lexington, Kentucky: la memoria della Rivoluzione sulla Wilderness Road”, «Storia Urbana» 25, 2001/94, pp. 17-34. Smith F., 1932, “Philip Freneau and «The Time-Piece and Literary Companion»”, «American Literature» 4, 1932/3 (November), pp. 270-287. «The Time-Piece and Literary Companion», 1797-1798. Twohig D., 2001, “‘That Species of Property’: Washington’s Role in the

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Controversy Over Slavery” in D. Higginbotham ed., George Washington Reconsidered, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, pp. 114-138. Wallace J., 1797, A General and Descriptive History of the Antient and Present State of the Town of Liverpool […] Together with a Circumstantial Account of the True Causes of Its Extensive African Trade (1795), Liverpool: Crane and Jones, 2nd ed. Webb R. D., “Liverpool Fifty Years Ago”, The Liberty Bell. By Friends of Freedom, Boston: National Anti-Slavery Bazaar, 1849, pp. 117-146. Wiencek H., 2003, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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PART II IN THE

THEATRE

OF

EMPIRE

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SLAVERY

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LAUGHING BRAVELY IN ILLEGITIMATE THEATRE: THE COMIC SPIRIT IN ROMANTIC-ERA SLAVERY PLAYS Gioia Angeletti

1. Staging blackness and slavery in the Romantic period In a slave-holding nation like eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, the representation of black people and their enslavement on stage became a source, and, in some cases, even a guarantee of popular success. By the end of the eighteenth century there were around 15,000 black people in England1, a tide of otherness that inevitably struck the contemporary literary scene, as is testified by the great amount of printed materials – both literary and non-literary works, including dramas – devoted to slavery and related issues in the crucial decades preceding and following abolition2. As regards specifically theatrical performances, Jeffrey Cox remarks that a «regular London theatregoer would have seen depictions of African characters or of slavery during perhaps every season of the 18th and early 19th century»3. These characters were played by white men in blackface; most critics and theatre historians agree that the first

1 See J. Walvin, The Black Presence: A Documentary History of the Negro in England, 1555-1860, London: 1971. Walvin, however, clarifies that this figure cannot be regarded as absolute, since no census returns are available to prove it. 2 An exhaustive collection of a wide range of Romantic-period creative and non-creative texts dealing with transatlantic slavery is P. J. Kitson, D. Lee (gen. eds.), Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, 8 vols, London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. 3 J. Cox (ed.), “Introduction” to Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. 5: Drama, p. ix.

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black man appearing on the English stage was the American actor Ira Aldridge in 18254. As Felicity Nussbaum has underlined, black parts acted by white men heighten «the instabilities and contradictions surrounding race in eighteenth-century culture», since they may be read as an attempt to «cleanse England of its racial impurities and its slave history», by suggesting «a racism located principally in the skin and in the physiognomy»5. If racial colour is represented as evanescent, the implication is that the essential core of man is always «white». By providing a contact zone, to borrow Linda Pratt’s phrase6, between white and black cultures, while, at the same time, insinuating the ephemerality of racial difference and an implied desire to erase it, blackface practices turn out to be an important index of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century ideological controversies concerning race. Since such a recurrence of figures and themes also characterises much Romantic-period comic theatre, one question worth investigating is the unstable ideological import of plays which clearly responded to the contemporary spectators’ demand for sheer entertainment, while, in some cases, participating in the emergent and increasingly 4

Black-faced performers were already present in Renaissance-period legitimate playhouses. Actors dressed as Africans were common in court entertainments until the Civil War; then, after the Restoration, actual Africans brought to England made their appearance on stage, but mainly in minor parts. A. G. Barthelemy identifies Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones’s The Masque of Blackness (1605) as the first performance in which actors blackened their skins. See A. G. Barthelemy, Black Face, Maligned Race. The Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southerne, Baton Rouge and London: Lousiana State University Press, 1987, p. 20. Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780), born on a slave ship to the West Indies, became the first Afro-British playwright, theatre and art critic, composer and patron of the arts. However, as his biographer Joseph Jekyll reports, he did not manage to become an actor – he would have wished to play the part of Othello and Oroonoko at Drury Lane in the 1760s – because he had some articulation problems. See I. Sancho, Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African, ed. Vincent Carretta, New York: Penguin Books, 1998. See also F. Nussbaum, “The theatre of empire: racial counterfeit, racial realism”, in Kathleen Wilson (ed.), A New Imperial History. Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 71-72. So Ira Aldridge is recognised as the first black actor performing in a starring role on the English stage; he played the lead in a melodrama entitled The Revolt of Surinam, or A Slave’s Revenge, in fact an adaptation of Oroonoko, at the Coburg (now Old Vic) in October 1825. On Ira Aldridge’s roles see H. Marshall and M. Stock, Ira Aldridge, The Negro Tragedian, Carbonale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958; and H. Waters, Racism on the Victorian Stage. Representation of Slavery and the Black Character, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, chapter 3. 5 F. Nussbaum, “The theatre of empire: racial counterfeit, racial realism”, cit., p. 74. 6 Cf. M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge, 1992.

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heated debate on slavery and abolition. The fact is that numerous plays in the so called «illegitimate» genres stage blackness and slavery as associated with the language of comedy, zany kinetics and preposterous action. Could it be that grotesquery, burlesque and drollery in these cases become disguised strategies to confront the anxieties and paradoxes of a traditionally liberal society permitting a practice such as slavery that denies the same principles of liberalism? De facto, as regards individual as well as national responses to the slavery issue, Romantic drama and theatre, both legitimate and illegitimate, hold up the mirror to society; they function, that is, as a metonymy of the British state, a fictional site in which the audience, bursting either into laughter or tears, is constantly called to reflect upon the «facts» determining the cultural and political context. A sociological and anthropological approach to the theatrical culture of the age that takes into account the important contribution of the contemporary reviews and commentaries can help the scholar understand how blacks were perceived culturally, and, specifically, how British people reacted to the institution of, as well as the debates about, slavery. On stage spectators could possibly recognise either their humanitarian principles of equality and liberty, or their fears of miscegenation, racial contamination, and «that burgeoning numbers of free blacks arriving in the country would take the jobs of English domestics»7. As Nussbaum has clarified, «the drama incorporated colonial encounters onto the skins, gestures, and dialogue of white actors at once to fabricate the representation of racial difference, to celebrate and worry it, and finally to grant it a recognizable reality»8. Romantic theatre records those selfsame ambivalent attitudes that mark Britons’ response to the question of slavery, recognised by many as a shameful offence against egalitarianism, though, at the same time, a profitable machine facilitating Britain’s economic development and commercial fortune as a world power. However, as Wylie Sypher has claimed, openly anti-slavery plays are hard to find in the general panorama of eighteenth-century British drama, and even later on, if the «drama in which the Negro plays his

7 F. Nussbaum, “The theatre of empire: racial counterfeit, racial realism”, cit., p. 74. On the English anxiety about miscegenation and fear of impurity see also F. Nussbaum, The Limits of the Human. Fictions of Anomaly, Race and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 8 Ivi, p. 71.

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part»9 is rather conspicuous and frequently performed, it often resorts to black-slavery imagery as an allegorical vehicle for confronting either more general political issues or other forms of enslavement – class and gender, for example – as is often the case in female dramaturgy10. Curiously enough, though, Sypher admits that, in the eighteenth-century pro- and anti-abolitionist climate, «[w]hat the drama did contribute was the comic Negro»11, whom he regards as a more realistic character than the bon sauvages populating that repertory of contemporary theatre privileging a sentimental attitude to slavery12. In spite of, or perhaps because of the contradictions and paradoxes it stages, Romantic comic theatre seems to provide a privileged site for confronting the dilemmas of an increasingly multiracial society. This argument applies both to those comedies that uphold the continuation, evolution and transformation of the Comedy of Manners tradition13 and to «illegitimate» forms that, contrary to the general critical 9 W. Sypher, Guinea’s Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the XVIIIth Century, Chapel Hill: The University of South Carolina Press, 1942, p. 231. 10 Racial or interracial romance, for example, is central in Mariana Starke’s dramaturgy, where it often becomes an expedient to talk about woman’s condition in general. See, for instance, the plays The Sword of Peace (1789) and The Widow of Malabar (1791). Before her, another woman, Mrs. Weddell, associated slavery with gender subjugation in the tragedy Incle and Yarico (1742). Isaac Bickerstaff also confronts gender issues both in The Padlock, which will be analysed in section 3, and in a play set in the east, The Sultan (1775), whose protagonist is Roxalana, a British girl who endorses feminist reform within the seraglio. When slavery images are used in drama to refer to a universal human condition, not necessarily related to the historical reality of the slave trade, the risk, as Cox has observed, is that this drama tends to eschew the question of Britain’s responsibility in a business that contradicts its liberal tradition. This is also why most plays dealing with slavery cannot be regarded as straightforwardly abolitionist and anti-establishment. Cit. Cox, “Introduction”, pp. xi-xii. 11 Ivi, p. 232. 12 Here the examples are numerous, most of them focusing on the topos of the good master/thankful slave relationship, on the fiction of plantation-life idyll, or on the idea of the bon savage deserving liberty. See, among others, George Colman’s comic opera Inkle and Yarico (1787), Thomas Bellany’s afterpiece The Benevolent Planters (1789), Frederick Reynolds’s comedy Laugh When You Can (1799), Archibald MacLaren’s ballad opera The Negro Slaves (1799), and George Colman’s abolitionist drama The Africans (1809). For a study of the eighteenth-century vision of blackness in relation to abolitionist sentiments, see A. Lively, Masks: Blackness, Race and the Imagination, London: Chatto and Windus, 1998, in particular chapter 2. An early study, yet still relevant, on Romantic-period sentimental writings dealing with slavery is E. B. Dykes, The Negro in English Romantic Thought, or A Study of Sympathy for the Oppressed, Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, 1942. 13 This is the case, for example, of Hannah Cowley’s comedies. On how she inherits and appropriates the comedic tradition, see Jeffrey N. Cox and Michael Gamer, “‘Torn from its Genus’: Hannah Cowley on Comedy, Laughter, Morality”, G. Angeletti (ed.), Emancipation, Liberation, and Freedom. Romantic Drama and Theatre in Britain, 1760-1830, Parma: Monte Università Parma, 2010, pp. 87-116.

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consensus dismissing them as sheer popular entertainment («afterpieces» intended as a diversion from the seriousness of the mainpiece repertory), sometimes show, to borrow Julia Swindells’s words, «[…] the power of staging a performance for the purpose of furthering a cause»14, however disputed and ambiguous it may be.

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2. Black servants and slaves in illegitimate comic theatre Throughout most of the Romantic period, Covent Garden, Drury Lane and, in the summer season, the Haymarket were the only «patent» or «legitimate» theatres, that is, the playhouses legally entitled to perform the canonical genres of tragedy and comedy after the passing of regulations such as the Licensing Act of 1737 and the Act of 1752, the latter «for the better preventing thefts and robberies, and for regulating places of public entertainment, and punishing persons keeping disorderly houses»15. However, as Jane Moody has demonstrated, towards the end of the eighteenth century, British dramatic culture underwent a crucial transformation whereby, besides London’s patent playhouses, new «minor», «illegitimate» theatres began to emerge, and, with them, also «an absolute opposition between authentic and spurious theatrical forms, an opposition which soon begins to be imagined as a nightmarish confrontation between quasi-ethereal textuality and grotesque corporeality»16. Charles II’s system of royal patents had inaugurated a classification of theatrical genres (specific and pure versus unauthentic and non-literary) which continued to be supported by conservative theatre managers as well as authors and critics throughout the eighteenth-century, as is evinced by the many articles and reviews published by the contemporary press. Whatever could not be classified as comedy or tragedy was labelled as a «monstrous medley», the result of an outrageous generic miscegenation which risked compromising the supremacy of the British dramatic tradition17. 14 J. Swindells, Glorious Causes. The Grand Theatre of Political Change, 1789-1833, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. xiv. 15 J. Moody, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 17. 16 Ivi, p. 12. Several «minor» theatres were opened in London in the early years of the nineteenth century, mostly located in lower-class districts, such as the Surrey and the Coburg (today’s Old Vic) south of the Thames, the Pavilion, the Grecian and the Britannia in the east of London. 17 Cfr. Ivi, pp. 12-13. As an example of metatheatrical critique of the dangerous «invasion»

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Under the umbrella of illegitimate theatrical genres were included melodramas, musical romances, comic and ballad operas, harlequinades, pantomimes, extravaganzas, farces, and later melodramas – in sum, all those hybrid forms of entertainment relying on a strong visual impact and spectacular effects that unquestionably provided amusement18. However, one may even conjecture that the predominant corporality and immediate sensory hold of these shows might also function as devices to distract the audience from latent subversive contents, or underlying political and ideological issues. Black slavery and the fervid, dilemmatic debate on its legitimacy might thus be part of or be implied by the staged action in such a way as to succeed in eschewing the censorship of intransigent licensers of plays. Without offering definite solutions to the controversy concerning British people’s awareness of the slave-market vis à vis the recognition of its immorality, many of these performances seem to elect irony and paradox as structural and thematic strategies to pose crucial open questions, to turn colonial and imperial topoi into spectacles – either to admire or to deprecate. Like the later nineteenth-century music-hall and the early twentieth-century silent movie comedy, illegitimate theatrical genres

of these hybrid genres, Moody refers to David Garrick’s Harlequin’s Invasion, performed at Drury Lane in 1759, in which Harlequin first attacks Shakespeare but eventually sinks through the trap door. 18 Although many of these hybrid performances came to be staged in the patent houses, some of them, especially those less dependent on the spoken word, increasingly took place in the minor theatres. See J. Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830, 10 vols., Bath: Carrington, 1832. Because of their hybridised nature, any attempt to define the specificities of illegitimate genres is destined to fail. In some cases, different terms are used by eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century drama commentators to refer to the same or similar concepts. For example, «burletta», being until about the 1820s a form privileging music and miming on the spoken word, is sometimes juxtaposed to comic opera or, generally, musical drama. David Worrall is one of those critics sharing this view. He describes burletta as «drama set to music, [...] the dominant dramatic mode for the majority of Romantic-period playhouses and for the London theatres in particular». See D. Worrall, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, 1787-1832, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 3. «Farce» may be sometimes found in theatre criticism and theory as synonymous with comic opera if it is set to music. «Ballad opera» and «comic opera» may also be found with similar meanings, although the former generally consists of both spoken and musical components. «Pantomime» and «harlequinade» present more or less the same features, so that the latter may be regarded as a specific version of the former. John O’Brien defines pantomime as follows: «mode of performance [that] fused Continental commedia dell’arte characters, classical mythology, dance, opera, acrobatics, and farce» and that «took its name from silent dance performances of the classical world but would come to be considered a characteristically British form». See J. O’Brien, Harlequin Britain. Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690-1760, Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2004, p. xiii.

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could, in other words, become vehicles of political debate by means of generic transgression and pastiche, combining the serious with the comic, high with low culture, verbal and body language, Commedia dell’Arte with classical mythology, dance and acrobatics with operatic elements. In particular, the comic black character, «Negro» or «Moor» – terms which were often used interchangeably to signify the racial other19 – recurrently appears among the dramatis personae of these «transgeneric» plays in the second half of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth-century. As a protagonist of popular theatre, he is mostly identified with stereotypical figures, easily recognisable to the heterogeneous Romantic-period theatre audience. Unlike the black characters in tragedies, they usually sing, play an instrument, dance, and speak «Negro» dialect. Sometimes, owing to their colour, they may be associated with the Prince of Darkness or black magic20. On other occasions, they become prototypes of the working class, mainly coalminers and chimney sweepers, so that «blackness» almost coincides with a specific class marker, as well as being a central feature of the so called «new lows»21. 19 Throughout the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth century, many men of letters employ words such as «Negro», «Indian», and «Moor» indiscriminately, because the Moors were supposed to be mostly black or very swarthy, which explains the use of the term «blackamoor», often found in slavery plays. 20 This link of blackness to evil or the devil was already a recurring motif in seventeenthcentury theatre, for example in plays such as Thomas Dekker’s Lust’s Dominion (1600), Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer (1677), and Edward Ravenscroft’s reworking of Titus Andronicus (1686). In her study on racial and racist representations on the Victorian stage, Hazel Waters maintains that the comical black servant «became the progenitor of the most degraded black image», since his revengeful, violent counterpart at least inspired fear, and adds that the black character in general «expressed not just that well-known psychological projection, the ‘Other’, but an ingrained, dynamic relationship to the development of racism in the nineteenth century». Cit. H. Waters, p. 4, 7. While this study concentrates on the period from 1830 to 1860, it also provides a useful introduction to the representation of race in that period by looking at the stereotype of the black character and how it evolved during the 18th and early 19th centuries. 21 The phrase «new lows» is used by Julie Carlson to refer both to theatrical genres in late eighteenth-century London, such as farce, comic opera, and pantomime, growing increasingly popular at the time, even in licensed playhouses, and to those social classes, types, and contexts, deemed as economically and culturally «low», which were given a voice in these illegitimate dramatic genres. Cfr. J. Carlson, “New Lows in Eighteenth-Century Theater: The Rise of Mungo”, European Romantic Review, 18:2 (April, 2007), pp. 139147. «Blacks» was moreover the name given to rural gangs of poachers and deerthieves active in Waltham and Windsor Forest in 1722 and 1723; they used to wear black masks probably for the sake of anonymity. Walpole’s government’s response was the Black Act of 1723, which established that blacking one’s face was a capital crime. Cit. J. O’Brien, Harlequin Britain. Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690-1760, pp. 127-128.

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The following analysis will focus on two illegitimate genres and what may be regarded as textual paradigms for each: the comic opera, as exemplified by Isaac Bickerstaff’s The Padlock (1768) and Henry Bate’s The Black-a-moor Wash’d White (1776); and the harlequinade, in particular William Bates’s Harlequin Mungo; or, A Peep into the Tower (1788) and the anonymous Furibond; or, Harlequin Negro (1808).

3. Singing slavery in The Padlock (1768) and The Black-a-moor Wash’d White (1776)22 Documento acquistato da () il 2023/04/27.

3.1 The Padlock The comic opera The Padlock by Isaac Bickerstaff was first produced at Drury Lane on 3 October 1768. Not only did it become one staple of the repertoire in the London theatres throughout the 1770s, but, in the following century, it was also performed in various playhouses in Europe, America, and the British colonies23. As the authors of Biographia Dramatica observed, «few pieces have been more applauded than this was during the first season of its representation»24, while Julie Carlson has recently defined the protagonist, the West Indies servant Mungo, as the low prototype of the black character that was to generate many different spin-offs25. In fact, in the late eighteenth 22 The texts used here are the first edition of The Padlock, printed for William Griffin in 1768, included in J. Cox (ed), Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. 5: Drama, pp. 73-107; and the edition of The Black-a-moor Wash’d White printed by Cox and Bigg (London, 1776), located in the Rare Books archives of the Huntington Library (K-D 429). The songs included in this opera were also printed separately in the same year with a number of variations. Cfr. Airs, ballads, &c. in The blackamoor wash’d white. A new comic opera. As it will be performed this evening at the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane, London: Cox and Bigg, 1776. Quotations will be given in parentheses by act and scene. 23 For a discussion on Mungo’s success and the issues which emerge in the play see F. Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage. Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830s, Bari: Edizioni del Sud, 2009, pp. 49-57, and by the same author, «‘Thank you my Massas! Have you laugh your fill?’Acting out Racial Conflict in Theatrical Limina», in G. Angeletti (ed.), Emancipation, Liberation, and Freedom: Romantic Drama and Theatre in Britain, 1760-1830, Parma: MUP, 2010, pp. 37-57. 24 D. E. Baker, I. Reed, S. Jones, Biographia Dramatica; or, a Companion to the Playhouse, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1812, vol. 3, p. 114. 25 Cit. J. Carlson, “New Lows in Eighteenth-Century Theater: The Rise of Mungo”. Among Mungo’s heirs it is worth mentioning, apart from William Bates’ pantomime Harlequin Mungo, or, A Peep into the Tower (1787), which will be analysed in the next section of this article, the miscellany The Padlock open’d, or Mungo’s Medley (1771). Cit. Cox, Slavery,

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century «Mungo» became a generic name for any black person, and a slang term for Africans26. Moreover, «Mungo» is a play on «mungo», echoing the servant’s lines that became a catchphrase: «What e’er’s to be done,/ Poor black must run;/ Mungo here, Mungo dere,/ Mungo every where» (I. vi.). Significantly enough though, the name has Scots origins, which would seem to imply a connection between all individuals regarded as «primitive» in relation to the English, either within or without Great Britain27. The plot is drawn from Cervantes’s novel El Celoso Extremeño, translated as The Jealous Estremaduran28, as Bickerstaff himself suggests in the Advertisement. Don Diego, an ageing and wealthy West Indian planter, wants to marry Leonora, a beautiful young woman from a poor family, so he welcomes her to live under his roof until he becomes convinced of her virtuousness. Eventually Don Diego resolves to go and ask Leonora’s parents for her hand. So he orders the servant Ursula and Mungo, his Negro slave, to look after the house, but he also decides to lock all of them in, since «a woman’s not having it in her power to deceive you is the best security for her fidelity» (I. v). However, Leander, a young student in love with Leonora, pretending to be an ex-slave and lame beggar, and after serenading Mungo with his guitar and a bottle of wine, succeeds in entering the house, and declares his love to the woman. On his return Don Diego finds his servant totally intoxicated and discovers the deception, but soon admits his own fault and joins in the celebration of Leander and Leonora’s marriage. Mungo, played originally by the composer and actor Charles Dibdin and later in the nineteenth century by Ira Aldridge, embodies the comic quintessence of the play. Despite reflecting some features of the Negro character that would become stereotypical, Mungo is also Abolition, and Emancipation, p. 74; Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage, cit., p. 129 n. 28. 26 G. Gerzina, Black London: Life Before Emancipation, London: John Murray, 1995, p. 10. As Oldfield notices, «The character of Mungo became a popular obsession, celebrated in prints, silver tea caddies, and, interestingly, masquerades». See J. R. Oldfield, “The ‘Ties Of soft Humanity’: Slavery and Race in British Drama, 1760-1800”, «The Huntington Library Quarterly», 56: 1 (Winter, 1993), pp. 1-14 (p. 9). 27 F. Nussbaum, The Limits of the Human, p. 8. See also A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) by James Boswell. During their journey in Scotland, Boswell and Samuel Johnson visited Lord Mondobbo; then, when they left him on August 21, 1773, on their way to the Hebrides, the black servant of the Laird went with them. Boswell observed that the African in the north of Scotland showed similar manners to the native inhabitants. 28 In S. Croxall (ed.), A Select Collection of Novels (1720). Cit. in Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage, cit., p. 129 n. 31.

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a challenge to the hackneyed representation of the black male as one who arouses erotic impulses in the female characters. Unlike some of his successors (including Harlequin Mungo), Mungo is not involved in romantic or sexual pursuits; on the other hand, he pioneers some typical identity marks of the black character on stage, such as naivety, gullibility, and a passion for singing (mainly «songs and sarabands», I.iv), dancing and playing29. He is also the initiator of a peculiar way of speaking that looks forward to the nineteenth-century blackfaced minstrel singers’ dialect, a kind of pidgin or mongrel English, meant to produce comic effects. Mungo’s idiolect, as Gates observes, is «a caricature that signifies the difference that separated white from black»30. Mungo’s role, in other words, is essentially double, since he both provides comic relief through his drunkenness and penchant for song, and yet reveals the cruelty involved in the master-servant relationship. However, the comic tone prevents the audience from taking this issue too seriously – while perhaps having the advantage of obfuscating any negative judgement by the theatre censors on the latent ideology of the play. Scene vi in Act I provides the first example of this double-coded comic discourse, which is sometimes emphasised by the co-presence of, and contrast between, the humorous tone of the dialogues and the sentimental thrust of the incorporated songs. Whereas in the exchange of cues between Mungo and Don Diego even the violence of the master-slave relationship is used for comic ends, Mungo’s song at the end of the scene expressly reveals his unhappy state and can be regarded as an example of abolitionist verse: Diego. [...] Now tell me, do you know of any ill going on in my house? Mungo. Ah, Massa, a damn deal. Diego. How! That I’m a stranger to? Mungo. No, Massa, you lick me every day with your rattan; I’m sure Massa, that’s mischief enough for poor Neger man. [...] Mungo. Dear heart, what a terrible life am I led, A dog has a better that’s shelter’d and fed: Night and day ‘tis de same, 29 These recurring features are extensively illustrated by Nussbaum in “The Theatre of Empire: Racial Counterfeit, Racial Realism”, pp. 71-90. 30 H. L. Gates, Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the «Racial» Self, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 6.

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My pain is dere game; Me wish to de Lord me was dead. (I. vi)31.

«My pain is dere game» is one of those lines that lend themselves to multiple readings. Literally, it is an allusion to the cynical cruelty of slaveholders or tyrannical masters in general; on a figurative, metatheatrical level, the «game» could be taken as synonym for «ludicrous entertainment» and thus a slanted reference to popular performances such as The Padlock. Is Mungo acting here as a persona of the author to launch a self-ironic critique as a dramatic work that merely represents slavery without having any effect on the suffering it causes? Unquestionably, the «padlock» of the title, together with the recurrent motif of the locking key, is the central symbol of the imprisonment imposed by the fearful Don Diego, not only on Mungo but also on Leonora, thus encouraging the reader/spectator to draw a parallel between various forms of subjugation and confinement, involving in particular black people within a slave-holding society and women within the domestic walls in a patriarchal world. The whole opera is indeed pervaded by images of detention, fake protection and their reversals, so that liberty, first denied and finally achieved, with its embedded political resonances, can be regarded as the work’s leading theme. Leonora’s bird tied to a string is one such images, as is the garden – seemingly locus amoenus while in fact hortus conclusus – in which the woman, according to Don Diego, should feel «far from being a slave [but an] absolute mistress» (I. ii), whereas Leonora feels like «a gold-finch in a cage» (I.iii). In I. iv Leander compares Diego’s house, later described with its barred-up windows and front iron gate, to a monastery «or rather prison», and later on, in order to win Mungo and Ursula’s favour, the young man introduces himself as a Christian once enslaved by a Turkish tyrant. Real or invented, slavery is a presence with which the audience is constantly confronted, together with various attempts to question it and resist authority, including the subaltern characters’ symbolic and subversive act of helping the fake beggar to climb the fencing wall, and the resulting choral singing and dancing. 31 Dellarosa underlines the contrast between the allegro movement of Mungo’s song and the melancholy tone of his words, so that the lament forms an oxymoron with the jocundity of the tune, which seems to mimic the frenzied rhythm of a slave’s life. This song includes the famous lines «Mungo here, Mungo dere,/ Mungo everywhere». Slavery on Stage, cit. pp. 54-55.

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In fact, Mungo’s naive hinting that all social and racial conflicts can be solved through collective singing and dancing, until they «make a house ring, / And, tied to his garters, old Massa may swing» (II. ii), could again be seen as providing the spectators with the light entertainment meant to divert their mind from complex ideological issues, but, as J. R. Oldfield has pointed out, this kind of distraction could also produce empathic feelings and thus help «to build ‘a bridge of sympathy and understanding’ between the races which, in turn, made abolition seem possible as well as desirable»32. Likewise, the excipit of the play, by showing a radically changed, though hardly credible Don Diego, who not only forgives the conspirators but even grants the future husband and wife the promised dowry, seems to suggest that easy solutions and simple consolations may be given to social evils such as racial (and gender in this case) discrimination and enslavement. However, once again, the play’s final song, shared by all the characters, by blending serious and humorous lines serves its purpose of conveying a cogent political message (to those willing to hear it) while, at the same time, providing comic relief and mindliberating entertainment. Dellarosa endorses the essential duplicity of the play by seeing in it «a double interpretative option», since it can be received both as sheer entertainment and as a work participating in anti-slavery discourse33. Hence, in the finale, after Mungo’s hilarious metaphorical stanza on an owl wanting to marry a pretty bird but ending up with a cuckoo, Leonora takes the stage and delivers her message: «Ne’er let the mistress and the friend,/ In abject slave and tyrant end» (II. viii). The comic and the sentimental are yoked in The Padlock to convey a humanitarian message that an anonymous author strongly reinforced by composing a poem entitled «Epilogue to ‘The Padlock’», which appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine of October 1787. The date is significant as this is precisely when both religious and lay people began to be actively involved in the campaign against slavery and the slave trade, which Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp were calling attention to in Parliament. In the poem Mungo takes off his comic mask to address the theatrical audience as «sons of freedom», in order to awaken their sympathy for his plight, to ac32 Oldfield, “The ‘Ties of soft Humanity’”cit., p. 12. Oldfield quotes D. B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1966. 33 Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage, cit., p. 53.

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knowledge their responsibility for it, and to launch a defence of liberty and equality against racial discriminations34. 1787 is of course the year when the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed, but the emancipation of slaves would still take decades. In The Padlock Mungo remains a farcical slave seemingly accepting his lot, but in the Epilogue he unequivocally speaks up on behalf of all enslaved Africans35.

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3.2 The Blackamoor Wash’d White A more potent exemplification of the ongoing discourse of race is embedded in the two-act comic opera by Henry Bate The Blackamoor Wash’d White, produced at Drury Lane on 1 February 1776. Because of the central theme of miscegenation, the story can be partly read as a parody of Othello. Sir Oliver Oddfish, worried that his wife and daughter may be attracted to their white male servants, decides to sack them, and asks Grenville, his nephew, to replace them with black slaves, who, to his biased view, are far from inspiring temptation. The frolicsome Grenville then entices his friend Frederic into disguising himself as the black Amoroso in order to be employed by Sir Oliver and have the chance to court his daughter Julia. Thus Frederic/Amoroso camouflages himself among the other black characters on the stage even using the «black» form of dialect. Of course, like all the other actors playing black parts on the eighteenth-century stage, he is a white person in black makeup, but, unlike them, he is a white man playing a white man playing a black, and, more importantly, the readers/audience know it. At the end of the play, Grenville and Frederic’s plot is revealed, but the comic-opera requires a happy denouement, which is achieved through the two lovers’ marriage. In spite of the happy ending and the unveiling of the truth – that Julia is attracted to a blackamoor who is in fact a British soldier masked 34 The epilogue was later printed in the radical Scottish magazine The Bee (6 February 1793), and Thomas Clarkson reproduced the it with minor variations in his History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808). For an exhaustive account of the genesis and meanings of this epilogue see Dellarosa, “‘Thank you my Massas! Have you laugh your fill?’Acting out Racial Conflict in Theatrical Limina”’, cit. 35 Among Mungo’s «brothers» obtaining freedom are the Indian Caesar in Starke’s The Sword of Peace (1789) and the West-Indian Quako in Archibald MacLaren’s The Negro Slaves (1799).

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and painted and not a black subaltern – the comic opera did not meet with the audience’s approval, possibly for two main reasons that can be related to the contemporary social and ideological context. Firstly, Frederic’s masquerading as a black servant who seduces Julia with his love song contains a subversive undertone that might have disturbed those members of the audience obsessed with essentialist and purist notions of race: eventually Julia marries a white British subject, but how to explain her sensitivity to desire as elicited by a black servant? Moreover, the play would seem to suggest that class and race are tentative and ephemeral, since both aristocratic and working-class women characters are shown as sexually tempted regardless of racial difference. On the other hand, the excipit demonstrates that the black person to whom Julia is attracted is reassuringly white, which mirrors a recurrent motif in eighteenth-century representations of race: the ambiguous belief that the skin is merely a surface trait that, in fact, conceals a white core, just like a mask that may be discarded to reveal a white heart and soul. William Blake’s eponymous «Little Black Boy» (1789) comes to mind, especially when he says «I am black, but O! my soul is white», a line which, if one ignored Blake’s egalitarian and abolitionist ideas, could be misread as supportive of the stereotypical association between black and evil. The poet clarifies his position through an ironic use of inner-whiteness imagery in the following stanzas, whereas in the play the racial controversy remains unsolved, and the readers/audience are left with open questions: is the author for or against racial codes? Does he use blackface disguise to show that «whiteness is essential to the skin while blackness is easily washed off»36? Does he want to show hybridity simply as a ludic equivocation, a ruse and absurd blackface romance, or is he actually hinting at racial intermixture as a real menace and thus justifying the general anxiety about the contamination of pure Englishness? After all, four years before the opera was performed, the Jamaican planter Edward Long published his Candid Reflections (1772), the first pamphlet playing on the nation’s fear of miscegenation to maintain the supremacy of white people, and insisting on the impossibility that blacks could ever «be wash’d white»37. 36

Nussbaum, “The theatre of empire: racial counterfeit, racial realism”, cit., p. 79. Indeed «washing the blackamoor white» is an old proverb to refer to an impossibility or fruitless labour, Cfr. D. Coleman, “Janet Schaw and the Complexions of Empire”, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 36: 2 (2003), pp. 169-193 (p. 187 n. 4). As Coleman specifies, «the phrase also carried a charged sexual allusion, namely, to the process whereby white 37

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On the other hand, what the playwright clearly tackles is another central fear of British people: that increasing numbers of black people would take the jobs of English domestics, which in turn could lead to an increase in miscegenation. In 1731, interpreting this widespread fear, the Lord Mayor of London proclaimed that it was forbidden to employ blacks as apprentices in the city38. Bate gives one of his white servants the task of speaking on behalf of all those apprehensive white workers:

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Jerry (alone): [...] Why surely the times are turn’d topsey turvey, that while Englishmen should give place to foreign Blacks! [...] Oh that I should ever live to see the days, when white Englishmen must give place to foreign blacks! (I. vii)

Soon afterwards, another white servant sings a ballad both to reiterate the equivocal theme of essential whiteness and to share Jerry’s fear: Must a Christian man’s Son born & bred up, By a Negar be flung in disgrace? Be asham’d for to hold his poor head up, ‘Ca’se as how he has got a white face? No never mind it little Jerry Let your honest heart be merry; British boys will still be right ‘Till they prove that black is white! (I. vii)

Here the singer, Mr. King, apparently mocks Jerry’s anger against the «Blackmoor Devils» to hearten him that there is nothing to fear, that people like them, «the British boys» will always be right unless someone could prove that «black» is «white» – an impossibility, as the proverb says. men copulated with their mixed-race offspring over several generations, with the object of producing ‘pure’ white progeny» (op. cit., p. 171). In Candid Reflections Long suggests a further, even more tragic, meaning, when he alludes to the violent practice of flaying the black person’s body with corrosive lotions which turned it into white. Bate plays with the polysemy of the expression, although the implications underlying the whole story are far from merely comic. 38 As Peter Fryer reports, the Proclamation by the Lord Mayor of London in September 1731 forbidding the employment of blacks as apprentices in the city was aimed to prevent black people from stealing jobs available for the white British working class. Cfr. P. Fryer, Staying Power: the History of Black People in Britain, London: Pluto Press, 1984, pp. 74-75. See also F. Shyllon, Black People in Britain 1555-1833, London: Oxford University Press, 1977.

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About ten years after the performance of The Black-a-moor Wash’d White, the former slave and African abolitionist Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, would argue with powerful eloquence that the core of man has nothing to do with colour:

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It does not alter the nature and quality of a man, whether he wears a black or a white coat, whether he puts it on or strips it off, he is still the same man. And so likewise, when a man comes to die, it makes no difference whether he was black or white, whether he was male or female, whether he was great or small, or whether he was old or young; none of these differences alter the essentiality of the man, any more than [if] he had wore a black or a white coat and thrown it off for ever39.

Unluckily, this analysis of man came out amidst a furore of monogenist and polygenist theories and commentaries on race that were still largely marked by prejudice and dubious notions of national and cultural identity. Despite the 1780s earliest important humanitarian movements against slavery and racial discrimination, for most people «black-a-moor» still had a negative connotation. As Nussbaum has written, «The Blackamoor also allows the characters unselfconsciously to utter racisms against the counterfeit black, including making allusions to a black mazzard (a wild cherry), ugly devil, blackey man, raven, magpie, Satan, and calling attention to ‘saucer’ eyes»40. This association between blackness and the devil has a very long history, which is traceable back to Horace’s saying «Hic niger est, hunc tu, romane, cavetto», and the Biblical account which generated the belief that Africans were heirs of Noah’s sinful son Ham (Genesis 9). As has been already mentioned, blackness and evil have been regularly linked on the English stage since the early medieval drama, in which, 39

Q. O. Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787), ed. V. Carretta, New York: Penguin, 1999, p. 41. This idea that there were no deep-seated differences between black and white people was shared by such eighteenth-century abolitionists as Thomas Clarkson, who produced a scientific study of skin to prove that skin colour only concerned the upper surface, while the deepest layer was exactly the same for all men. Cfr. Clarkson, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, particularly the African; translated from a Latin Dissertation, London: J. Phillips, 1788, p. 136. 40 Nussbaum, “The theatre of empire: racial counterfeit, racial realism”, cit., p. 83. Barthelemy reports that the word «Moor» derives etymologically from a Greek term used to refer to the inhabitants of Mauretania (today’s Morocco and Algeria). This is also the origin of the Latin proper noun «Maurus», which identified a particular ethnic group and which came to mean black. From Mauritiana came the Islamic invaders who dominated Spain from the eight to the fifteenth century, called «Moros» in Spanish; hence «Moor» soon became a synonym for «non-Christian», and, by the same token, was associated with the devil. Cit. Barthelemy, pp. 8-10.

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for example, Lucifer and the other fallen angels turn black after their sin41. However bizarre it may appear now, this pattern of association even feeds into the creation of Harlequin’s black mask.

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4. Race and class miscegenation in harlequinades Since a harlequinade is a pantomime whose protagonist is Harlequin, the Commedia dell’Arte character, it presents all the typical structural features of this popular theatrical form, including the sequence of the opening, transformation scene, harlequinade proper and restoration scene42. Hence, like all pantomimic performances, also the harlequinade, as O’Brien argues, is also «a ‘crime against writing’, an action that undercuts the theater’s desire to define itself as a space of language, and therefore as a literary medium on a par with epic poetry»43. Moreover, like all pantomimes, its core feature is genre hybridity, as provided by a bizarre fusion of elements deriving from Commedia dell’Arte, opera, classical myth, mimicry, acrobatics and dance, that is to say a medley of disparate forms and modes that challenges any «literary» and elitist conception of culture and, in some ways, looks forward to the postmodern gallimaufry of high and low art. Its reliance on gestures and music rather than spoken language (except for the song lyrics), allows the harlequinade to defy the supremacy of verbal language in conveying messages or embodying values, since its slapstick, its grotesque or absurd scenic effects and kinetics are intended to provide the audience not merely with a sensual experience but also with an alternative to closet drama, or traditional performances, that could offer the spectators (with no class distinction) either diversion 41 Barthelemy, cit., pp. 2-4. Barthelemy identifies William D’Avenant’s The History of Sir Francis Drake (1658) as the first play, in fact a musical entertainment, to introduce black characters in a New World setting (p. 171). A similar discussion on the connection between blackness and evil can be found in A. Lively, Masks: Blackness, Race and the Imagination, London: Chatto and Windus, 1998, in particular pp. 15-20. O’Brien also reports E. K. Chambers writing in the 1930s that the devils in miracle plays frequently «wore vizards, or were, like the bad souls themselves, painted black». Cit. O’Brien, Harlequin Britain. Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690-1760, cit., p. 118. 42 For an accurate analysis of the pantomime structure, see both D. Mayer, Harlequin in his Element: The English Pantomime, 1806-1836, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969, in particular chapter II-III, and M. R. Cocco, Arlecchino, Shakespeare e il marinaio: teatro popolare e melodramma in Inghilterra (1800-1850), Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1990, pp. 103-122. 43 O’Brien, Harlequin Britain. Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690-1760, cit., p. xviii.

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from or participation in a variety contemporary issues, including racial conflicts and slavery. This adaptability of harlequinades and all pantomimes to the variegated expectations of a diversified audience accounts for their success in Britain in the eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century, when, moreover, their constituent features were absorbed by the music-hall and minstrel show. The genre has survived until today, although the Christmas «panto» is an entertainment designed primarily for children. Furthermore, as O’Brien points out, «in its use of slapstick, physical comedy, and spectacle», pantomime can be also regarded as «a forerunner of the early twentieth-century’s silent movie comedy»44. In the period under discussion, Harlequinades achieved popularity at a historical moment when black faces pervaded the public imagination, not least because they could also be encountered regularly in public as well as domestic spaces. In this context, therefore, Harlequin’s black face inevitably assumed a peculiar significance. The general critical consensus is that there is no irrefutable reason why Harlequin’s mask is black but a series of more or less evincible hypotheses have been advanced to explain this phenomenon45. In Dante’s Inferno one of the devils among the so called Malebranche is Alichino, a grotesque, comic figure possibly named after Hellekin, a twelfth-century female demon belonging to Provençal folklore46. According to some scholars, the name then underwent a series of transformations until it became that of the popular comedic character «Arlecchino» from Bergamo, no satanic figure but certainly as cheeky as Dante’s devil47. So it may be that the Italian poet provided the first important association between Harlequin and darkness both in physical and spiritual terms. However, it was the Italian actor-manager Luigi Riccoboni who, in the late 1720s, suggested a plausible connection between Harlequin’s costume, including his black mask, and the one worn by the pantomimi dancers of ancient Rome when they acted the part of African slaves captured by Roman armies in wars of conquest and brought back to the seat of empire. This view was later supported by the French authors Jean-François Marmon44

Ivi, p. xxiv. Among the most relevant studies on this topic see Gates, Lively, and O’Brien, Harlequin Britain. Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690-1760. 46 Ivi, p. 119. 47 See, among others, P. Toschi, Le origini del teatro italiano, Torino: Einaudi 1955, pp. 196-208. 45

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tel and Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, who, in the late 1780s wrote respectively that «it is likely that an African slave was the first model for [Harlequin]», and «the most realistic opinion is that [Harlequin] was originally an African slave. His black face and shaved head seem to indicate this»48. In particular, Marmontel justifies this putative genesis by specifying Harlequin’s personality traits – «ignorance, naiveté, high spirits, stupidity, and grace» – and describing him as «a great child who has flashes of reason and intelligence», all features echoing traditional pictures of the black slave, ranging from that of a gullible silly creature to the bon sauvage with the potential of becoming civilised49. Apart from this racial association, several eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers began to link Harlequin with black magic and malignity, as, for example, Alexander Pope did by describing John Rich’s Harlequin in The Dunciad as the «sable sorcerer» of The Necromancer, the afterpiece supposed to have initiated the success of the English pantomime in the 1720s50. One interesting common element among all these different interpretations is that Harlequin personifies some kind of otherness, a cultural, religious, ethnic or racial difference from Englishness or Britishness that in pantomimic performances assumes various connotations, generally tinged with the same ambiguity and complexity that characterises most theatrical representations of the «other» in the form of blackness and slavery. One significant exception to this rule is the already mentioned Harlequin’s Invasion produced by David Garrick at Drury Lane in 1759, which is in fact an anti-pantomime, given that Harlequin, embodying theatre as entertainment only, is banished from the stage by Shakespeare and what he represents – the true and authentic English dramatic tradition. Yet this play stages more than a partly ironic meta-theatrical critique, if we recognise that Garrick would absorb some pantomimic aspects into his (hyper-kinetic according to some) acting style, thus incorporating in the mainpiece some features typical of afterpieces. 48 Gates, cit., p. 51. Carlo Goldoni, on the other hand, suggested an interpretation of Harlequin’s black face or mask based on the fact that the Bergamese, living in a particularly sunny region, were generally dark-skinned. O’Brien, Harlequin Britain. Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690-1760, cit., p. 131. 49 Lively, cit., pp. 16-17. 50 O’Brien, Harlequin Britain. Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690-1760, cit., p. 118. O’Brien refers also to an anonymous verse satire on pantomime entitled British Frenzy, in which Harlequin is called the «Black Magician». Ibidem.

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Monsieur Harlequin is the French invader during the Seven Years’ War51, but, owing to his black mask, he does not look like a European, and various characters mistake him for a blackamoor. The French and the Black are here juxtaposed as one single figure of otherness, personifying all those values that contrast with the true spirit and genius of Britishness; hence his marginalisation and final expulsion, in order for «Rule Britannia» to triumph. Harlequin is the ethnographic Other against which the British nation and identity can be defined. By implication, here the association between Harlequin and blackamoors implies more than a touch of xenophobia. On the other hand, in a few later harlequinades the overlapping of the black slave and Harlequin may even serve as a vehicle for surreptitiously conveying anti-racist messages or supporting abolitionist sentiments. Two significant examples in this respect are William Bates’ Harlequin Mungo, or, A Peep into the Tower (1788) and the anonymous Furibond; or, Harlequin Negro (1807), both of which, contrary to such plays as Bate’s The Blackamoor Wash’d White52, seem to disregard the national anxiety about the invasion of black domestics and miscegenation, and, instead, celebrate the intermarriage between a black slave and a white planter’s daughter53. In both pantomimes the black slave is transformed by a supernatural agent into Harlequin, in Mungo’s case just at the moment when, overwhelmed by despair, he is about to commit suicide, while for the hero of Furibond the metamorphosis occurs just after he has been abused by the iniquitous planter Sir Peevish Antique (later Pantaloon). Interestingly enough, in Furibond, it is not Harlequin who is associated with black magic but the evil enchanter Furibond, who Sir Peevish would like to have his daughter (later Columbine) marry. Considering that the slaves in the Caribbean were usually seen as primitive and uncivilised adepts of obi or obeah54, this pantomime 51 1759, the year of the production, was when the British military defeated French forces in Quebec. 52 See also Rodwell’s ludicrous burletta Bruno; or, The Sultan’s Favorite (1821), a later parody of the contemporary obsession with miscegenation. 53 Another interesting pantomime on interracial marriages is the 1791 Newcastle-UponTyne production of a version of Richard Sheridan’s pantomime adaptation of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, called Robinson Crusoe; or, Harlequin Friday, in which Crusoe and Friday go to Spain and are introduced to Pantaloon’s daughter, Columbine, who falls in love with Friday. Both Crusoe and Pantaloon try to impede the marriage, but then a Magician turns Friday into Harlequin, and the two lovers are eventually reunited. 54 See, for instance, John Fawcett’s serio-pantomime Obi or, Three-Finger’d Jack (1800) on the slave revolt in Jamaica, based on the real story of Jack Mansong, an escaped Jamaican slave known for his strength and courage as well as for practising obeah.

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conceals a much stronger subversive overtone than it may at first appear.

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4.1 Harlequin Mungo, or, A Peep into the Tower Harlequin Mungo, or, A Peep into the Tower55 was produced at the Royalty Theatre from 12 November 1787 to January 1788 with music by William Reeve. The plot revolves around the theme of miscegenation, a threat to some or a profitable contact zone to a few others, but, in any case, one of the most debated and controversial themes in these years of pro- and anti-slavery campaigns. As in any pantomime, a «serious» part (most of Act I) is followed by a «comic» part starting from the transformation scene (III) and centred on Harlequin’s escapades while he and Columbine are pursued by Pantaloon and his servant the Clown. The first act is set on a sugar plantation in the West Indies, where a slave ship lands and the slaves are taken to the market to be sold to the planters, among whom there is one ironically called Justice. At first nobody seems to be interested in Mungo, until Columbine persuades her father Pantaloon to purchase him. Meanwhile a well-to-do Chinese (another stereotypical figure, this time part of the orientalist discourse identifying Chinese people and Chinoiserie with wealth and high-quality goods) arrives and asks for Columbine’s hand in marriage, which she «reluctantly accepts» (I. iii) at her father’s bidding. «Quite disconsolate at his slavery» (ibidem) and ready to hang himself, Mungo is transformed into Harlequin by a Wizard, who grants him the magic sword and introduces him to Columbine. They immediately fall in love. So Harlequin uses magic to turn himself into the Chinese and sign the marriage contract in his stead. When the trick is discovered, the two lovers and the Wizard must flee from their pursuers, eventually embarking for England on a transatlantic voyage, or Middle Passage in reverse direction. Act II is entirely set in London, where, still chased by Pantaloon, the Clown, and the Chinese, they enter and exit several chambers of the Tower of London (the Den of the Wild Beasts, the Spanish Armoury, the Horse Armoury), each visit offering an opportunity to celebrate (or deprecate?) in various songs 55 The text here used is Harlequin Mungo; or, A Peep into the Tower: A New Pantomimical Entertainment. In Two Acts: As Performing at the Royalty Theatre, Well-Street, Goodman’s Fields, London: J. Skirven, 1788. References are indicated by act and scene number.

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Britain’s colonial and military enterprises. The profusion of detail, in particular of material objects, which is generally a constant feature in pantomimes, may actually produce a double effect on the spectator: is the exaggeration here meant to emphasise the Queen of the Seas’ power, or is it instead an ironic device to ridicule if not critique it? At the end, an unquestionable fact is that all’s well that ends well, since Harlequin’s and Columbine’s hands are ultimately «leagu’d in Hymen’s bands» (II. vii) with Pantaloon’s permission. As in The Padlock, the central slavery-versus-liberty theme also reverberates in scenes and imagery that are not strictly concerned with the historical realities of slavery or with racial issues. The quoted «Hymen’s bands», for example, alludes to the wedlock in its etymological literal meaning, an image counterbalanced by the emancipatory thrust of a union that crosses not only racial but also class boundaries. David Worrall emphasises this aspect by indicating as Harlequin and Columbine’s main achievement not so much their defeat of racial barriers as their success in setting themselves free from the patriarchal manacles imposed by the affluent Pantaloon and his subaltern servant: «whatever the social or political allusions within the particular pantomime, the harlequinade pursuit was invariably a love story principally beset not by the problems of racial origin but by an aged Pantaloon and a vengeful, sadistic Clown»56. Cox’s comment on the second harlequinade analysed here, Furibond; or Harlequin Negro is equally relevant to Bates’ pantomime: «[T]he emancipation of Harlequin Negro is also a liberation of the white Columbine, [...] in their marriage there is an emblem of a world imagined beyond the struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed»57: Another example of the ubiquity of the enslavement-emancipation leitmotiv has to do with the structural and generic nature of pantomimes, in particular from the transformation scene onwards, when the hero becomes the protagonist of a masquerade, of a carnivalesque world in which the traditional norms regulating hierarchical relations, and individual and social identity, no longer apply. Hence, the harlequinized universe shows, rather than says, that the inner truth of man can be liberated from social superstructures, and emerge from behind the masks – Pirandello docet – defining one’s roles in the world. So Mungo’s metamorphosis into Harlequin could be interpreted in Ba56 57

Worrall, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, cit., p. 97. Cox, “Introduction”, cit., p. xiv.

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khtinian terms as his realised wish of freeing himself from the chains of his superimposed role as slave and, through magic, entertaining new ways of life and behaviour. In scene v of the first act, both Harlequin and the Wizard metamorphose into the two china Mandarine figures that are part of the Chinese man’s wedding gifts for Columbine, so that they can meet her and resume their identities in front of her eyes. This sudden transformation, however, frightens the woman, which prompts the Wizard to reassure her in these words:

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Be not alarm’d, fair main, my motly son Shall with such beauty ev’ry fortune run; Accept his love, and fate shall join your hands, In Hymen’s constant, happy wedlock’s bands. (I. v, my italics)

Mungo/Harlequin is described by an adjective, «motly» (now spelt motley) that literally refers to his polychromatic costume but, on a metaphorical level, connotes his identity as fluid and protean, so that his transformation from the slave Mungo into Harlequin, a prototype of resistance, is another image of liberation. Mungo’s mutation into Harlequin involves the dramatic persona’s change from a blackface character into one wearing the traditional black mask of the Commedia dell’Arte figure: these two ways of being «black» could be read as a theatricalisation of race as something contingent, or as an embedded critique of those essentialist theories that tended to establish fixed ethnographic and anthropological paradigms. In Act II the search for emancipation is enacted by the two lovers’ escape from their pursuers. At some point they find refuge in the Tower of London, first in the room of the «Wild Beasts», all catalogued in a song by the keeper, which is both a parodic celebration of Britain’s colonial expansion and a mockery of the exoticist fashion that derived from it. The animal collection includes a lion called «Nero» and a leopard «black» that «From India came, and here was christen’d Jack» (II. ii), as well as bears and monkeys that at some point «break loose from their cells» (Ibidem) and drive all the pursuers off, while Harlequin and Columbine, concealed in the lion’s den, manage to escape. In fact, in the Tower scenes the semantic isotopy of enslavement/liberty reaches its apogee, being also reinforced by several ambiguous images of imperial Britain, apparently eulogising its military glory (for example in the description of the spoils of the Spanish Armada), but in fact demystifying English royalty and history. The song performed by the «Keeper of the Beasts, and Warder of the Tower» is a comic tirade list-

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ing examples of monarchic scandals and courtly disgraces. So he links «a line of Kings on wooden chargers mounted» to the bold riders at «Astley», points to the effigy of «bluff King Harry/ Who’d numbers kiss and some few virgins marry», hints at Edward IV’s sexual promiscuity and his «concubine,» «pretty Mistress Shore,» mocks «John of Gaunt» who «Was to a King, Dad—Uncle—Son –/ Yet had not himself – the honor to be one», and also at Henry VIII’s best-known court jester, «droll Will Summers», who was «buckled / To a fair wife that made him cuckold» (II. iv). Then his comic register shifts to a more serious one when he points to [...] a collar – mind its use, When wives did cuckold, or abuse – This went about their necks, – but then ‘Twas so much call’d for by the men; The Smiths cou’d never make enough, So the good custom was left off. (Ibidem)

The irony here needs no commentary, though it is interesting to see how once again, the discourse of liberty revolves around the plausible comparison between a woman’s and a slave’s plight. This is further confirmed by the ensuing symphony tune, which suggests «The black joke» (Ibidem). In the final scene, Columbine is again under her father’s yoke. In order to hinder her from meeting Harlequin, he gives her in charge to the keeper of the Tower, but this final imprisonment will also end eventually thanks to the intercession of the Wizard. As in all pantomimes, a happy ending is necessary, in which harmony among all the characters is restored through choral singing and dancing, with an expected liberating effect on the audience. This final reconciliation, however, cannot totally dissipate the horror of the opening slave-market scene, in which the ruthless law of supply and demand is foregrounded, even in the words of the odious captain: Oyes, Oyes, Oyes. Come, Planters, you wish to purchase prizes, Be quick in buying, e’er the market rise’s. My Slaves are healthy, youthful, and well-made; I’ll deal with honor, tho’ with Knaves I trade. (I.i)

A woman wants «a stout young-man / With breadth of shoulders» to «suit [her] plan» of keeping a wife-beating husband «in awe»; an «Old Man,» though complaining that young «Mahogany» is too expensive,

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agrees to buy him since «His features please [him] much»; and Justice requires a «black Amanuensis—or a Scribe,» whose «virtues» include that his «charcoal mazard» shall «never run the hazard» of blushing over his owner’s indiscretions. Quite clearly the buyers are interested not only in the slaves’ capacity for hard work but also and above all in their sexual performances. Such an emphasis is typical of eighteenthand nineteenth-century stereotypes of black people. The fact that Harlequin, both in the Commedia dell’Arte and in pantomimes, is often associated with sexual imagery and themes may further confirm the link between this character and black slaves in popular imagination. Quoting the French Commedia dell’Arte critic Pierre Louis Ducharte, Gates reports that in some early representations, Harlequin figures are wearing a giant phallus: the ancient Harlequin was a phallophore, and, inasmuch as some of the phallophores of the ancient theatre played the part of African slaves, it is thought that Harlequin might be their direct descendant.58

4.2 Furibond; or, Harlequin Negro Perhaps sexuality is not directly exploited as a theme in Furibond; or, Harlequin Negro, but this harlequinade also confronts the contentious issue of miscegenation and interracial marriage.59 This Christmas pantomime opened at Drury Lave on Boxing Night, 28 December 1807 clearly to celebrate the abolition of the slave trade, officially enacted by a bill whose passage was first secured by Lord Grenville in the Lords, and then passed by an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons60. Like the earlier harlequinade, and indeed owing to it its narrative, Furibond stages the fulfilment of the interracial marriage between a black slave and a white planter’s daughter. Moreover, like its predecessor, as Cox underlines, it «goes furthest in creating a posi-

58

Gates, cit., p. 51. See also Lively, p. 15. The text used here is the facsimile reproduction of the manuscript included in Cox (ed), Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. 5, pp. 283-305. Quotations from the text will be indicated by scene and page number. The Larpent manuscript (LA 1553) at the Huntington Library was also consulted. 60 See Worrall, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, and by the same author Theatric Revolution 1773-1832, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, chapter 8. In both books Worrall maintains that Furibond was composed by James Powell, a London Corresponding Sociery spy and playwright. 59

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tive role for a slave by transforming him into the carnivalesque and liberatory figure of Harlequin»61. Unlike Harlequin Mungo, it follows the typical structure of the Christmas pantomime, consisting of one act which includes twenty or more scenes: the opening ones setting the main theme; the central ones on the persecution of hero and heroine on the part of their opponents; the penultimate, or so called «dark» scene where the lovers must face an umpteenth obstacle; and finally the happy ending thanks to the intervention of a benevolent agent. In this case too, it is possible to divide the play into two main parts with the turning point coinciding with the transformation scene and the beginning of the harlequinade proper. Also set in the West-Indies, a coffee plantation in Jamaica, Furibond opens with a scene showing Negro slaves abused by Sir Peevish Antique (later Pantaloon), the heinous slave-holder and planter who intends to marry his daughter (later Columbine) to the Jamaican evil enchanter Furibond, «a pantomimical Faust»62 who will reappear in England as the Dandy Lover. The woman refuses the marriage proposal, and shows instead concern for a slave, although she is unable to liberate him. So a benevolent fairy, Benigna, intervenes and offers him one of three choices: to become a white man; to receive power; or to become the benefactor Harlequin. He chooses the third option, and the scene changes to England, where he immediately expresses the wish to free all slaves, but Benigna responds that this is the task of the Genius of Britain. After a series of typical Harlequinade tricks, Harlequin and Columbine are united in marriage by the good fairy, all the hostile forces are defeated and the walls between slavers and slaves, oppressors and oppressed people are demolished. Is this play therefore genuinely a celebration of the abolition of slavery? There is no denying the fact that the release and staging of the pantomime precisely when the slave trade was formally outlawed is not coincidental. As in Harlequin Mungo, the protagonist slave here is totally different from the sacrificial noble negroes populating much eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sentimental drama, since he turns into a par-excellence hero of resistance, a likeable trickster (unlike Clown) usually siding with the subaltern. However, if the slave trade could be formally abolished, racial stereotypes were much harder to destroy. These appear from the very first scene, where, for example, 61 62

Cox, “Introduction”, cit., p. xxiii. Cox, “Introduction”, cit., p. xxiii.

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a black female servant is clearly the object of ridicule when she brings Clown a basket laden with food. The audience was likely to laugh at the same servant also in scene xvi, when she marries Clown «ridiculously dressed», and, during the party, replies to her bridegroom’s offensive gift of the horns of the buck served for dinner by producing «six little ragged children, which dance round the Clown and call him father» (scene xvi, p. 304). In another scene the image and idea itself of blackness seem to be treated comically when a stroke of Harlequin’s magic sword turns a lottery bill into «one for shining japan blacking», and, immediately afterwards, the Clown appears on stage in the role of a shoe-black who makes the mistake of applying the blacking to the white stocking of a young Buck (that is, Furibond in disguise), which produces a scuffle between them, in the course of which, the Clown blacks his face, cloaths &c. And catching hold of his other leg says he must have a pair of half boots, and blacks that leg also (scene v, p. 294).

Nussbaum, after remarking that «Buck» is a patronizing term for a young black man, observes that in scenes such as these «black’ is [...] an inherently comic concept associated with discomfort or embarrassed laughter», and that comic plays like Furibond «make the ornamental nature of race the subject of ludicrous clowning and stage business». Therefore she concludes that «they are all but anti-slavery»63. On the other hand, one might argue that the ephemerality of blackness is here a metaphor to signify that the core of man has nothing to do with skin colour, and that, behind the diversified surface, all men are essentially equal. This hypothesis is corroborated by one of the initial episodes in which the slave at first expresses to the fairy Benigna the wish to become white, and, in response, she shows him a transparency representing Narcissus admiring his own reflection: «Wilt thou the beauties of the mind forego» (scene i, p. 287), she asks him, implying that over-estimating aesthetic forms may endanger an individual’s most valuable prerogatives. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to read the pantomime as one of those theatrical experiences recording the controversies of the time, and staging the contradictions inherent in the public response to extremely complex social and political is63

Nussbaum, “The theatre of empire: racial counterfeit, racial realism”, cit., pp. 83-

84.

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sues. There is no denying the fact that the spectators’ laughter at the performance of enslavement or other kinds of subjugation involving black characters might have had a minimising effect on the gravity of the issues involved, or a momentary relief from any responsibility for a cruel trade that right then was being abolished, though only formally. However, the play clearly endorses the abolitionist cause from the first scene, where the protagonist slave rebels against the cruel slave-driver and then, turned by the good fairy Benigna into Harlequin Negro, asks her to liberate his fellow slaves. When Benigna replies «Alas! – that task was not reserv’d for me» (scene i, p. 288), a figure of Britannia enters carrying the law abolishing the slave trade and the Genius of Britain sings about her: The lash she heard, she saw the wound, And human gore polute the ground; Each feeling tie that nature gave, Sunk lost and shatter’d in the Slave. Kindling with a sacred ire, Her voice broke forth in words of fire; England shall stamp the blest decree, That gives the Negro Liberty. (scene i, p. 288)

At the beginning of the following scene this appeal to liberty is reiterated in a more powerful tone: This is the land where all are free, This the home of Liberty. By the sparkling stars of night, By the Fairy’s lov’d moonlight; We’ve oft trip’s around the tree, While Alfred sat with Liberty! [...] Our fleet from Alfred’s oak then rose, The nation’s shield, the dread of foes; And to this day that brave decree, Secured the Briton’s Liberty! (scene ii, p. 289)

Clearly these lines are in tune with the kind of national self-glorification that typifies many works overtly expressing or encapsulating an opposition to the slavery system. In spite of the undeniable emancipatory message, such emphasis on Liberty may even sound suspicious, betraying a self-conscious attempt to mask a guilt-complex with a hyperbolic celebration of the fundamental principle of any democratic society.

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However unconvincing the treatment of emancipation may be, the grand finale of Furibond; or, Harlequin Negro, which sees the triumph of good (embodied by Benigna) against evil (in the shape of Furibond) and the union of the two lovers in the orientalised palace of the fairy, shows the ultimate victory of the rebels against their tyrants and pursuers. This may be simply a spectacle, but one in which the moral meaning might not have passed unnoticed to the most alert or politically-minded members of the audience.

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5. Conclusion On 8 October 1821 the Adelphi Theatre in London staged a very bizarre production, the one-act burletta Bruno; or, The Sultan’s Favorite attributed to James Thomas G. Rodwell64. Many years after the abolition of the slave trade, this late version of pantomime, or «extravaganza», is a paradigmatic example of how persistent certain stereotypes may be, as is, in this case, the cliché of the bon sauvage associated with racial paradigms. In this absurd play, the discourse of blackness and whiteness is encapsulated in a grotesque narrative set in an Eastern location that reflects the contemporary craze for oriental commodities. The Sultan’s favourite, a «learned» white bear named Bruno, is dead, so, in order to provide him with the usual entertainments, his servants replace it with a new white bear, to which a black one is added; in fact both are men in disguise. When in a scuffle the two fake animals end up exchanging by mistake their bear-shaped heads, the resulting hybridity of black and white cannot but arouse the spectators’ laughter. Needless to say, this is mainly an orientalist entertainment piece, although the Sultan’s comment, before discovering the masquerade trick, echoes the argument on racial discrimination and intermixture at the core of the other texts previously analysed: Sultan – Why the head of my white bear has turned into a black one. And, as I live, your’s into a white. How do you account, Slave, for this most strange event?’ Shift – Mighty Sir, the sight of so much grandeur and beauty (turning to Rosetta [favourite sultana]), has often turned a man’s head, before now—much less a bear’s. 64

At the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, it is the Larpent Manuscript 2249.

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Sultan – Yes, but it never turned a white man into a blackamoor yet, I believe65.

Once again, as in The Black-a-moor Wash’d White and, more generally, in blackface disguises, the discourse of race is fraught with ambiguities and often tinged with xenophobic innuendoes. Abolitionist sentiments pervade various post-1807 dramas, such as, for example, George Colman’s The Africans (1809) or in Thomas Morton’s 1816 reworking of Oroonoko as The Slave, which also exemplifies, as much as Furibond, the emphatic national self-congratulation on Britain’s role in abolishing the slave trade. However, as the nineteenth century wore on, new racist theories gained ground that also found reverberations on stage, and impacted on the dramatic representation of black people and blackness. As Waters suggests, in the nineteenth century, the black image became shorn, first of noble, then of fearsome and, finally, almost of human qualities – all that was left was its incarnation as a figure as artificial as the pantomime clown66. The noble Oroonoko, or the dangerous yet respectable Threefingered Jack, turned into Jim Crow, the grotesque and laughable buffoon performed by the American entertainer Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice in the 1830s blackface minstrel shows. In 1833 the reformed Parliament in Britain passed the Emancipation Act; around the same time Rice achieved his peak popularity at the Surrey Theatre in London: a contradictory coincidence confirming the ideological paradoxes and conflicting ideas in those years of heated debates and revolutionary changes.

Works cited —, 1776, Airs, ballads, &c. in The blackamoor wash’d white. A new comic opera. As it will be performed this evening at the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane, London: Cox and Bigg. Angeletti G. ed., 2010, Emancipation, Liberation, and Freedom: Romantic Drama and Theatre in Britain, 1760-1830, Parma: Monte Università Parma. Dykes E. B., 1942, The Negro in English Romantic Thought, or A Study of Sympathy for the Oppressed, Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers. 65 66

Ivi, pp. 31-32. Waters, Racism on the Victorian Stage, cit., p. 188.

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Baker D. E., Reed I., Jones S., 1812, Biographia Dramatica; or, a Companion to the Playhouse, 3 vols., London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. Carlson J., 2007, “New Lows in Eighteenth-Century Theater: The Rise of Mungo”, «European Romantic Review» 18, 2/2007 (April), pp. 139147. Clarkson T., 1788, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, particularly the African; translated from a Latin Dissertation, London: J. Phillips. Clarkson T., 1808, The History of the Rise and Progress and Accomplishment of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols., London: Longman, Hurst, Reese and Orme. Coleman D., “Janet Schaw and the Complexions of Empire”, «EighteenthCentury Studies» 36, 2/2003, pp. 169-194. Cocco M. R., 1990, Arlecchino, Shakespeare e il marinaio: teatro popolare e melodramma in Inghilterra (1800-1850), Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale. Cugoano Q. O., 1999, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787), ed. V. Carretta, New York: Penguin. Davis D. B., 1966, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, Ithaca-New York: Cornell University Press. Dellarosa F., 2009, Slavery on Stage: Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830s, Bari: Edizioni del Sud. Fryer P., 1984, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London: Pluto Press. Gates H. L., 1987, Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gerzina G., 1995, Black London: Life Before Emancipation, London: John Murray. Harlequin Mungo; or, A Peep into the Tower: A New Pantomimical Entertainment. In Two Acts: As Performing at the Royalty Theatre, Well-Street, Goodman’s Fields, London: J. Skirven, 1788. Kitson P. J., Lee D. eds., 1999, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, 8 vols., London: Pickering & Chatto. Lively A., 1998, Masks: Blackness, Race and the Imagination, London: Chatto and Windus. Marshall H., Stock M., 1958, Ira Aldridge: The Negro Tragedian, Carbonale: Southern Illinois University Press. Mayer D., 1969, Harlequin in his Element: The English Pantomime, 1806-1836, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Moody J., 2000, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Pratt M. L., 1992, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge. Nussbaum F., 2003, The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Brien J., 2004, Harlequin Britain. Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690-1760, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Oldfield J. R., 1993, “The ‘Ties Of soft Humanity’: Slavery and Race in British Drama, 1760-1800”, «The Huntington Library Quarterly» 56, 1/1993 (Winter), pp. 1-14. Sancho I., 1998, Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African, ed. Vincent Carretta, New York: Penguin Books. Shyllon F., 1977, Black People in Britain 1555-1833, London: Oxford University Press. Swindells J., 2001, Glorious Causes: The Grand Theatre of Political Change, 1789-1833, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sypher W., 1942, Guinea’s Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the XVIIIth Century, Chapel Hill: The University of South Carolina Press. Toschi P., 1955, Le origini del teatro italiano, Torino: Einaudi. Walvin J., 1971, The Black Presence: A Documentary History of the Negro in England, 1555-1860, London: Orbach and Chambers, 1971. Waters H., 2007, Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representation of Slavery and the Black Character, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson K., 2004, A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Worrall D., 2005, Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship, and Romantic Period Subcultures 1773-1832, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Worrall D., 2007, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality 1787-1832: The Road to the Stage, Basingstoke-New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

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SLAVERY AND ABOLITIONISM ON STAGE: LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH WOMEN DRAMATISTS AND THE DEBATE ON COLONIALISM Marianna D’Ezio

1. Introduction During and after the Hastings trial in London (1787-1795), both public opinion and the literary world in Britain were suspended between colonial anxiety and imperial guilt. What had previously been seen as vast but remote colonial territories were now becoming more and more relevant to Britain’s economic, political and international power, as well as to Britain’s own perception of a new «Other». Many travellers had already undertaken long journeys to the colonies to gather information about the lands and their inhabitants, and had returned to England with the purpose of narrating their experience in works, which by the end of the century had become very popular1. A large part of the literary market was thus dominated by prose, verse, fiction, travel narratives and letters: such writings tried to satisfy the curiosity of British readers regarding the manners and customs of the newly acquired subjects of the Empire. An ambivalent attitude towards their cultural practices often shaped these representations, which on one side contributed towards creating and establishing clear distinctions between Western and Eastern cultures, and on the other encouraged 1 As far as India, for example, was concerned, its first British Governor, Warren Hastings, had contributed to the promotion, knowledge and appreciation of Indian culture in England by patronizing oriental scholarship and encouraging the translation of Sanskrit literature. In 1784 he established the Asiatic Society and a year later wrote a memorable preface to Charles Wilkins’s translation of the Bhagavad-Gita.

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the political and public debate about the actual government in the colonies. Many women writers and dramatists were among those who subtly opposed the diffusion of a canonical, one-sided and stereotyped picture of the Empire. Despite their own uncertain status (that of women playwrights writing, and often acting, for money) they deliberately chose to stage and explore ideas of despotism2, and by challenging the censorship imposed upon licensed theatres (Drury Lane and Covent Garden during the winter season and Haymarket in the summer)3, they made their own contribution towards spreading radical ideas about colonialism and abolition. Their intention was clearly to play a part in the abolitionist movement which was then becoming very popular among intellectuals, and furthermore participate in the debate on Britain’s responsibilities in the colonies and in contemporary political and colonial British affairs, as emerges from their interest in the impeachment of Warren Hastings4. This essay offers a close reading of some of the plays, farces and afterpieces by such diverse women dramatists of the late eighteenth century, as Hannah Cowley, Elizabeth Inchbald, Mariana Starke and Frances Burney, with the aim to highlight the strategies they used in order to question cultural beliefs and prejudices and either condemn or obliquely endorse British colonization and the practice of slavery, particularly in India5. When Warren Hastings became Governor of Bengal, between 1772 and 1785, he contributed to the establishment of a British colonial settlement in India and to the transformation of the East India Company from a mercantile enterprise into a political and military presence, with the power to rule over the area6. Hastings started his political career in

2

See B. Bolton, Women, Nationalism and the Romantic Stage: Theatre and Politics in Britain, 1780-1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 202. 3 J. Moody, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1787-1843, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 16-18. 4 In writing this essay, I am extremely indebted to the volume by Daniel O’Quinn that definitively throws light upon the subject: Staging Governance. Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 5 On this point, see also L. Brown, Fables of Modernity: Literature and Culture in the English Eighteenth Century, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001, especially p. 4. 6 See J. Bernstein, Dawning of the Raj: The Life and Trials of Warren Hastings, Chicago: Ivan D. Ree, 2000; The Impeachment of Warren Hastings: Papers from a Bicentenary Commemoration, eds. G. Carnall and C. Nicholson, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989; K. Feiling, Warren Hastings, London: Macmillan, 1954; and P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

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1757, when he was made British Resident of Murshidabad and then later appointed to the Calcutta council (1761), and after governing Bengal, he became the first Governor General in the history of British India (1773-1784). Notwithstanding the fact that he had gradually created a complicated system of alliances with Indian rulers through treaties and agreements, many in Britain saw his policy as a way to encourage local rivalries in order to increase British influence over their territories, and his methods were considered ethically and financially dubious. It is mainly for this reason that he was charged with extortion by Edmund Burke and his followers – Sir Philip Francis, the dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the Whig politician Charles James Fox – and during the trial, they insisted that Hastings was favouring a corrupted governance of British India, relying on violent means of subjugating the natives as well as the slaves who were brought there from Madagascar and the Red Sea. When Warren Hastings was formally impeached on 10th May 1787 and the trial was officially opened before the Lords in Westminster Hall on 13th February 1788, the audience had been primed for the event. In his speech on “Mr Fox’s East India Bill”, given on 1st December 1783, Burke had already begun to underline that «the total silence of [some] gentlemen concerning the interest and well-being of the people of India, and concerning the interest which this nation has in the commerce and revenues of that country, is a strong indication of the value which they set upon these objects»7. His sharp critique of the East India Bill, «a charter to establish monopoly and to create power»8, had certainly turned the attention of public opinion on the issues of colonialism and slavery, and granted him a good share of popularity. Nevertheless, at a closer look, Burke’s arguments might appear contradictory. In his speech “On the Nabob of Arcot’s Debts, 28 February 1785”, as K. S. Green has pointed out, while pursuing the cause of Indian dignity, he was at the same time issuing a brilliant «rehabilitation of British imperialism, which, he maintains, can still be a civilizing and beneficial force for colonizers and colonized alike»9. The contradictions between the abolitionist and anti-colonialist ideals encouraged by Burke’s entourage and the actual implications of his speeches are but further signs of that ambivalence 7 The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. In Twelve Volumes, vol. 2, London: John C. Nimmo, 1887, p. 359. 8 Ivi, p. 362. 9 K.S. Green, “‘You Should Be My Master’: Imperial Recognition Politics in Elizabeth Inchbald’s Such Things Are”, «Clio» 27, 1998/3, p. 395.

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mentioned at the beginning of this essay. The widespread feelings of uncertainty on the issues of slavery and colonialism, however, did not prevent the Hastings trial from becoming a sort of fashionable event, which attracted spectators from all over the country. On the opening of the trial, Frances Burney’s diary records that Queen Charlotte herself asked Burney (then working as second keeper of the Queen’s robes) if she wished to be present at the beginning of the trial, and gave her «six tickets from Sir Peter Burrell, the great chamberlain, for every day; that three were for his box, and three for his gallery»10. As if describing a theatre, Burney continues with a narration of the shape of the hall, the boxes and the galleries11 and then turns to the character of Burke as a «cruel prosecutor [...] of an injured and innocent man»12, finally introducing «the procession»13 of lawyers, peers, bishops, officers, princes, followed by the chancellor and ultimately, by Warren Hastings, who, in fact, opened the public performance of his own trial. The political and public debate on Hastings’ policy and on the authority and the legitimacy of the East India Company was inevitably linked with the current tide of abolitionist thinking, since the East India Company «did not prohibit the export of slaves until 1789 and allowed slavery legal status until 1843»14. William Pitt’s India Act (1784), however, had already tried to reduce the supremacy of the East India Company by restoring military and ruling power back to the Crown and the Parliament15. Furthermore, 1787 saw the foundation of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in London: as Jeanne Moskal reminds us, «in May 1788 Pitt had persuaded the House of Commons to agree that the slave-trade would be debated in the next session», and this event led to «the largest petitioning 10 The Diaries and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, Edited by her Niece [Charlotte Barrett], vol. 4, London: Henry Colburn, 1854, p. 95. 11 Ivi, p. 96. 12 Ivi, p. 97. 13 Ivi, pp. 97-8. 14 D.R. Banaji, Slavery in British India, Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., 1933, quoted in J. Moskal, “English National Identity in Mariana Starke’s The Sword of Peace: India, Abolition, and the Rights of Women”, Women in British Romantic Theatre. Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790-1840, ed. C. Burroughs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 123. 15 «All political instructions and dispatches addressed to the Company’s offices in India had to be submitted to a supervisory body called the Board of Control, which could amend or reject them as it saw fit. Henceforward (as Hastings had wished), the final voice in the affairs of India was not the Company’s board of directors, but the British government, exercising its responsibility through an appointed agency of its own making», G. S. Graham, A Concise History of the British Empire, London: Thames and Hudson, 1970, p. 85.

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campaign on public matters ever to have been organized in Britain up to this point»16. Through their hinting at the controversial issue of slavery in the representation of colonial subjects and slaves and the advocacy of their freedom, British women writers’ imaginations displayed their own anxiety about their place in the literary canon and the marketplace, as well as in society. As their position and status seemed to frequently mirror that of the colonial subjects as well as of the slaves, much of their writing explores and challenges not only the power relations between self and other, but, more importantly, between master and slave17. Despite the fact that some of these writers took part in the anti-slavery campaigns and the abolitionist movement, their power to give voice to such radical ideas on a theatre stage was however limited, since the Licensing Act of 1737, which demanded pre-production government censorship of plays, strictly prevented explicit references to controversial social and political matters. Increasingly, dramatists thus tried to make the audience guess the unsaid, sometimes by indirectly questioning and criticizing slavery itself from a gendered perspective. In the light of their potential contribution to antislavery discourse and their involvement in the public debate on the Hastings impeachment, the plays I am going to examine employ a range of differing strategies18, which also reveal their authors’ apprehension about the consequences of British colonial expansion. The issue of an eventual loss of British identity when in contact with the culture of the colonized, for instance, is expressed

16

J. Moskal, “English National Identity”, cit., p. 122. M. Choudhury, Interculturalism and Resistance in the London Theater, 1660-1800. Identity, Performance, Empire, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2000, p. 113. 18 The plays I have chosen are: Hannah Cowley’s A Day in Turkey; or, The Russian Slaves. A Comedy, as Acted at the Theatre Royal, in Covent Garden, first performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, 3 December 1791; Elizabeth Inchbald’s The Mogul Tale; or, The Descent of a Balloon. A Farce, as it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal, Smoke-Alley, (Haymarket, 6/7/1784); Elizabeth Inchbald, Such Things Are; A Play, in Five Acts. As Performed at the Theatre-Royal, Smoke-Alley (Covent Garden, 10/2/1787); Mariana Starke’s The Sword of Peace, or, A Voyage of Love; A Comedy, in Five Acts (Haymarket, 9/8/1788); and Frances Burney’s A Busy Day; or, An Arrival from India (1800-1801), first performed in 1993 at the Hen and Chicken Pub Theatre in Bristol (see M.A. Doody, Frances Burney. The Life in the Works, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988, pp. 293-300) and first edited by T. Ghoshal Wallace (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1984). I have excluded Starke’s The Widow of Malabar: A Tragedy in Three Acts. As it is Performed at the Theatre-Royal Covent Garden (1791), a true “Indian” play dealing with the issue of the sati as seen from a British viewpoint, as it is actually a translation of Antoine Marin Le Mierre’s La Veuve du Malabar, ou, L’Empire des Coutumes (1780). 17

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through the fervent patriotism and a «nationalist myth-making»19, as evident in Starke and Burney, or by portraying the «Other» through a «set of representative figures, or tropes», and through «style, figures of speech, setting, narrating devices»20, as in Cowley and Inchbald. In all these cases, it must be noted that the playwrights were drawing upon a developed and accepted cultural code that they implicitly shared with their audience: rather ironically, the closer they came to 1807, the year of the abolition of the slave trade, the more that nationalism emerged. Burney’s A Busy Day, datable around 1800, ends with a celebration of London as the «foster-mother of Benevolence and Charity, and the pride of the British Empire»21, while Starke’s The Sword of Peace, staging what Jeanne Moskal describes as the «final vision of colonial acclamation»22, ends with the rejoicing of the British settlement in India over the arrival of a new governor: JEFFREYS. Mr. Northcote made Resident! – the whole place is run wild for joy, Sir – blacks and whites, masters and slaves, half casts and blue casts, Gentoos and Mussulmen, Hindoos and Bramins, officers and soldiers, sailors and captains [...]. They do nothing but call him father – they keep blessing him and his children; and King George and his children; and their great prophet and his children23.

The binary oppositions seen in these lines become even clearer when we look at the settings of some of the plays mentioned. By staging the events in a harem or seraglio, a closed and limited space within the colonial area, Cowley’s A Day in Turkey and Inchbald’s The Mogul Tale resolve the anxiety of «miscegenation» remaining separated from a dangerous immersion into the Other’s culture; significantly, they also suggest ways to enter the Other’s world to dominate it, and it is of interest that the space where the colonizer and the colonized meet is one dominated by women. Male power in the seraglio (except for the Sultan) is in the hands of the eunuchs, whose authority is in fact threatened by the virility of the European men24. 19

J. Moskal, “English National Identity”, cit., p. 112. E. Said, Orientalism, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978, p. 21. F. Burney, A Busy Day, cit., p. 79. 22 J. Moskal, “English National Identity”, cit., p. 118. 23 M. Starke, The Sword of Peace, or, A Voyage of Love; A Comedy, in Five Acts, Dublin: H. Chamberlaine et al., 1789, p. 59. 24 Entering the harem did not equate to entering the private spaces of the colonized in general. Eighteenth-century India, for instance, was a kaleidoscope of religions, languages and customs, but for the British colonial government it was the Muslim Mughal rulers who 20 21

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Another relevant issue to which these plays referred is the anxiety of aristocrats and middle-class society in Britain over the emergence of a new class of people. This new social group was being formed by those who had returned to England from the colonies with their new imperial wealth, thus destabilizing class hierarchy. The «nabobs», an Anglicization of a Mughal honorific, represented a concrete threat to the domestic balance of power, exacerbating the tensions already existing between aristocrats and an emerging industrious middle class. For this reason, they began to be satirized on stage, becoming a recurrent character in the comedy of the late century, like Samuel Foote’s The Nabob (1778). As Mita Choudhury observes, «laughter veils the colonialist implications of Orientalism»25: her remark throws light on why these women dramatists wrote comedies, comic operas and even farces, i.e. genres that allowed them to present their political concerns to the audience with a levity and ambiguity that escaped government censorship. Cowley and Starke, for example, explicitly underline that they were not discussing British politics in their plays: «I know nothing about politics; [...] politics are unfeminine, I never in my life could attend to their discussion», Hannah Cowley declares in the advertisement of A Day in Turkey. Describing herself as a «comic poet», she cleverly averted any connection with political satire26. «Not a breath of politics, I vow!» exclaims Mr Palmer in the Prologue of caused the greatest inconvenience and it was this power that the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century narratives and travelogues questioned and criticized the most. Once Mughal power had been contained and a new wave of evangelical thinking had reached India, Hinduism and its practises became the new target of scrutiny and criticism. On British encounters with Hinduism, see G. A. Oddie, Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism, 1793-1900, London: Sage, 2006. 25 M. Choudhury, Interculturalism, cit., p. 111. 26 Ivi, p. 124. In the advertisement, however, Cowley also astutely returns on politics, stating that she cannot fully avoid to hint at political matters when dealing with a French character (A La Grecque): «Hints have been thrown out, and the idea industriously circulated, that the following comedy is tainted with POLITICS. I protest I know nothing about politics; —will Miss Wollstonecraft forgive me […] if I say that politics are unfeminine? I never in my life could attend to their discussion. True Comedy has always been defined to be a picture of life—a record of passing manners—a mirror to reflect to succeeding times the characters and follies of the present. How then could I, pretending to be a comic poet, bring an emigrant Frenchman before the public at this day, and not make him hint at the events which had just passed, or were then passing in his native country? A character so written would have been anomalous—the critics ought to have had no mercy on me. It is A la Grecque who speaks, not I; nor can I be accountable for his sentiments», H. Cowley, A Day in Turkey; or, The Russian Slaves. A Comedy, as Acted at the Theatre Royal, in Covent Garden, London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1792, p. 1.

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Starke’s The Sword of Peace. The 1799-printed version of Starke’s play, as Daniel O’Quinn has pointed out, carries a note indicating that «[t]he Lines in inverted Commas, are omitted in Representation»; O’Quinn observes «how significant the omitted passages are to the play’s politics»27.

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2. A Day in Turkey, or, the Russian Slaves Hannah Cowley’s A Day in Turkey is a comic opera whose first version was written in 1779 and premiered at Covent Garden in 1791. The action of the play centres on the experiences of four prisoners of war taken to the seraglio of the Turkish Bassa, Ibrahim28. They are Orloff, a Russian army officer, and his new bride Alexina, who was captured immediately after the ceremony and before their marriage was consummated. The other prisoners are Paulina, the daughter of Alexina’s father’s vassal, and A La Grecque, a French emigrant who is Orloff’s valet. Forced to wear Turkish national dress, Paulina is mistaken by the Bassa for Alexina, whom he is eager to enjoy as a new love. In her anger, Paulina showers contempt on this stranger’s claim to love her, but her scorn only increases the Bassa’s raptures. Meanwhile Alexina, who has succeeded in avoiding being brought before the Bassa, is put in solitary confinement by the malicious slave Azim. Orloff demands that his bride be restored to him «in the same condition» as when he led her to the altar. On discovering that she is married, the Bassa tries to stop seeing Paulina (still mistaking her for Alexina), who by now has fallen in love with him. A happy ending ensues when Orloff learns that it was Paulina in the Bassa’s arms and that Alexina has remained chaste; similarly, the Bassa learns that Paulina is not Orloff’s wife and may now love her freely29. The whole action takes place within the Other’s dominions, which vis27

D. O’Quinn, “The Long Minuet as Danced at Coromandel: Character and the Colonial Translation of Class Anxiety in Mariana Starke’s The Sword of Peace”, British Women Playwrights Around 1800, 1 Sept. 2000: 28 For an interesting reading of Cowley’s A Day in Turkey, see also G. Kucich, “Women’s Cosmopolitanism and the Romantic Stage: Cowley’s A Day in Turkey, or the Russian Slaves”, Poetic and Dramatic Forms in British Romanticism, ed. F. Dellarosa, Bari: Laterza, 2006, pp. 79-98. 29 For a more detailed summary, see J. Gagen, “Hannah Cowley”, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 89 (1989), pp. 82-105.

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ibly shrink as the play progresses. The scene in fact moves from «a Turkish camp» to the «the Gardens of the Bassa», then «the Palace», «the Court», «a Quadrangle», «the Building», «the Prison», to finally «the Harem» and «the Bassa’s apartment”. The precise organization of the space, where even the trees in the garden are geometrically organized, suggests that in the Bassa’s dominions strict social, sexual and political laws are enforced; this order is however destabilized by the arrival of the foreigners, who on their part reject and subvert the Bassa’s laws and establish their own. Cowley transforms this “intrusion” into an indirect condemnation of British colonialism, whose invasive means were often justified, as Hastings had done, by appealing to the right to counteract native despotism. Despite her public declaration of disinterest in politics, Cowley cleverly achieves a subtle political criticism, particularly through the character of A La Grecque, whose name visibly alludes to Catherine the Great of Russia’s «Greek Plan»30. When his master Orloff is imprisoned, A La Grecque talks to him as his «brother slave», thus subverting the master/slave relationship which is underlying throughout. A La Grecque comments that in Russia «they still continue to believe that a prince is more than a porter, and that a lord is a better gentleman than his slave», and then concludes that, «had they but been with me at Versailles, when I help’d to turn those things topsey turvey there!»31, they would have realized that the revolutionary events of France could have spread all over Europe and inspire cultural, social, and political change. In keeping with Cowley’s own allusions to the French revolution in the advertisement32, A La Grecque’s political speech is thus further developed by the Turks: AZIM. Such a wailing about freedom and liberty! Why the Christians in one of the northern islands have established a slave-trade, and proved by act of parliament that freedom is no blessing at all. MUSTAPHA. No, no, they have only proved that it does not suit dark complexions33.

30 Having annexed Crimea to Russia, Catherine the Great’s secret plan was that of allying with Austria (and France) to drive Turkey back from Europe. This was a plan that obviously excluded Britain from sharing power and influence over the area. 31 H. Cowley, A Day in Turkey, cit., p. 18. 32 Interestingly, in the advertisement Cowley almost reverentially refers to Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a «book [that] contains such a body of mind as I hardly ever met with», Ivi, p. 1. 33 Ivi, p. 10.

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Cowley’s condemnation of slavery as an institution goes even further: again, a Turk (Mustapha) says that «every country has its fancies, and we are so fond of liberty that we always buy it up as a rarity»34. Even though interest in the Hastings trial had cooled by the time Cowley’s play premiered at Covent Garden, much of the action in the comedy hinges on the impeachment. The fact that Cowley intentionally set the play in Turkey and that the foreigners were Russians also links the comedy to the contemporary crisis of the Whigs (especially to Pitt’s unpopular attempt to enter a war against Russia), an event which eventually split Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox and condemned the party to dissolution35. Cowley’s comedy thus was certainly political, commenting on domestic political issues and characters that the audience could easily recognize.

3. The Mogul Tale In Cowley’s play, the foreigners who arrive and upset the balance of power, and even question the religious creed36 in the idealized colony are Russians who have been taken captive in Turkey. In Elizabeth Inchbald’s farce The Mogul Tale, written in 1788 and performed in the same year at Haymarket, however, it is an odd trio of English people who descend in their hot-air balloon directly into the Mughal Sultan’s seraglio, in an unidentified oriental kingdom. Again, as we have already seen, the harem is the dramatic setting because of its association with gender oppression; more importantly, the characters coming from the outside, Western world, grant themselves the freedom to inviolately penetrate spaces and to invade foreign territories. It is true that «images of despotic sultans and desperate slave girls became a central part of an emerging liberal feminist discourse about the condition of women not in the East, but in the West»37; the domestic enslavement 34

Ivi, p. 35. See D. O’Quinn, “Hannah Cowley’s A Day in Turkey and the Political Efficacy of Charles James Fox”, «European Romantic Review» 14, 2003, pp. 17-30, and B. Bolton, Women and Nationalism, cit. Both O’Quinn and Bolton deal with the Oczakow affair and Britain’s expedient support of the Ottoman Empire against Russia. 36 On this point, see my “Colonialism, Slavery, and Religion on Stage: Late EighteenthCentury Women Dramatists, the Hastings Trial, and the Making of British India”, in New Readings in the Literature of British India, c. 1780-1947, ed. S. Towheed, Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2007, pp. 11-39. 37 J. Zonana, “The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of Jane Eyre”, «Signs» 18, 1993/3, p. 594. 35

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of women in the seraglio, however, also becomes a metaphor for the political enslavement of men in the colonies. Inchbald’s farce takes a greater step forward in comparison to Cowley’s comedy as subversive and political. Personally linked to William Godwin and his entourage of radical and revolutionary thinkers and writers, Inchbald in fact provides a more direct approach to political issues. A Wapping cobbler, Johnny, and his wife Fanny, take off from Hyde Park Corner in a hot-air balloon with a “doctor” and land in the garden of the Great Mogul. They are immediately taken captive by the Great Mogul, who pretends he wants to torture them and put them to death merely to see their reactions. Their outrageous assumed identities (the Pope of Rome and the Ambassador of the King of England) lead to a hilarious trial scene, where the Great Mogul sets them free. The hierarchical order of power relations is completely subverted and the Mughal Sultan turns from being a tyrant and a torturer to an enlightened sovereign, essentially «indistinguishable from contemporary European philosophers”38. By contrast, Christianity and British imperialism become the targets of a witty satire, as tyrannical expressions of political power. To avoid any possible risk of impeachment or sedition, Inchbald’s religious satire turns to Roman Catholicism and culminates in an extremely funny scene that may well have shaken the theatre with the audience’s laughter39, while retaining that powerful opposition between religions also present in Cowley’s A Day In Turkey: MOGUL. Then who art thou, slave, that dare come into our presence? FIRST EUNUCH. He is no slave; know, my most royal master, this is his highness the Pope of Rome. JOHNNY. [Aside — The Devil I am!] Yes, and please your highness, I am the Pope, at your service. MOGUL. A great Pontiff, indeed — Is that the fashion of his robe? FIRST EUNUCH. His travelling dress only. JOHNNY. My Air-Balloon jacket, please your honour. MOGUL. I want no enumeration of his dignity, I have heard it all. JOHNNY. Yes, yes, all the world have heard of the Devil and the Pope. MOGUL. Cruel and rapacious. The actions of his predecessors will never be forgotten by the descendant of Mahomet. I rejoice I have him in my power — his life will but ill repay those crimes with which this 38

B. Bolton, Women, Nationalism, cit., p. 8. See E. Donkin, Getting into the Act: Women Playwrights in London, 1776-1829, New York: Routledge, 1995, esp. pp. 110-19. 39

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monster formerly pestered the plains of Palestina. Who is that female? JOHNNY. She does not belong to me, she is a nun, and please your highness, taken from a convent in Italy, and was guilty of some crime, not to be forgiven, but by severe penance, enjoined to accompany us. MOGUL. In our country dress she would have charms! — [. . .] Give her another dress, and take her into the Seraglio — [. . .]. FANNY. Oh Johnny — [. . .] MOGUL. Johnny! JOHNNY. Yes, and please your holiness — I am Pope Johnny the twelfth. Please your Mogulship I will talk to her in private — perhaps I may persuade her to comply with your princely desires, for we Popes have never any conversation with women, except in private40.

The Sultan in The Mogul Tale is not only enlightened and magnanimous, but he also admits to having learnt, from an inferior “Other”, how to rule, punish and forgive. He is comically redeemed by the effects of an Oriental interpretation of European and Christian «enlightened» thought: THE MOGUL. Keep silence while I pronounce judgement — Tremble for your approaching doom. You are now before the tribunal of a European, a man of your own colour. I am an Indian, a Mahometan, my laws are cruel and my nature savage – You have imposed upon me, and attempted to defraud me, but know that I have been taught mercy and compassion for the sufferings of human nature; however differing in laws, temper and colour from myself. Yes from you Christians whose laws teach charity to all the world, have I learn’d these virtues? For your countrymen’s cruelty to the poor Gentoos has shewn me tyranny in so foul a light, that I was determined henceforth to be only mild, just and merciful41.

Through the Mughal’s denunciation of the injustices perpetrated upon his people, Inchbald was staging the debate on the East India Company’s governance on India, and contributing to preparing the ground for Burke’s speeches during the Hastings trial. Furthermore, as O’Quinn has noted, the spectacular descending balloon also links the farce with «a series of satirical prints published throughout December 1783 that pictured the fate of both the East India Company and Fox’s East India Bill as similarly troubled balloons»42. 40 E. Inchbald, The Mogul Tale; or, The Descent of a Balloon. A Farce, as it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal, Smoke-Alley, London: F. Powell, 1796, pp. 12-13. 41 Ivi, pp. 21-22. 42 D. O’Quinn, Staging Governance, cit., p. 20.

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4. Such Things Are The Mogul Tale was Inchbald’s debut as a playwright. On 10 February 1787, her five-act comedy Such Things Are opened to astounding success43. The combination of popular features (an exotic Eastern setting, characters who could be easily identified, and the serious and comic discussions of contemporary issues such as tyranny and the state of prisons) made the comedy extremely enjoyable at a time when the Hastings impeachment was about to begin. This time Inchbald set the play in the dominions of a tyrannical Sultan in Sumatra, borrowing heavily from William Marsden’s History of Sumatra, published in 178344. The central character Haswell, described during his visits to the Sultan’s prison, is Inchbald’s tribute to the philanthropist John Howard, whose work as a prison reformer was universally praised. The dungeon scenes where Haswell meets, and succeeds in reforming, the would-be thief Zedan, and where he also encounters the Sultan’s wife Arabella (who is presumed dead) are regularly contrasted with the lazy English inhabitants of the island. Sir Luke Tremor and his wife, Lord Flint and a prospective nabob, Mr Twineall, are accurate representations of British colonial life, a hilarious microcosm that Mariana Starke will also further develop in her Sword of Peace. These characters embody some of Inchbald’s peculiar comic subjects: «the pretence of society, the pretence of dress, the pretence of language»45. The plot consists of a love story that develops in the Sultan’s prison, and depends upon mistaken identity. Of particular relevance is the story of a would-be prisoner, Elvirus, who having petitioned the Sultan in vain to take his father’s place in prison, eventually asks for Haswell’s help. Haswell becomes then the mediator between the two cultures, and supported by a rhetorical religious opposition he appeals to the Sultan while launching into a brave and idealistic defence of justice that mirrors Burke’s own righteous indignation: HASWELL. The prisoner is your subject — there misery — more contagious than disease, preys on the lives of hundreds --- sentenced but 43

For the reception of Inchbald’s plays, see J. Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs Inchbald: Including her Familiar Correspondence with the most Distinguished Persons of her Time, 2 vols., London: Richard Bentley, 1833. 44 For Inchbald’s borrowings from Marsden, see K. S. Green, “You Should Be My Master”, cit., pp. 397-8. 45 A. Jenkins, I’ll Tell You What. The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003, p. 197.

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to confinement, their doom is death. — Immured in damp and dreary vaults, they daily perish — and who can tell but that amongst the many hapless sufferers, there may be hearts, bent down with penitence to Heaven and you, for every slight offence — there may be some amongst the wretched multitude, even innocent victims. — Let me seek them out — let me save them, and you. SULTAN. Amazement! retract your application — curb this weak pity; and receive our thanks. HASWELL. Curb my pity? — and what can I receive in recompense for that soft bond, which links me to the wretched? — and while it sooths their sorrows repay me more, than all the gifts or homage of an empire. — But if repugnant to your plan of government — not in the name of pity — but of justice. SULTAN. Justice! — HASWELL. The justice which forbids all but the worst of criminals to be denied that wholesome air the very brute creation freely takes; at least allow them that46.

Although his eloquence certainly wins the Sultan’s curiosity, it does not succeed in changing his mind. Haswell thus shrewdly turns to a more successful strategy: SULTAN. Sir, your sentiments, but much more your character, excite my curiosity. They tell me, in our camps, you visited each sick man’s bed, — administered yourself the healing draught, — encouraged our savages with the hope of life, or pointed out their better hope in death. — The widow speaks your charities — the orphan lisps your bounties — and the rough Indian melts in tears to bless you. — I wish to ask why you have done all this? — What is it prompts you thus to befriend the wretched and forlorn? HASWELL. In vain for me to explain — the time it wou’d take to tell you why I act thus — SULTAN. Send it in writing then. HASWELL. Nay, if you will read, I’ll send a book, in which is already written why I act thus. SULTAN. What books? — What is it called? HASWELL. “The Christian Doctrine.” [Haswell bows here with the utmost reverence.] There you will find all I have done was but my duty47. At this point, the Sultan is compelled, not without relief, to reveal his painful secret – that he is no Sultan at all, as he converted to Christian46 E. Inchbald, Such Things Are; A Play, in Five Acts. As Performed at the Theatre-Royal, Smoke-Alley, London: Printed for G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1788, p. 33. 47 Ivi, p. 34.

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ity after meeting his (European) wife, and in order however to maintain his dominions, secretly became an apostate: SULTAN. Your words recall reflections that distract me; nor can I bear the pressure on my mind without confessing — I am a Christian48. Inchbald’s recognition (and condemnation) of Britain’s imperial politics49 emerges in the last few famous cues of the play, spoken by Haswell and Zedan: HASWELL. My Indian friend, have you received your freedom? ZEDAN. Yes — and come to bid you farewell — which I wou’d never do, had I not a family in wretchedness till my return — for you shou’d be my master, and I wou’d be your slave50.

As both the audience and the Sumatrans in the play seem to tacitly consent to leaving an «impostor» on the throne of Sumatra, the closure of the play is thus a celebration of the ambiguous Burkean approach to fighting the corruption and avarice of Hastings’s East India Company in favour of gaining justice for the oppressed Indian population, without actually criticising British colonialism itself. This move confirms the image of India and, in general, of the colonies, as a «tropological repository from which colonial (and postcolonial) imaginations have drawn […] their most basic figures for the anxiety of empire»51.

5. The Sword of Peace In contrast, it is the enlightened sovereignty of a British governor that dominates Mariana Starke’s The Sword of Peace. Set in India, the comedy deals mainly with the British women’s marriage market in the East Indies. Unlike Inchbald or Cowley, Starke had actually lived in the colonies (her father was governor of Fort St. George in Madras), and clearly wrote the play with the purpose of endorsing British imperial power over India during the Hastings trial. Indeed, The Sword of Peace portrays the story of a corrupt governor who is finally replaced by an honest one, David Northcote. The romantic plot is set amidst the change in political power in the colony and starts with the journey to India of two young cousins, Louisa and

48

Ibidem. K. S. Green, “You Should Be My Master”, cit., p. 411. 50 E. Inchbald, Such Things Are, cit., p. 63. 51 S. Suleri, The Rhetoric of English India, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 5. 49

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Eliza Moreton. Louisa has come to India on behalf of Sir Thomas Clairville, to buy back the sword of his young nephew, a soldier who died and bequeathed the sword to his friend Lieutenant Dormer, while Eliza’s father’s will requires her to go to India in order to inherit her fortune. By coincidence, she also seeks her faithful admirer Edwards, who had left London for India when his family denied him permission to marry Eliza, thinking her penniless. Around them, a myriad of funny characters provide a portrait of colonial life in British India. These include women who have travelled there in order to get married and gain a social position, corrupt governors and their sycophants, and honest politicians replacing the less honest ones. The insertion of one particular subplot however, seemingly unconnected to the main storyline, does undermine Starke’s seeming imperial triumphalism. An English servant, named Jeffreys, buys a black slave’s freedom but ironically, freedom to Caesar (the former slave) seems to have no other meaning than his new desire to resemble an Englishman: JEFFREYS. Shou’d you like to serve me and go over to England? CAESAR. Oh, Massa! yes, yes – [leaps for joy.] – me love England, ‘cause my old Massa love it – he hate India – so do I52. JEFFREYS. You are free, Caesar; I make you so. But, you dog, I must make you a lad of spirit, like an Englishman, or else, what’s your liberty good for? CAESAR. Ah, Massa, I free! I like you! – Am I Englishman? – oh teach me to be Englishman. JEFFREYS. That I will, you rogue. – An Englishman – ay, he lives as he likes – lives where he likes – goes where he likes – stays where he likes – works if he likes – lets it alone, if he likes – starves, if he likes – abuses who he likes – boxes who he likes53 – thinks what he likes – speaks what he thinks – for damme, he fears nothing, and will face the devil54.

The subplot of a black slave’s liberation by a white servant in a colonial settlement was potentially subversive. Such questioning of the master/slave hierarchy, in addition to a social system threatened by the nabobs, and along with the traditional patriarchal family system menaced by women of uncertain origins who ran to India to find the husband they could not have in England, constituted potential threats to the Indian settlement as a whole. In the opinion of the previous 52 53 54

M. Starke, The Sword of Peace, cit., p. 15. These last two lines were omitted in representation. M. Starke, The Sword of Peace, cit., pp. 27-28.

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Resident (and therefore, possibly, Hastings), even the newly arrived governor, with his liberal thought, represents an alarming change in the system of the colony: RESIDENT. Lookye, Mr. Northcote, if you continue to go on in this style, Sir, I must write home; there is no going on thus; “for what with your pretended benevolence and generosity, and stuff”, Sir, you set the whole settlement in an uproar! There’s no governing them – blacks, whites, Gentoos, and Hindoos, all alike running made after you, and your vagaries, truly. NORTHCOTE. Yes, Mr. Resident, I feel for human nature, of whatever colour or description; I feel for the name and character of an Englishman. “I feel neither the power of gold, prejudice, nor partiality; and where the lives and properties, or even happiness, of others, are concerned, I have ever regarded the impulse of humanity”55.

Both Green and Moskal underline that the final restoration of “British” order is on the one side dictated by the fact that the colonizers «are masters, not by force of conquest, but by moral deserving»56, and on the other side by the reduction of the master/slave relation to a parent/child relation, thus «naturalizing the [colonized] submission through the metaphor of the patriarchal family»57. Once order is re-established, the binary oppositions already mentioned also return; the rhetoric of the happy ending could not have been more celebrative.

6. A Busy Day A similar strategy, that of submitting the political message to the subplot in order to secure the moral purpose of the play while still celebrating the Empire, is even more evident in Frances Burney’s unperformed (until 1993) A Busy Day. The comedy is set in London, where the protagonists have just returned from the East Indies. Eliza Watts has long been in India with her adopted father, Mr Alderson, who has left her an inheritance of eighty thousand pounds. She returns to London with her fiancé Cleveland (they had met in India) who has been summoned home by his uncle Sir Marmaduke to become his heir. Sir 55 56 57

Ivi, p. 52. K.S. Green, “You Should Be My Master”, cit., p. 413. J. Moskal, “English National Identity”, cit., p. 118.

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Marmaduke and Lady Wilhelmina want him to marry Miss Perceval. Meanwhile, Cleveland’s brother Frank meets Eliza by accident and plots to marry her because he needs money to repay his gambling debts, and, together with Miss Perceval, determines to get revenge on Cleveland who is supposed to have excluded Frank from the inheritance. Miss Perceval and Frank invite Eliza’s «vulgar» family to a party with Sir Marmaduke and Lady Wilhelmina with the intention of humiliating both Eliza and Cleveland. When, however, Sir Marmaduke threatens to disinherit Cleveland, Eliza solves her hero’s financial problems and her generosity is rewarded by the happy ending. In Burney’s view, their marriage is based on a nabob’s wealth, and she gives them (and their imperial wealth) the elevated place she believes they deserve in society. The play has almost nothing to say about slavery and abolition, the colonial issue or the Hastings trial58, except that the first act opens with Eliza talking to her maid Deborah and another English servant about the black servant she brought back with her from India: ELIZA. [...] pray assist my servant in taking care of my trunks. 1ST WAITER. What, the Black? ELIZA. Yes; be so good as to see if he wants any help. 1ST SERVANT. What, the Black? ELIZA. Yes. He is the best creature living. I shall be extremely concerned if he should meet with any accident. 1ST SERVANT. What, the Black?59

Deborah then adds: DEBORAH. Why, that’s very good of you, my dear young lady, to be so kind to him [. . .]: but, [. . .] after all, a Black’s but a Black; and let him hurt himself never so much, it won’t shew. It in’t like hurting us whites, with our fine skins, all over alabaster60.

Curiously, «the Black», whose name is Mungo (a most typical name for a black slave since the huge success of Isaac Bickerstaff’s comic opera The Padlock), never appears on stage; Africans and Indians as characters were rarely represented on stage, an omission that has 58 The Burneys were supporters of Hastings, despite Frances Burney’s early friendship with Burke; see N. Chevalier, “Redeeming the Nabob: Frances Burney, Warren Hastings and the Cultural Construction of British India in A Busy Day”, «The Burney Journal» 2, 1999, p. 36. 59 F. Burney, A Busy Day, cit., p. 22. 60 Ivi, p. 23

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only recently been studied and discussed61. The few reliable sources we have today are the newspapers and the gazettes of the time, the playbills and the dramatis personae in the published texts. Looking at the printed versions of Cowley’s, Inchbald’s and Starke’s plays, all the Indian and black main character roles were played by white British actors and actresses, despite the fact that there might have been actors of colour in London at that time62. Many playwrights, including Hannah Cowley, «introduced Negroes [...] because of their box-office appeal»63, although they most probably were white actors in disguise64. Furthermore, the word «black» during the eighteenth century was a generic term, and also included, for example, Indians, as evident in Burney’s play. Characterizations, changes and adaptations could easily be achieved by stereotyping the character and associating him with an unmistakable stage object, such as a turban, a veil, a fake beard and blackening their skin with burnt cork. A Busy Day is a reaction (at least an ideological one) to such generalization, for Eliza seems to be willing to mark the difference between the «Black» referred to by both the English servant and Deborah, and the actual Indian servant she brought with her from India, 61

Recent studies include J. Carlson, “Race and Profit in English Theatre”, Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730-1830, eds. J. Moody and D. O’Quinn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 175-88; F. Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage. Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830s. With an Anthology of Texts, Bari: Edizioni dal Sud, 2009; H. Waters, Racism on the Victorian Stage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007; and D. Worrall, Harlequin Empire: Race, Ethnicity and the Drama of the Popular Enlightenment, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007. 62 On this point, see J. Cox, Drama, vol. V of Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, 8 vols., eds. P. J. Kitson and D. Lee, London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. 63 Quoted in J. Carlson, “New Lows in Eighteenth-Century Theater: The Rise of Mungo”, «European Romantic Review» 18:2, 2007, p. 141. 64 See D. Worrall, Harlequin Empire, cit.; F. Shyllon, Black People in Britain 1555-1833, London: Oxford University Press, 1977; F. Nussbaum, The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, and “The Theatre of Empire: Racial Counterfeit, Racial Realism”, A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840, ed. K. Wilson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 71-90. The role of Othello, for instance, often played by white actors in disguise. For example, Mr. Ross played as Othello in 1761 and 1765 both at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, (Othello, the Moor of Venice. A tragedy. As it is now acted at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden. Written by W. Shakespeare, London, 1761; Othello, the Moor of Venice. A tragedy. As it is now acted at the Theatres Royal in Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden. Written by W. Shakespeare, London, 1765), and Mr. Pope took on the role of Othello in 1788 at Covent Garden (Othello, the Moor of Venice. A tragedy, in five acts. Written by W. Shakespeare. Taken from the manager’s book, at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden, London, 1788?).

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by clarifying his ethnicity throughout the play:

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MISS WATTS. Pray, sister, do the Indins [sic] do much mischief? — What kind of look have they? Do they let ‘em run about wild? Wa’n’t you monstrous frightened at first? ELIZA. Frightened? The native Gentoos are the mildest and gentlest of human beings. MISS WATTS. La, nasty black things! I can’t abide the Indins [sic]65.

Burney’s apparent philanthropy may have referred to things to come (the Bill for the Abolition of the British Slave Trade was finally passed a few years later), but her view of India and the Indians was still influenced by Hastings: that same image of India as found in Starke’s The Sword of Peace and Inchbald’s Such Things Are is faithfully reproduced in Burney’s play. The characters are now in London, at the heart of that Empire still at the beginning of its making. And yet, as Chevalier acutely observes, «the opening action immediately suggests London as a place of danger – far greater danger, in fact, than the Calcutta that Eliza has left»66. London is thus to Eliza the «foreign, exotic landscape» that India must have appeared to the eyes of the adventurers who travelled in the opposite direction. The acquisition of Eliza’s inheritance allows her to change her social status: such mobility as Eliza enjoys in London, as well as a new economy of the social system, derives directly from the wealth of the whole Empire overseas, and especially from British India, which begins to be perceived also as an “Emporium”67. The idealized, traditional and ancien régime perception of the colonies (represented by Hastings) was waning, opening the way to a modern colonization, relying more and more on the trade in luxury goods for consumption in the heart of the Empire. The exploitation and subjugation of the native populations remains one of the darkest sides in the process of colonial expansion that was just at its beginning. Other authors would later react, this time by learning how to speak out and back their contempt, anger and indignation, finally achieving the freedom of self-definition, confidence and expression of which the women dramatists of the late eighteenth century were deprived.

65

F. Burney, A Busy Day, cit., p. 26. N. Chevalier, “Redeeming the Nabob”, cit., p. 31. 67 For this definition of “Empire” as an “Emporium” I am indebted to Joseph W. Childers, in a paper delivered at the International Conference on Travel Literature and India, University of Delhi, 20-21 February, 2007. 66

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Works cited Banaji, D. R., 1933, Slavery in British India, Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co.. Bernstein, J., 2000, Dawning of the Raj: The Life and Trials of Warren Hastings, Chicago: Ivan D. Ree. Boaden, J., 1833, Memoirs of Mrs Inchbald: Including her Familiar Correspondence with the most Distinguished Persons of her Time, 2 vols., London: Richard Bentley. Bolton, B., 2001, Women, Nationalism and the Romantic Stage: Theatre and Politics in Britain, 1780-1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, L., 2001, Fables of Modernity: Literature and Culture in the English Eighteenth Century, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Burney, F., (1802?), A Busy Day; or, An Arrival from India, ed. T. Ghoshal Wallace, 1984, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Burney, F., (1802?), “A Busy Day; or, An Arrival from India,” The Complete Plays of Frances Burney, 2 vols., ed. P. Sabor, 1995, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, vol. I, Comedies, pp. 287-397. Burroughs, C., ed., 2000, Women in British Romantic Theatre. Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carlson, J., 2007, “New Lows in Eighteenth-Century Theater: The Rise of Mungo”, «European Romantic Review» 18:2, pp. 139-147. Carlson, J., 2007, “Race and Profit in English Theatre”, Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730-1830, eds. J. Moody and D. O’Quinn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 175-88. Carnall, G. and C. Nicholson, eds., 1989, The Impeachment of Warren Hastings: Papers from a Bicentenary Commemoration, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Chevalier, N., 1999, “Redeeming the Nabob: Frances Burney, Warren Hastings and the Cultural Construction of British India in A Busy Day”, «The Burney Journal» 2, 1999, pp. 24-39. Choudhury, M., 2000, Interculturalism and Resistance in the London Theater, 1660-1800. Identity, Performance, Empire, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. Cowley, H., 1792, A Day in Turkey; or, The Russian Slaves. A Comedy, as Acted at the Theatre Royal, in Covent Garden, London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson. Cox, J. ed., 1999, Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, vol. 5: Drama, London: Pickering & Chatto. Davies, A. M., 1935, Strange Destiny: A Biography of Warren Hastings, New York: Putnam’s Sons. De Bruyn, F., 1987, “Edmund Burke’s Gothic Romance: The Portrayal of

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Warren Hastings in Burke’s Writings and Speeches on India”, «Criticism» 29, 1987, pp. 415-38. Dellarosa, F., 2009, Slavery on Stage. Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830s. With an Anthology of Texts, Bari: Edizioni dal Sud. D’Ezio, M., 2007, “Colonialism, Slavery, and Religion on Stage: Late Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists, the Hastings Trial, and the Making of British India”, New Readings in the Literature of British India, c. 17801947, ed. S. Towheed, Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, pp. 11-39. Donkin, E., 1995, Getting into the Act: Women Playwrights in London, 17761829, New York: Routledge. Doody, M. A., 1988, Frances Burney. The Life in the Works, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Feiling, K., 1954, Warren Hastings, London: Macmillan. Foote, S., 1778, The Nabob; A Comedy, in Three Acts. As it is Performed at the Theatre-Royal in the Haymarket, London: Printed for T. Cadell et al. Franklin, M. J., 1998, “Accessing India: Orientalism, Anti-“Indianism”, and the Rhetoric of Jones and Burke”, Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing Empire 1780-1830, eds. T. Fulford and P. J. Kitson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 48-66. Franklin, M. J., 2000, Representing India: Indian Culture and Imperial Control in Eighteenth-Century British Discourse, 9 vols., London: Routledge. Fulford, T. and P. J. Kitson, 1998, Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing Empire 1780-1830, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gagen, J., 1989, “Hannah Cowley”, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 89, pp. 82-105. Graham, G. S., 1970, A Concise History of the British Empire, London: Thames and Hudson. Green, K. S., 1998, “You Should Be My Master:” Imperial Recognition Politics in Elizabeth Inchbald’s Such Things Are”, «Clio» 27, 1998/3, pp. 387-414. Inchbald, E., 1788, Such Things Are; A Play, in Five Acts. As Performed at the Theatre-Royal, Smoke-Alley, London: Printed for G.G.J. and J. Robinson. Inchbald, E., 1796, The Mogul Tale; or, The Descent of a Balloon. A Farce, as it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal, Smoke-Alley, London: F. Powell. Jenkins, A., 2003, I’ll Tell You What. The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Juneja, R., 1992, “The Native and the Nabob: Representations of the Indian Experience in Eighteenth-Century Literature”, «Journal of Commonwealth Literature» 27, 1992/1, pp. 183-98. Keay, J., 1993, The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company, London: Harper Collins. Kucich, G., 2006, “Women’s Cosmopolitanism and the Romantic Stage:

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Cowley’s A Day in Turkey, or the Royal Slaves”, Poetic and Dramatic Forms in British Romanticism, ed. F. Dellarosa, Bari: Laterza, pp. 79-98. Lawson P. and J. Phillips, 1984, ““Our Execrable Banditti:” Perceptions of Nabobs in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain”, «Albion» 16, 1984, pp. 225-41. Lawson, P., 1993, The East India Company: A History, London: Longman. Lewis, I., 1998, Sahibs, Nabobs and Boxwallahs: A Dictionary of the Words of Anglo-India, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mani, L., 1998, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India, Berkeley: University of California Press. Marshall, P. J., 1976, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marshall, P. J., 1965, The Impeachment of Warren Hastings, London: Oxford University Press. McCann, A., 1999, “Edmund Burke’s Immortal Law: Reading the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, 1788”, Cultural Politics in the 1790s: Literature, Radicalism, and the Public Sphere, Houndsmill: Macmillan, pp. 33-58. Moody, J. and D. O’Quinn, eds., 2007, Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730-1830, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moody, J., 2000, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1787-1843, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moon, P., 1962, Warren Hastings and British India, New York: Collier. Moskal, J., 2000, “English National Identity in Mariana Starke’s “The Sword of Peace:” India, Abolition, and the Rights of Women”, Women in British Romantic Theatre. Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790-1840, ed. C. Burroughs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 102-31. Musselwhite, D., 1986, “The Trial of Warren Hastings”, Literature, Politics, and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference, 1976-84, ed. F. Barker et al., London: Methuen, pp. 77-103. Nussbaum, F., 2003, The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, F., 2004, “The Theatre of Empire: Racial Counterfeit, Racial Realism”, A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840, ed. K. Wilson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 71-90. Oddie, G. A., 2006, Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism, 1793-1900, London: Sage. O’Quinn, H., 2003, “Hannah Cowley’s A Day in Turkey and the Political Efficacy of Charles James Fox”, «European Romantic Review» 14, 2003, pp. 17-30. O’Quinn, D., 2006, Staging Governance. Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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O’Quinn, D., 2000, “The Long Minuet as Danced at Coromandel: Character and the Colonial Translation of Class Anxiety in Mariana Starke’s The Sword of Peace”, British Women Playwrights Around 1800, Raven, J., 1992, Judging New Wealth, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Said, E., 1978, Orientalism, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Samet, E. D., 2001, “A Prosecutor and a Gentleman: Edmund Burke’s Idiom of Impeachment”, «English Literary History» 68, 2001, pp. 397-418. Shyllon, F., 1977, Black People in Britain 1555-1833, London: Oxford University Press. Spear, P., 1963, The Nabobs: A Study of the Social Life of the English in Eighteenth-Century India, London: Oxford University Press. Starke, M., 1789, The Sword of Peace, or, A Voyage of Love; A Comedy, in Five Acts, Dublin: H. Chamberlaine et al.. Starke, M., 1791, The Widow of Malabar: A Tragedy in Three Acts. As it is Performed at the Theatre-Royal Covent Garden, Dublin: Printed for P. Wogan et al.. Suleri, S., 1992, The Rhetoric of English India, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sutherland, L. S., 1942, The East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics, Oxford: Clarendon Press. The Diaries and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, Edited by her Niece [Charlotte Barrett], 1854, 7 vols., London: Henry Colburn. The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. In Twelve Volumes, 1887, London: John C. Nimmo. Waters, H., 2007, Racism on the Victorian Stage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Worrall, D., 2007, Harlequin Empire: Race, Ethnicity and the Drama of the Popular Enlightenment, London: Pickering & Chatto. Zonana, J., 1993, “The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of Jane Eyre”, «Signs» 18, 1993/3, pp. 592-617.

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«IT IS THIS COUNTRY WHICH IS TO ME A LAND OF SAVAGES»: CONTRASTING GROUP IDENTITIES IN PAUL AND VIRGINIA Ulrich Pallua Hail Britain, happiest of countries! Happy in thy climate, fertility, situation and commerce; but still happier in the peculiar nature of thy laws and government. Oliver Goldsmith, “A Comparative View of Races and Nations,” 1760

1. Introduction The novel Paul et Virginie, written by the French author Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre in 1787, was translated and shortened by Helen Maria Williams in 1795, and adapted for a play by James Cobb in 18001. While Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s story is set in Mauritius, which had been seized by the French in 1715 and renamed Ile de France (Isle of France)2, Cobb’s musical drama moves the setting to an unidentified ‘Spanish Island in the West Indies’. 1

A later adaptation of the story for the theatre was American writer Jessie Ringwalt’s play Paul and Virginia: Or, The Runaway Slave. A Play in Three Acts (1864). It is not dealt with in this paper as it dates to the years of the American Civil War, and its historical-cultural context is significantly different from that of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of the Saint Pierre/Williams and Cobb texts. 2 The French developed the economy of the island with a prosperous sugar production industry. The British gained control of the island on December 3, 1810, during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). See M. Vaughan, “Slavery and Colonial Identity in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius”, «Transactions of the Royal Historical Society» 8, 1998, pp. 189-214.

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A central trope, which is differently modulated in the various versions of the story of Paul and Virginia, is the island – a confined place, «[…] generator[…] of colonization, capitalist production and ecological thinking alike […]»3, where different people coalesce into an amalgam of conflicting cultural identities. As P.D. Morgan argues,

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[i]dentities depend on imagined communities, on constructed associations, on invented traditions, on manufactured myths. A sense of self is rotted in a collective consciousness of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Neither ‘we’ nor ‘they’ are fixed, but rather are constantly negotiated and renegotiated, encompassing a multitude of shifting boundaries and subjective identities.4

In the prevailingly ethnocentric and hierarchical categorisation of cultures featuring eighteenth-century worldview, the island was often represented as «[…] a cultural world, a mental construction…a cultural boundary, which divides ‘the world between here and there, us and them, good and bad, familiar and strange’»5. Such a clash of cultural identities is staged as a process of valuation in which a particular culture is socially excluded and defined as inferior, while the other is seen as superior and thus responsible for the former’s enlightenment – in the case of Great Britain, «one superior Island Race»6. ‘Race’ – as a category intended to qualify people by creating a collective identity – plays an active role in the contact zone7 between Europeans and Africans. According to Wilson, «‘[r]ace’, it seems, like gender and ethnicity, was a historically contingent construction that did not describe empirical, static or absolute conditions in society, but positional relationships made and unmade in historical circumstances 3 K. Wilson, The Island Race. Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century, London and New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 5. 4 P. D. Morgan, “Encounters between British and ‘indigenous’ Peoples, c. 1500-c. 1800,” Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850, eds. Martin Daunton, and Rick Halpern, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1999, p. 45. 5 G. Denin, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land, Marquesas 1774-1880, Honolulu: Hawaii UP, 1980, p. 23. (qt. in Morgan, “Encounters between British and ‘indigenous’ Peoples, c. 1500-c. 1800”, p. 55) 6 Wilson, The Island Race, cit., p. 13. «[E]nglishness itself had emerged by the 1760s and 1770s as a nascent ethnicity that, although certainly defined through government, institutions and language, and sharing important features with European and Celtic cultures, still had within it what we would recognize as racialized assumptions, which ranged from the superior capacity of English people for rational thought to the greater aesthetic beauty of the ‘pink and white complexion.’» (Ibidem) 7 For a detailed study on cultures in contact see Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge, 1992.

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and manipulated in the pursuit of power».8 The use of stereotypical images assumes importance in assessing «other» people’s lives, customs, and social standing as the creation of a collective identity enables the colonisers to juxtapose two allegedly opposing cultures: their own, labelled as advanced and civilized, with that of Africa as savage and underdeveloped. As Ryan rightly avers, in the context of his study on European exploration of another terra incognita, Australia, [t]he stereotype results from the initial disavowal of difference in the subject’s search for a unified self and the subsequent recognition of difference in the indigene. As the search for a unified identity collapses with this recognition of difference, the stereotype gives access to an ‘identity’ which is predicated as much on mastery and pleasure as it is on anxiety and defence – it offers an anti-type against which the identity of the coloniser may be formed. This means that the indigene is trapped within this discourse of colonial self-identification, rendered as a safe alterity and the stereotype remains a fixed category9.

The aim of this paper is to focus on the contrasting group identities in the relation between Europeans and African slaves, between coloniser and colonised in the two English or Anglicised versions of the story of Paul and Virginia. In the encounter the colonial subjectivity is contrasted with the indigenous, where the coloniser’s positive identity defines the negative identity of the colonised. The creation of the image of the African character, the creation of the «African body» as juxtaposed with the «European body», reveals the ideological subjectivation in the process of colonising Africa.

2. Williams’s Translation Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s Paul and Virginia was translated and shortened by Helen Maria Williams from within the Luxembourg prison, where she had been kept in jail since 1793, due to her Girondist sympathies10. As Williams’s own preface to the first edition of the novel 8

Wilson, The Island Race, cit., p. 11. S. Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers saw Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 138. 10 Williams’s biography and career are explored in D. Kennedy, Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution, Cranbury, N.J.-London: Bucknell University Press, 2002. «For Williams, working on the translation, entering the world of Paul and Virginia, was an ‘escape’ from the ‘misery’ of Robespierre’s France, when she could not enjoy ‘the calm 9

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makes clear, the translator «omitt[ed] several pages of general observations» and added «a few Sonnets»11 thereby stressing the cultural differences between the intended reading public of the two countries.12 In her sonnets – interspersed in the narrative weft and introduced by the eye-witness nameless narrator as the creation of Virginia’ mother, Madame de la Tour – Williams conjures up the image of the island’s nature as determining human existence: Pathway of light! o’er thy empurpled zone With lavish charms perennial summer strays; Soft ’midst thy spicy groves the zephyr plays, While far around the rich perfumes are thrown: The amadavid bird for thee alone Spreads his gay plumes, that catch thy vivid rays, For thee the gems with liquid luster blaze, And Nature’s various wealth is all thy own. But, ah! Not thine is twilight’s doubtful gloom, Those mild gradations, mingling day with night; Here instant darkness shrouds thy genial bloom, Nor leaves my pensive soul that lingering light, When musing memory would each trace resume Of fading pleasures in successive flight13.

Darkness/light, clouds/sun, the calmness of the island/the roaring ocean are pairs of contrasting images around which the poem is structured. The poetic voice identifies the dazzling light with happiness, juxtaposing it with the despair of the fading light, «twilight’s doubtful gloom»; the brittleness and transitoriness of nature with hu-

of literary leisure,’ such as a writer is usually thought to enjoy. These circumstances give the translation additional interest for having been somehow stamped by the struggles of the Revolution, a not inappropriate association for a work that has at its core a rejection of the corruption of the Ancien Régime». (p. 123) 11 H. M. Williams, «Preface» to B. de Saint Pierre, Paul and Virginia, trans. Helen Maria Williams, 1851, Doylestown, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press, 2004, p. 6. Further references will be given in parentheses in the text. 12 See Williams’s Preface, where, commenting in particular on her omissions, she points out that «the two nations seem to change characters, and while the serious and reflecting Englishman requires, in novel writing as well as on the theatre, a rapid succession of incidents, much bustle, and stage effect, without suffering the author to appear himself, and stop the progress of the story; the gay and restless Frenchman listens attentively to long philosophical reflexions, while the catastrophe of the drama hangs in suspense». (p.6) A close comparison of de Saint Pierre’s original French text and Williams’s translation, which is outside the scope of this paper, would show to what extent Williams’s omissions and changes altered the original text. 13 Sonnet To the Torrid Zone, Paul and Virginia, p. 51.

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man existence, emphasising the transitory ‘nature’ of youth, whose «pleasures» are destined to fade; the loneliness and seclusion of life are overshadowed by the «present woe»14 of human existence: while the bird absent from its nest can return, «[…] I my long lost home no more shall hail!»15 Williams identifies the untouched nature of the island as the epitome of human life uncorrupted by the materialistic values of European lifestyle, corroborating Saint Pierre’s «distaste for human society» and «distaste for civilization»16. The story portrays the life of two families in Port Louis, Mauritius, contrasting the island as a divine paradise with cold and corrupted Europe that eventually exterminates both families17. When a «man, advanced in years»18, who soon takes on the role of the true narrator19, is asked to recount the story of two ruined cottages appearing in the landscape, he expresses astonishment at his interlocutor’s curiosity: […] what European, pursuing his way to the Indies, will pause one moment to interest himself in the fate of a few obscure individuals? What European can picture happiness to his imagination amidst poverty and neglect? The curiosity of mankind is only attracted by the history of the great20.

The old man’s reproaching words, directed to Europe, enact what turns out to be a gender as well as class-oriented critique of social discrimination: of the two destitute white women whose lives and destinies intertwine in the colonial setting, one was disowned by her rich and noble family, due to her having married a man below her rank, the other was seduced and abandoned by a man who deserted her and left her with a child. These two outcasts have found a home 14

Sonnet To the Curlew, Paul and Virginia, p. 48. Sonnet To the White Bird of the Tropic, Paul and Virginia, p. 86. 16 See A. Goodden, 1982, “Tradition and Innovation in ‘Paul and Virginie’: A Thematic Study”, «The Modern Language Review» 77, 1982 July/3, pp. 561, 562. 17 In the eighteenth century on the Isle de France “[t]he rigidities of the ideology of slavery came up against the fluidity of a society in the making. This was clearly a highly unequal process in which some groups retained much of their history, culture and language, albeit transformed by the experience of being colonists, whilst others were rarely recognised as having any culture to lose.” (M. Vaughan, “Slavery and Colonial Identity in EighteenthCentury Mauritius”, «Transactions of the Royal Historical Society» 8, 1998, p. 208) 18 Paul and Virginia, cit., p. 10. 19 The story has a complex narrative frame, with a double narrative level where an external, framing voice is soon replaced by the «man, advanced in years», who is the true, eye-witness narrator, telling the story of the two neighbouring families. (from now on referred to as the narrator) 20 Ivi, p. 11. 15

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in Mauritius which, according to them, will protect their offspring Paul and Virginia «[f]rom the prejudices of Europe, those prejudices which poison the most precious sources of our happiness», allowing them to «[e]njoy at once the pleasures of love and the blessings of equality»21. While the island is portrayed as being a haven of peace people can retire to, the inhabitants of the island act out seemingly unchangeable power relations, where slavery is never questioned, and a benevolent master may elicit the slaves’ perennial gratitude. This is particularly true with the families’ slaves Domingo and Mary. Domingo is described as possessing «[…] some knowledge, and a good natural understanding», (PV 16) and Mary as being «[…] active, cleanly, and, above all», (PV 17) but the narrative voice grants the right of freedom only to the Europeans living there, while the black woman is described as the only «earthly possession, or rather support» of young widow Madame De la Tour (PV 12). In the primitivist Eden where they are brought up, Paul and Virginia are not taught to write or read and do not concern themselves with morality and sciences, which makes them hardly different from the enslaved human beings around them. However, it is their childlike innocence and «God-like» purity that separates them from the culturally «inferior» slaves. Their tears had never been called forth by long application to useless sciences. Their minds had never been wearied by lessons of morality, superfluous to bosoms unconscious of ill. They had never been taught that they must not steal, because everything with them was in common; or to be intemperate, because their simple food was left to their own descretion; or false, because they had no truth to conceal. Their young imaginations had never been terrified by the idea that God has punishments in store for ungrateful children, since with them filial affection arose naturally from maternal fondness. All they had been taught of religion was to love it; and if they did not offer up long prayers in the church…they raised towards heaven their innocent hands, and their hearts purified by virtuous affections. (PV 21-22)

In an important episode early in the novel, a runaway «negro woman» (PV 33) is rescued and led back to her master by Paul and 21 Paul and Virginia, p. 20. Hereafter referred to as PV. Madagascar, quite contrarily, is presented as being inimical to European ‘constitution’: when in 1726 Monsieur de la Tour went to Madagascar to fetch slaves for a plantation he wanted to establish, he died of a fever «[…] which will forever baffle the attempts of the European nations to form establishments on that fatal soil». (Ivi, p. 12.)

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Virginia, who asks the «great wicked man» (PV 31) [the slave’s master] for forgiveness:

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The man at first paid little attention to the children, who he saw were meanly dressed. But when he observed the elegance of Virginia’s form, and the profusion of her beautiful light tresses, which had escaped from beneath her blue cap; when he heard the soft tone of her voice […] he took his pipe from his mouth, and lifting up his stick, swore, with a terrible oath, that he pardoned his slave, not for the love of heaven, but for her who asked his forgiveness. (PV 28)

The woman is thus momentarily pardoned because her master is attracted by Virginia’s kindness and charisma, not because he repents enslaving human beings. Gratitude emerges in the slave’s words, as she observes that «[…] there are still some good white people in this country […]» (PV 27). However, when Domingo later rescues Paul and Virginia, he informs them that the planter has again had the slave put in iron: «But what pardon! he showed her to me with her feet chained to a block of wood, and an iron collar with three hooks fastened round her neck». (PV 33) Ironically, neither Paul nor Virginia seem to care about the slave’s fate, but in the light of their own moral gratification: «Virginia sighed at the recollection of the poor slave, and at the uneasiness which they had given their mothers. She repeated several times, ‘Oh how difficult it is to do good!’» (PV 34). It seems as if the whole deed of the slave being granted pardon by the master is sufficient for Paul and Virginia as it corroborates their benevolent attitude and complacency, and is consistent with their «[l]ittle world…where slavery is tolerated […]»22. Paul and Virginia enact the same paternalistic attitude when the group of maroon slaves saves Paul and Virginia’s lives by escorting them home after their attempt at rescuing the runaway woman. The feeling of gratitude they express to the maroon slaves responds to their being instrumental to God’s benevolence – «God never leaves a good action without reward» (PV 35) is Virginia’s comment on the help they receive – for saving the poor runaway slave. Analogously, while the families express their gratitude to the blacks by simply providing them with food, the «[n]egroes… [pray] the blessings of heaven might descend on those good white people», (PV 35), an attitude implying submission and gratitude for 22

Goodden, “Tradition and Innovation in’Paul and Virginie’: A Thematic Study“, cit., p. 563.

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the white presence on the island. Moreover, black people’s cultural «inferiority» is sketched as an arrested development of little children - «Sometimes she [Virginia] performed a pantomime with Paul, in the manner of the Negroes. The first language of man is pantomime; it is known to all nations, and is so natural and so expressive, that the children of the European inhabitants catch it with facility from the Negroes» (PV 48) – which is consistent with the primitivistic figuration of the island, a the romantic garden of Eden where Paul and Virginia are adumbrated as God’s children: The periods of their lives were regulated by those of nature… Thus grew those children of nature. No care had troubled their peace, no intemperance had corrupted their blood, no misplaced passion had depraved their hearts. Love, innocence, and piety, possessed their souls; and those intellectual graces unfolded themselves in their features, their attitudes, and their motions…Virginia was gentle, modest, and confiding as Eve; and Paul, like Adam, united the figure of manhood with the simplicity of a child. (PV 51, 52)

Having focused on European identities in Africa as compared to African underdevelopment, the same heavenly Africa is juxtaposed with Europe, described as the economic centre sending out subjects to gain profit. According to Neill, «[…] the new society is morally distinct from its parent nation and [… ] by virtue of its separateness it can criticise a degenerate Europe»23. Since Paul challenges Europe’s materialistic seductiveness, he is reluctant to leave the island – even though Madame de la Tour is planning to send him to the Indies: «[w]ere we to send Paul for a short time to the Indies, commerce would furnish him with the means of purchasing a slave» (PV 59). Paul refuses to believe in the idea of Europe being the source of fortune and welfare – «You send her [Virginia] to Europe, that barbarous country that refused you an asylum, and to relations by whom you were abandoned» – his distrust culminating in his anxiety of her becoming «corrupted». (PV 71, 77) When the economic incentive used by the governor – «Wherefore do we come to these islands? Is it not to acquire a fortune?» (PV 62) – and his mother to lure Virginia into going to France fails, God’s call, in the words of her confessor, finally convinces her to leave her family: «He devoted himself for you; and you, in imitation of his example, must devote yourself for the welfare 23

A. Neill, “The Sentimental Novel and the Republican Imaginary: Slavery in Paul and Virginia”, «Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism» 23, 1993 Fall/3, p. 37.

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of your family». (PV 65) Only after eighteen months in France does Virginia realise that it is not Africa and Mauritius that is inhabited by «savages»; when told by one of her waiting women that she is a «[…] Frenchwoman, and must forget that country of savages», she readily replies, «Sooner will I forget myself than forget the spot on which I was born, and which you inhabit! It is this country which is to me a land of savages». (PV 80) The corrupted nature and barrenness of Europe is soon laid bare by the seeds Virginia has sent Paul: «[…] whether they were injured by the voyage, or whether the soil of this part of Africa is unfavorable to their growth, a very small number of them blew, and none came to perfection». (PV 82) The fact that seeds from Europe do not grow on African soil is an image of Europe’s formative influence on Africa as being detrimental to the romantic life of Paul and Virginia. Unfortunately, also Paul temporarily falls victim to Europe’s temptation as a ‘fortune-making’ country: «Virginia being rich, we shall have a number of Negroes […]». (PV 91) After a hurricane right off the Mauritian coast hits the ship and Virginia dies like «[…] an angel prepared to take her flight to heaven», (PV 101) both families are wiped out. Only on her deathbed does Madame de la Tour grant the two slaves Domingo and Mary a status of equality: «When they were no more, she used to talk of them as of beloved friends, from whom she was not distant». (PV 113) Even if divine law imposes justice when the rich aunt is shut away and loses all her possessions, the happy life of Paul and Virginia has been destroyed by the avarice of Europe, which has left behind a scene of destruction: nature’s beauty has faded, «orchards are destroyed, your birds are fled […]».(PV 114)

3. Cobb’s Musical Drama James Cobb’s play Paul and Virginia premiered on May 1, 180024. The setting is moved to a Spanish Island in the West Indies, explicitly positioning the story of Paul and Virginia within the ongoing debate on the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery is much more an issue in the play than it is in the novel, which, to an extent, testifies to the key role theatre had in Georgian culture as an arena for 24

J. Cobb, “Paul and Virginia: A Musical Drama, In two Acts” (1800), The English Prose Drama Full-Text Database, Chadwyck-Healy Ltd., 1996-1997.

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political debate and a site for the formation of public opinion25. The play revolves around Great Britain’s role in the abolitionist cause, and is significantly ambiguous as to its ideological stance, while the original plot is importantly altered, to the point of contriving a happy ending. The play’s various incongruities are effectively exposed by George Daniel in his “Remarks”, included in the Cumberland 1828 edition of the play26: Cobb was a man of mean talent. With so fine a subject before him, he has produced little else but tame dialogue and doggerel verse. He has had recourse to villainous clap-traps-exhibiting a compassionate planter, and a brutal menial, and contrasting the virtues of the oppressor with the vices of the wretch who is the instrument of his oppression. The first, for the honour of his native land, he has made an Englishman-the second, a Spaniard. This is excellent, and reminds us of a story, in which a poor negro, being about to be flogged for stealing, asked the magistrate this puzzling question: “Massa, if white man buy tolen goods, you no punish him!” To which the latter, with true official gravity, replied, “That we most certainly do”. “Yet,” rejoined the negro, “Massa buy me, though he know me to be tolen!” Can logic go beyond this? It is as reasonable to pronounce a man honest who buys stolen goods, as to represent a planter compassionate, who traffics in the bones and sinews of his fellow-men27.

As Daniel’s sharp comments make clear, Cobb’s ideological inconsistency is aimed to ends of national glorification, opposing non-British vice to British virtue, within a system of «oppression» in which British responsibility is blatantly ignored. Thus Diego, Captain Tropick’s overseer, is made to personify Europe’s avarice and recklessness, while his British master, and slaveholder, embodies virtue and generosity. The episode of the runaway slave in Saint Pierre’s novel is consistently altered. When Diego is looking for the runaway slave Alambra 25 Among the numerous studies devoted to exploring the political relevance of theatre in the age, see J. Swindells, Glorious Causes: The Grand Theatre of Political Change, 17891833, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 26 “A great portion of these events belong as much to the original tale, as to Tom Thumb.” D—G [George Daniel], “Remarks” on Paul and Virginia: A Musical Entertainment in Two Acts by James Cobb, Printed from the Acting Copy, with Remarks, Biographical and critical, by D—G.[…] London, John Cumberland, [1828], p. 7. George Daniel, 1789-1864, writer and book collector, was the editor for John Cumberland of his British Theatre series (39 volumes, 1823-1831), “printed from the acting cop[ies]”, as the title pages read, “with remarks, biographical and critical, by the –D G-“. He wrote prefaces for each of the nearly 300 plays in the series, which included most of Shakespeare and 18th-century drama. See F. Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage: Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830s, Bari: Edizioni dal Sud, 2009, p. 297. 27 “Remarks” on Paul and Virginia, p. 6.

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– now a man slave, and blessed with a name28 – he confronts Dominique, Virginia’s servant, calling him a slave. Dominique immediately rectifies the mistake by reminding him: «A slave! no, no – I am indeed her servant… for I have British blood in my veins… my father was an English sailor, who, being above vulgar prejudices, admired a black beauty. I was born in this island, and the sun gave a gentle tinge to my complexion, to mark me as a favourite»29. [my emphasis] Dominique’s remark about English blood running through his veins is an indication of British bounteousness towards the fate of slaves as the members of the British nation are «above vulgar prejudices», ostensibly challenging the presumption that there are certain gradations in human creation. Cobb stresses Britain’s pioneering role in the abolition debate in bringing liberty to mankind and in paving the way for slaves to become civilised members of mankind once they are embraced by British philanthropy, as exemplified by the image of the «brother sailors, thro’ the voyage of life” where “some are on the quarter-deck, and others before the mast». (Cobb 16) When Alambra seeks refuge among the merry party, gathered to celebrate Virginia’s birthday, and relates his hardship to Paul and Virginia, she trusts in the religiosity with which Paul and herself will alleviate the pain and suffering of the poor slave(s): «Let us thank Heaven, my dear Paul, for having again afforded us the satisfaction of relieving a fellow creature». (Cobb 12) The fact that African slaves are considered fellow beings is paired with the accusation of oppression and violence against the planters in the West Indies; Alambra denounces «cruel oppression» and the inhumanity of slavery: «Our parents died on board the ship which tore us from our native country. We were left helpless and deserted orphans». (Cobb 12) It is Britain’s glorious – and quite paradoxical – task to relieve the pain and to counteract the brutality of slave masters. The difference in attitude between the Englishman Tropick and the West Indian Diego30 is laid bare when Diego accuses Tropick of mishandling slaves: «[…] you Englishmen do not understand how to deal with your slaves. Your own country affords 28 Since Britain is portrayed as the nation that frees poor slaves from cruel bondage, Cobb furnishes the runaway slave with a name, a clever move to spur readers to identify with the slave. 29 J. Cobb, “Paul and Virginia: A Musical Drama, In two Acts”, p. 7. Hereafter referred to as Cobb. 30 The identity of Diego is uncertain; as the play takes place on “a Spanish island in the West Indies” and Diego is a Spanish name, he can be identified as having Spanish origin.

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no practice in that way». (Cobb 15) Tropick functions as a spokesman for Britain in condemning the act of denying liberty to slaves, alluding to the famous Mansfield judgment of 1772: «[i]t is the boast of Britons, that from the moment a slave imprints his footstep on our shore, the moment he breathes the air of our land of freedom, he becomes free». (Cobb 15)31 Cobb stages within the plantation a peculiarly incongruous clash between supporters and opponents of slavery, between Englishmen and non-English West Indian settlers, where Diego’s accusation of «spoil[ing] your slaves here in the West Indies» (Cobb 15) is rejected by Tropick who, conversely, claims his identity as a Briton, i.e. a member of the nation that liberates slaves from oppression. However, while Tropick considers slaves as «men» and condemns Diego’s hard-heartedness – «[…] for the credit of mankind, whether black or white, I have seldom found a heart so perverse as to be insensible to the treatment of humanity and kindness» (Cobb 16) – Diego succeeds in convincing him that Alambra must be punished, being a useless member of the «crew» on board the ship ‘Britannia’: Mankind are brother sailors, thro’ the voyage of life. ‘Tis our duty to assist each other. ‘Tis true, we have different stations; some on the quarter-deck, and others before the mast; or else, how could the vessel sail. But the cause of society is a common cause; and he that won’t lend a hand to keep the vessel in sailing trim; heave him overboard to the sharks, I say. (Cobb 16)

Cobb’s image of Great Britain as a ship32 – «Yes, my native country is my ship, and I am proud to call her Great Britain. Long may she ride like a peerless first-rate, the queen of the ocean; with a gallant 31 «When in 1772 the famous Somerset Case focused attention on the rights of Africans outlawing the forced removal of African slaves from Great Britain, it seemed as if it was an auspicious start to what promised to result in the fight against the enslavement of other human beings. It is worth repeating, however, that the Mansfield judgment did not free African slaves, but only prohibited their forced removal from Britain; so in sum it was of no consequence in improving the generally perceived picture of innate African inferiority as it did not challenge the righteousness of African enslavement as such». (Knapp A., and U. Pallua, “Images of Africa(ns): Racism and Ethnocentricity in the British Abolition Debate: 1787-1834,” «IDWRG. Innsbrucker Diskussionspapiere zu Weltordnung, Religion und Gewalt 26», 2008, p. 3). 32 William Cowper makes use of the same image in his poem “The Morning Dream” (1788). Britannia, known as the country that rules the waves and where the sun never sets, conveys the image of Britain as the nation among European powers that plays a pioneer role in making “Freemen of Slaves.” (William Cowper, “The Morning Dream,” The Poetical Works of William Cowper, ed. H.S. Milford, 4th ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1934, 373-5).

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crew, and a beloved commander» (Cobb 16) – implicitly reinforces the idea of Britain’s mission as the champion of freedom. Thus Paul and Virginia, when they call on Tropick to spare Alambra and the «the suffering sons of toil», can appeal to «Briton’s breast»:

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Ah! Could my fault’ring tong impart The tale of woe that pains my heart, Then in vain I should not crave Your pity for a wretched slave. The injured ne’er in vain addrest In plaints of woe a Briton’s breast; Compassion ever marks the brave, Oh pity then you wretched slave! (Cobb 19, 20)

Another prevailing ideological frame is the plea for human dignity as not depending on rank: when Don Antonio de Guardas lands on the Spanish island with a letter from Donna Leonora de Guzman, Virginia’s aunt, confirming Virginia to be the heiress to her wealth, and wants to deport her, Dominique reminds him that «Independence is not confined to any situation; it is the reward granted by heaven to industry and frugality… All distinctions of rank and station sink before a blow. Remember, it’s an appeal to manhood that would at once proclaim us to be equals». (Cobb 26) Nonetheless, even if Dominique claims that all men are basically equal since it is God who rewards every individual for his/her achievements, implying that societal rank and status are a human construct, and even if Alambra, having successfully rescued Virginia from the burning ship, is praised for his heroic deed33, it is «Albion’s crew» (Cobb 17) that takes on the role as the redeemer of humanity, fighting for the «common cause». (Cobb 17)

4. Conclusion Summing up, Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s story uses Paul to condemn Europe’s corruption by questioning its materialistic bedrock, at the same time illustrating what life would be like on the island if Virginia made it a better place with her aunt’s money. The black character, the

33

Alambra, generous as brave,/Rescued the favorite of the skies,/To shore he brings his lovely prize, (Cobb 42).

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runaway slave, is positioned within the colonial discourse as ‘the one’ who is rescued by Paul and Virginia from the cruel master but then is subject to their indifference and complacency. The families’ servants, once dead, are elevated to a quasi-equal position, and eventually allowed to reside together with the whites in heaven. The irrelevancy of the black protagonists in the colonial setting and the emphasis on the ambivalence of the colonial polarity between the centre and the periphery is what Neill alludes to when she claims, «[t]o draw attention to the historical, economic, and political status of the negro characters on the Ile de France would be to force the novel to open itself up to the complexities of antiabolitionist colonial history, rather than allowing it to offer to an old empire, as it endeavors to do, a model of both exemplificatory correction and critique»34. James Cobb’s play pays tribute to Britain’s role in bringing freedom to enslaved human beings, while identifying a slave-owner as the defender of liberty and humanity. The play, moreover, is obviously permeated by the belief in the cultural inferiority of Africans. It is his British blood that entitles Dominique to consider himself a servant rather than a slave, as Britishness elevates people «above vulgar prejudices» and frees slaves from bondage. The conflict of two cultural identities is resolved by claiming the assimilation of the subaltern into the system of values of the hegemon. The two versions of Paul and Virginia display the inherent instability in the relationship between Europe and Africa/the West Indies. While Europe is portrayed as detrimental to the new identity of European outcasts in Mauritius and/or West Indies, exactly those outcasts seeking refuge in Africa/the West Indies long for a space where they can regain their position as masters over conquered peoples. As Alexander and Knowles claim, «Space simultaneously sustains the existing racial order and offers the prospect of its subversion and reordering».35 This «racial order» exemplifies the ideological representation of others in the contact zone as the relation between individuals – the coloniser and the colonised – is converted into the relation between two entities, two spaces, two identities that substantiate the colonial encounter: Europeans (i.e. British) vs. Africans – «[i]deas of nation 34 Neill, “The Sentimental Novel and the Republican Imaginary: Slavery in Paul and Virginia”, p. 46. 35 C. Alexander, and C. Knowles, introduction, Making Race Matter. Bodies, Space and Identity, eds. C. Alexander and C. Knowles, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005, p. 4-5.

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and national belonging become systematically linked to ideas about ethnic difference whose features are not naturalizable, and to a racialized understanding of community, real and imagined, that grouped some people together, and irrevocably separated others»36. The assertion of the alleged difference between Europeans and Africans in the «[i]nterpretation of actual spatial relations for ideological purposes»37 generates the juxtaposition of two contrasting group identities: the positive identity of the outcast Europeans and the negative identity of African slaves on an island, positively depicted as a safe haven from European avarice. The secluded setting offers both the colonial and indigene subject a new opportunity: a retreat for Europeans who seek comfort from corruption and decay [identified as France or Spain], and a chance for Africans to receive religious education under the banner of Britain’s moral code, thus confirming «[E]ngland’s national identity»38 as the leading nation in bringing freedom to the enslaved, thereby strengthening her «[s]elf-conscious devotion to liberty»39.

Works cited Alexander C., Knowles C., 2005, Introduction, Making Race Matter. Bodies, Space and Identity, eds. C. Alexander and C. Knowles, New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Brown C.L., 2006, Moral Capital. Foundations of British Abolitionism, Williamsburg, Virginia: North Carolina Press. Cobb J., 1996-1997, “Paul and Virginia: A Musical Drama, In two Acts”, 1800, The English Prose Drama Full-Text Database, Chadwyck-Healy Ltd. Dellarosa F., 2009, Slavery on Stage: Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830s, Bari: Edizioni dal Sud. Denin G., 1980, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a silent Land, Marquesas 1774-1880, Honolulu: Hawaii UP. Goodden A., 1982, “Tradition and Innovation in ‘Paul and Virginie’: A Thematic Study”, «The Modern Language Review» 77, 1982 July/3, pp. 558-567.

36

Wilson, The Island Race, p. 13. S. Mills, Gender and Colonial Space, Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 2005, pp. 28. 38 C.L. Brown, Moral Capital. Foundations of British Abolitionism, Williamsburg, Virginia: North Carolina Press, 2006, p. 46. 39 Ivi, p. 47. 37

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Knapp A., Pallua U., 2008, “Images of Africa(ns): Racism and Ethnocentricity in the British Abolition Debate: 1787-1834”, «IDWRG Innsbrucker Diskussionspapiere zu Weltordnung, Religion und Gewalt» 26, 1-22. Mills S., 2005, Gender and Colonial Space, Manchester and New York: Manchester UP. Morgan D. P., 1999, “Encounters between British and ‘indigenous’ Peoples, c. 1500-c. 1800”, Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850, Eds. M. Daunton and R. Halpern, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, pp. 42-78. Neill A., 1993, “The Sentimental Novel and the Republican Imaginary: Slavery in Paul and Virginia”, «Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism» 23, 1993 Fall/3, pp. 36-47. Pratt M. L., 1992, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge. Ryan S., 1996, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers saw Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Saint Pierre B. de, 2004, Paul and Virginia, 1851, Trans. H. M. Williams, Doylestown, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press. Vaughan, M., 1998, “Slavery and Colonial Identity in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius”, «Transactions of the Royal Historical Society» 8, 1998, pp. 189-214. Wilson, K., 2003, The Island Race. Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century, London and New York: Routledge.

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PART III

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THE LONG JOURNEY OF ANTISLAVERY: NORMATIVE AND CULTURAL ISSUES

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ANTI-SLAVERY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AND RELATIONS Es¸ref Aksu

Normative change has been a favourite theme in contemporary International Relations (IR) for the last twenty odd years. The shift from one international order where slavery was an integral part (roughly between the mid-15th and early 19th centuries) towards another international order where anti-slavery has gradually acquired the status of a repeatedly confirmed principle (early 19th century onwards) certainly offers a promising case study as to why and how exactly the international community turned away from a long-established practice and created an opposing norm1. Such an analysis, though highly warranted, is deliberately beyond the scope of this chapter, because the present volume’s emphasis lies elsewhere2. The aim of this chapter is, quite simply, to introduce the «international» element firmly into the discussion in this volume, and to demonstrate as clearly and concisely as possible the normative space (understood mainly, but not exclusively, in legal terms) that the international community has carved out for the idea(l) of anti-slavery.

1

While institutionalised slavery was part of earlier international orders as well, the qualitative difference of post-Renaissance slavery is by now common knowledge, and it is taken for granted in popular/descriptive volumes on the subject; e.g. J. Knight, Slavery throughout History: Primary Sources, Farmington Hills, MI: UXL, 2000, pp. 1, 47. For an insightful and detailed analysis of the growth of the various “slave systems” between the 15th and 19th centuries (with specific reference to slavery’s somewhat puzzling connections with modernity and state–civil society interactions), see R. Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800, London: Verso, 1997. 2 One such attempt can be found in I. Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 37–60.

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There are three arguments in this chapter. None of them is entirely original, but all are important. First, slavery became an international issue largely due to the preferences and policies of the nineteenth-century world hegemon, namely, Britain. Secondly, the consolidation of the anti-slavery norm in international law and relations occurred only after (and not before or during) the de jure abolition and the de facto elimination of large-scale «chattel slavery» in the domestic systems of the global centres of power3. Thirdly, within the space of two-and-ahalf centuries the idea of anti-slavery has acquired such a prominent status in the normative texture of the international system that it has enabled, especially after its consolidation as an international norm, the international condemnation of several other inhumane activities «by association». The content and meaning assigned to slavery have broadened over time – not only in world public opinion, but also, to a lesser extent, in the spheres of international law and relations, which are notorious for their slowness in catching up with evolving practices and thought patterns4.

1. Anti-Slavery: Hegemonic Preference and the Emergence of «International» Norm (1807–1926) It is perhaps an ironic fact that the eighteenth century signified as much the Age of Slavery as the Age of Enlightenment. While the use of slaves was by no means «required» by the logic of economic production, it had become a convenient means for the plantation economies of the European colonial powers. Slavery and the slave trade had become entrenched institutions of the international economic and political order by the end of the eighteenth century5. Within just a 3 “Chattel slavery” refers to the most clear-cut type of slavery where the “owners” of such slaves were thought to have the right to treat them as if they were mere possessions that could be sold or transferred to others. 4 For a highly pertinent concise account, which is more narrowly preoccupied with locating a proper definition for slavery than the present chapter is, see K. Bales, “No One Shall Be Held in Slavery or Servitude: A Critical Analysis of International Slavery Agreements”, in K. Bales, Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005, pp. 40–68. 5 An account of the different shades of slavery as well as its estimated distribution across the Americas by the late eighteenth century can be found, for example, in L. W. Bergad, The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, especially pp. 33–63. For a concise summary of the most notable studies and estimates as to slave numbers, see J. Quirk, Unfinished Business:

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few decades, by the early 1840s, however, more than twenty states (including all of the Atlantic maritime powers) had made varying degrees of explicit commitment, under international treaty law, to the abolition of the slave trade. By the late 1860s, only a few hundred slaves were transported per year, and illegally, across the Atlantic6. By 1900, the institution of slavery itself, understood mainly in its traditional form, had been outlawed and largely eradicated in the entire Western Hemisphere. The role that Britain played in the internationalisation of anti-slavery is both immensely interesting and quite understandable at once. It is interesting, because in 1807, when Britain became the first major state to ban its subjects from participation in the slave trade (if not slavery per se)7, it was by far the major beneficiary of the slave trade in the world8. Between 1808 and 1867, the average financial cost of Britain’s decision to actively suppress the slave trade would amount to 1.8 percent of the country’s annual national income. The direct costs of Britain’s annual suppression efforts between 1816 and 1862 are estimated to equal the total profits the country had made from the slave trade between 1761 and 1807. On the whole, the costs to Britain included diplomatic, legal, and naval costs; emancipation indemnity to planters; lost customs revenues; lost income from the slave trade (including supplies to slave traders); reduced exports to West Africa and the British West Indies; losses in the sugar-carrying trade; and higher sugar prices for British consumers9. There seems to be an emerging consensus in the pertinent literature that any meaningful explanation of Britain’s materially self-destructive foreign policy in this period would need to make due reference to the strong ideational pressure

A Comparative Survey of Historical and Contemporary Slavery, Paris: UNESCO and WISE, 2008, pp. 35–45. 6 By the mid-nineteenth century, under the emerging international anti-slavery regime, the centres of the trade had moved to the New World. The slave ports had shifted from Nantes, Amsterdam, Bristol, and Liverpool to Pernambuco, Bahia, Rio, Havana, New Orleans, and New York; see J. Hart, Contesting Empires: Opposition, Promotion, and Slavery, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 149. 7 Denmark was the first European state to outlaw the slave trade (in 1792 to take full effect from 1802). 8 By recent estimates, the British carried at least 45 per cent of slaves shipped across the “Middle Passage” between 1700 and 1809; see D. Turley, Slavery, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000, p. 43. 9 See C. D. Kaufmann and R. A. Pape, “Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-year Campaign against the Atlantic Slave Trade”, «International Organization», 53, 1999, pp. 636–637.

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created by the British abolitionist movement, while only recently has the proactive, fundamental role of Africans in the making of their own history begun to be seriously investigated10. Britain’s role in the internationalisation of anti-slavery is also understandable, not so much because, as Eric Williams famously argued, the dominant industrial capitalists pushed for the abolition of slavery to advance their own interests in the face of declining British plantation economies in the West Indies11, but because the world hegemon arguably was not prepared, and could not afford, to suffer multifaceted losses all by itself 12. On the economic front, internationalisation of the issue would prevent other states from exploiting slavery to their own advantage in the absence of British competition. And on the normative front, internationalisation would create explicit moral and legal obligations for all participants in the system, turning them into equally responsible stakeholders. In any event, evidence suggests that the internationalisation of the slavery issue was, for the most part, a consequence of Britain’s unilateral preferences and policies13. Unlike the United States, which would soon follow the hegemon in tackling the slave trade, Britain was quick to enforce its prohibition on the slave trade and worked for the development of international treaty law on slavery. When the British abolitionists started to address the slave trade between Africa and the Americas, they had already succeeded in setting a crucial precedent in legal interpretation. The famous Somerset vs. Stewart case (1772) may not have been a clear-cut victory for abolitionists14, but it certainly did make it possible to argue, in legal (not only political or moral) terms, that from now on any slave who

10

See Ibidem; J. S. Martinez, “Antislavery Courts and the Dawn of International Human Rights Law”, «The Yale Law Journal», 117, 2008, pp. 557–569; and J. Quirk, “The AntiSlavery Project: Linking the Historical and Contemporary”, «Human Rights Quarterly», 28, 2006, pp. 582–583 and his Unfinished Business, pp. 60-72. 11 This interpretation seems by now discredited; see Kaufmann and Pape, cit., pp. 634–636. 12 Williams’ important argument has created much controversy in literature. However, an account of supporting and opposing views would be tangential to our discussion. For an overview, see H. Cateau and S.H.H. Carrington (eds), Capitalism and Slavery Fifty Years Later: Eric Eustace Williams – A Reassessment of the Man and His Work, New York: Peter Lang, 2000. 13 See Martinez, cit., pp. 563–579. 14 The case involved a substantial clash and a difficult resolution between at least two fundamental principles of «liberalism», namely, the right of freedom (in this context: for slaves) and the right to property (in this context: for slave-owners).

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landed on British soil would need to be considered free under British municipal law15. Following a number of well-documented unsuccessful attempts throughout the late 1700s, in the spring of 1806 the abolitionists finally changed their tactics and used the renewed war with France to their advantage. Framed as a «national security» measure, the Foreign Slave Trade Act (1806) easily passed the House of Commons, and prohibited British subjects from participating in the slave trade with the current or former colonies and possessions of France and its allies. By the time the 1806 parliamentary elections arrived, two international factors had considerably weakened the anti-abolitionist arguments about foreign competition in the West Indies. First, French power in the West Indies and on the high seas had declined due to the ongoing war. Secondly, France’s most productive sugar colony, Haiti, had gained independence as a result of a slave revolt. In other words, international relations were very much present in the lead-up to the landmark British Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1807). As soon as the 1807 Act prohibited participation of British subjects in the slave trade and the importation of slaves to British possessions, the British navy began to enforce the ban. The consequent decrease in the British-flagged slave trade quickly made it clear that Britain had to encourage other countries to suppress their own slave trades as well. Otherwise, the net effect of Britain’s ban would be to shift the trade from British ships to the ships of other states. In addition, the Caribbean colonies of other states would continue to receive new slaves, putting British possessions at an economic disadvantage. Thus, the British West Indian planters, who had been the strongest opponents of the 1807 Act, quickly became the strongest supporters of British suppression of all slave trade. Britain’s unilateral action against the slave trade proved especially crucial for the internationalisation of anti-slavery, because abolitionism was nowhere near as influential in the domestic politics of the other slave-trading countries as in Britain at the beginning of the nineteenth century16. 15 Mansfield later claimed «nothing more was then determined than that there was no right in the master forcibly to take the slave and carry him». A. Watson “Lord Mansfield, Judicial Integrity or Its Lack; Somerset’s Case” (2006), Scholarly Works, Paper 386, available online at: http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/386. For a relatively recent elaboration of the intricate nature of this case, see G. van Cleve, “Somerset’s Case and Its Antecedents in Imperial Perspective”, «Law and History Review», 24, 2006, pp. 601–645. 16 For instance, the difficult path of French abolitionism in the first half of the nineteenth century is depicted well in L. C. Jennings, French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the Aboli-

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The entry of the issue of slavery into modern international law coincided with the later phases of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) during which Britain claimed the right, under international law, to search ships on the high seas. The justification of the claim rested on the need to determine whether these ships belonged to the enemy or whether they were violating neutrality (for example, by carrying contraband for the enemy, or by running a blockade). Crucially, Britain rapidly began to utilise this search right also as a method to suppress the slave trade. Ships carrying slave cargoes were brought into British vice admiralty courts around the Atlantic for condemnation as prizes under international law17. Throughout the Napoleonic Wars, Britain continued to seize American, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish ships, despite strong international accusations that it was overstepping permissible bounds under international law. Following the end of the Wars in 1814-15, Britain’s unilateral actions became more suspect, since the right to search foreign-flagged ships – and the existence and modalities of such a «right» had been a matter of legal interpretation in the first place – was linked under international law only to a state of warfare. The British courts would not begin to invalidate the peacetime search and seizure of foreignflagged slaving vessels until the Le Louis case in 181718. Many states were already convinced that Britain was using the slave trade as a convenient cover for its self-interested efforts to dominate maritime commerce. Since success depended on greater international legitimacy, Britain would need to ensure other countries’ commitment to tion of Slavery in France, 1802–1848, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 17 The British appellate courts first addressed this issue in the case of The Amedie, a USflagged slave vessel which was captured by a British warship in 1808. Though the United States was neutral in the war at that time, its ships were, according to British interpretation, subject to search under international law. The British court in Tortola, while noting that the United States had also banned the slave trade as a matter of domestic law, nevertheless acknowledged that neither international treaty law nor international customary law had yet completely banned the slave trade. On the other hand, using the same reasoning as in the Somerset case, the court concluded that it was entitled to presume the slave trade unlawful unless some positive law authorised it, and upheld the condemnation of the ship. The slaves were freed; see Martinez, cit., pp. 565–566. 18 Le Louis involved a French ship seized in 1816 and condemned by the British vice admiralty court at Sierra Leone. The condemnation was reversed on appeal. Although the court acknowledged that French law prohibited the slave trade, it noted that customary international law provided no generalised right to search in peacetime, and concluded that Britain could not search or seize a French ship in conditions of peace, unless the ship was engaged in piracy or the search was directly authorised by a treaty with France; see Ivi, p. 568.

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its project. Consequently, Britain carried the slave trade issue to the post-war settlement negotiations, and started to press for the inclusion of slave trade-related regulations in a number of multilateral and bilateral legal settings. While the multilateral legal instruments contained no more than «statements of principle» against the slave trade, several of the ensuing bilateral treaties not only banned the trade, but also devised enforcement mechanisms. Under mounting domestic political pressure, the British government put special effort into concluding anti-slavery treaties with France, Spain, and Portugal19. Both sticks and carrots came in handy during negotiations. While agreement with France proved particularly difficult, Britain was more successful in its negotiations with other actors. In August 1814, the Netherlands signed a treaty prohibiting the slave trade. In the Treaty of Ghent (1814), Britain and the United States pledged to use their best endeavours to abolish the slave trade, although no enforcement mechanisms were specified. A relatively minor player, Sweden, too, was persuaded to enter into a treaty banning the slave trade. The British government tried to obtain similar agreements from Spain and Portugal. The former’s response was that the continuance of the slave trade was essential to the viability of Spanish colonies, and its abolition was inconceivable in the immediate future. Britain only managed to secure a provision that limited Spanish-flagged traffic exclusively to Spanish citizens and to Spanish possessions. In the case of Portugal, the government had already reluctantly agreed in 1810 to a treaty in exchange for British support against the French. That treaty had placed geographic limits on the Portuguese slave trade20, and had committed Portugal to the gradual abolition of the trade. Still heavily dependent on British military and financial support, in January 1815 Portugal entered into new treaties restricting the slave trade. While pursuing these various bilateral negotiations, Britain was simultaneously trying to obtain a multilateral agreement on the slave trade at the Congress of Vienna, where representatives of the European powers were preparing the continent’s post-Napoleon future21. 19 More than 750,000 people signed petitions denouncing a provision in the treaty with France, which allowed renewed French participation in the slave trade for five more years. Britain’s entire population at the time is estimated to have been around twelve million. 20 The trade was permitted only between the mainland and Portuguese ports in Africa and Brazil. 21 Again, the abolitionist campaign in Britain was a major push factor in this regard; see

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Between December 1814 and February 1815, the diplomats in Vienna intermittently discussed the slave trade. While France, Portugal, and Spain (all of them maritime powers) were recalcitrant, Russia, Austria, and Prussia were sympathetic to Britain’s proposals. It appears that the idea of an international body aimed at suppression of the slave trade first emerged in Vienna – hand in hand with Czar Alexander’s idea of a «Holy Alliance» and its more down-to-earth successor Quadruple Alliance. Britain firmly supported the creation of some kind of permanent international commission to deal specifically with the slave trade, although the likely powers and responsibilities of such a commission were far from clear. On 8 February 1815 the Congress of Vienna condemned the slave trade in its Declaration Relative to the Universal Abolition of the Slave Trade22. The issue of slavery was now explicitly introduced into the sphere of modern international law, even if the 1815 «Declaration», by definition, was nonbinding, and did not spell out, for example, any time limits. A bone of contention in the international relations of major powers was the question of enforcement. The British came to the conclusion that their continuing suppression of the slave trade would be less liable to international objections if the captured ships were to be condemned either by the domestic courts of the pertinent country in each case, or, preferably, by tribunals specifically created for this purpose. In this context, the notion of forward-looking international cooperation mechanisms entertained in Vienna became rapidly supplemented by an already existing concept – that of mixed arbitral commissions23. So the idea of mixed anti-slavery courts was born. In 1817 Britain successfully concluded bilateral agreements with the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain that allowed for mutual rights of search, and established mixed courts to try captured slave ships24. Unlike earlier international legal instruments on the subject, these treaties contained M. Craton, J. Walvin and D. Wright (eds), Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Black Slaves and the British Empire – A Thematic Documentary, London: Longman, 1976, p. 279 22 Hereafter: the 1815 Declaration. 23 The 1794 Jay Treaty between Britain and the United States had included provisions for the establishment of an arbitral commission consisting of representatives from each country to settle claims arising out of the American Revolutionary War. The 1815 AngloFrench peace treaty had included a provision for the arbitration of claims arising out of the Napoleonic Wars. However, none of the previous arbitration commissions had had prospective jurisdiction over future disputes; see Martinez, cit., p. 576. 24 While, formally, the courts were not uniform in scope and existed as bilateral institutions, they functioned as part of a de facto multilateral treaty network with Britain at its centre. For a detailed account, see Martinez, cit.

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robust enforcement mechanisms. Each one provided for the mutual right of search and seizure of suspected slave vessels, and the vessels’ trial before the mixed anti-slavery courts. Significantly, the new courts were empowered to judge without appeal, according to the letter and spirit of the treaty. Under each treaty, one court was to be set up in a British possession, and another in a Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch possession, respectively. The United States resisted joining the mixed court system until 1862, and France never participated. Multilateral negotiations regarding the slave trade also continued for several years. At the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), Russia pushed for a permanent international agency which would include a Council and a judicial system to exercise «high authorities over all states». By late 1818, however, the British government was reluctant to support such a system – probably either because it had made no progress in its bilateral negotiations with the most important country to be co-opted: France25, or because Britain was already on its way to create a British-centric net of bilateral arrangements26. A truly «internationalised» enforcement mechanism might fall out of Britain’s control at some later stage. In any event, two decades into the nineteenth century, the most powerful states in the world had all agreed in principle to the suppression of the slave trade. Britain had managed to institute positive treaty obligations as well as international enforcement mechanisms27. The 1815 Declaration was the first multilateral instrument to condemn the slave trade. The two Anglo-French pacts that gave Britain the right of search (1831-32)28, the abolition of the slavery apprenticeship system throughout the British colonies (1838)29, and the crea-

25

The British may have thought that, in the absence of France, the proposed system would not be as robust as was necessary to succeed. 26 A truly «internationalised» enforcement mechanism might fall out of Britain’s control at some later stage. 27 For an interesting argument that Britain’s anti-slave-trade campaign was inherently hierarchical (with notable differences between British approaches to «European and American powers», to «Muslim rulers», and to «African native chiefs») and that this hierarchy interacted with the increasingly dominant positivist understanding of law (with its emphasis on treaties), see E. Keene, “A Case Study of the Construction of International Hierarchy: British Treaty-making against the Slave Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century”, «International Organization», 61, 2007, pp. 311–339. 28 See P.M. Kielstra, The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France, 1814–48: Diplomacy, Morality and Economics, Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 138–162. 29 The Slavery Abolition Act had already gained Royal Assent in Britain in August 1833.

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tion of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (1839)30 gave special impetus to the internationalisation of the anti-slavery issue. Crucially, the two World Anti-Slavery Conventions held in London in the early 1840s, while exemplifying considerable success for the internationalisation of the anti-slavery agenda, would also coincide with important splits between British and US anti-slavery campaigners31. In the wake of an «international(ising)» anti-slavery sentiment, there was considerable diversity in national/parochial specifics, priorities, strategies, and methods32. To complicate matters further, the Britishled internationalisation of the slavery issue was inescapably intertwined with other complicated aspects of international politics33. It should be also remembered that anti-slavery was being pursued against the backdrop of flourishing modern ideologies such as liberalism, utilitarianism, nationalism, Marxism, anarchism, mercantilism, imperialism, and racism34. Arguably, none of these radically different worldviews had been authoritatively elaborated prior to the nineteenth century35. What is more, all of them would be accompanied by their respective conscious activism in the course of the nineteenth century – in interaction, to varying degrees, with the ongoing internationalisation of the slavery issue. In the 1840s, during the early years of colonial rule, suppression of slaving became an issue in India. In the 1860s and 70s, i.e. around the time of the Suez Canal project, maritime slavery in the Indian Ocean and in the Ottoman-controlled parts of the Mediterranean came under

30

Today’s Anti-Slavery International. See C. Bolt, The Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction: A Study in Anglo-American Co-operation, 1833-77, London: Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 2, 24. 32 For example, the idea and practice of «manumissions» (instead of emancipation) seem to have enjoyed support in America, see E. Burin, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005. 33 For example, abolitionism had become integral to British foreign policy by the midnineteenth century, but it seemed to strengthen the hand of British imperialism – at least in the view of the US government. On the other hand, US foreign policy in this period, also expansionist in essence, was decidedly pro-slavery; see D. E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 89–133. 34 For example, racism and social Darwinism appear to have dominated the discussions of slavery in Brazil between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century; see F. dos Santos Gomes, “The Legacy of Slavery and Social Relations in Brazil”, in G. Oostindie (ed.), Facing up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe, Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2001, p. 76. 35 Even mercantilism, which might be considered an exception in this regard, had not reached theoretical maturity until Friedrich List’s work came along. 31

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the spotlight. And in the 1890s, slavery in Africa attracted particular attention36. The century-long journey following the 1815 Declaration brought along the legal abolition of not only the slave trade but also slavery as an institution. Abolition would be gradually proclaimed in several British territories, e.g. the Gold Coast (1874), Egypt (1895), Zanzibar (1897), Sudan (1900), Nigeria (1901), and Kenya (1907). Hand in hand with these developments in the British-centric world, slavery would be legally abolished in a wide geographical spectrum, e.g. in Martinique (1847), Guadeloupe (1847), Portuguese colonies (1858), the Dutch colonies of the Caribbean (1863)37, the United States following the Civil War (1865), Puerto Rico (1876) Cuba (1886), Brazil (1888), China (1909) and Afghanistan (1923)38. A large number of international agreements dating from the early nineteenth century, both multilateral and bilateral, contain provisions prohibiting practices related to slavery in times of war and peace. According to estimates, some 300 international agreements put in place between 1815 and 1957 addressed the question of slavery39. A particularly noteworthy step towards international normsetting was taken on 2 July 1890, when, at the height of colonial competition, the General Act for the Suppression of African Slave Trade was signed by nineteen countries in Brussels. Despite its clear connections with the colonial agenda, the Act nevertheless contained the kernels of a human rights perspective on the issue of slavery40. Equally importantly, it «ushered in a gradual change in focus from 36 J. C. Miller, “The Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery: Historical Foundations”, D. Diène (ed.), From Chains to Bonds: The Slave Trade Revisited, Paris and New York: UNESCO Publishing and Berghahn Books, 2001, p. 178. 37 «The lapse of time between (British-induced) Dutch Atlantic slave trade abolition (1814) and Dutch West Indian emancipation (1863) was the longest in the Caribbean»; see S. Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 217. 38 See S. Engerman, “Comparative Approaches to the Ending of Slavery”, H. Temperley (ed.), After Slavery: Emancipation and Its Discontents, London: Frank Cass, 2000, p. 287; Quirk, cit., note 7, p. 588. Abolition in the Muslim world is reported to have begun in Tunis (1846); see F. A. Nussbaum, “Slavery, Blackness and Islam: The Arabian Nights in the Eighteenth Century”, B. Carey and P. J. Kitson (eds), Slavery and the Cultures of Abolition: Essays Marking the Bicentennial of the British Abolition Act of 1807, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007, p. 153. For a detailed study of the abolition of slavery in the Islamic world, see W. G. Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 39 D. Weissbrodt and Anti-Slavery International, Abolishing Slavery and Its Contemporary Forms, New York and Geneva: United Nations, 2002, p. 3. 40 C. E. Welch, Jr, “Defining Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Updating A Venerable NGO”, «Human Rights Quarterly», 31, 2009, pp. 85–87.

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almost exclusively British to multinational pressure against slavery and the slave trade»41. However, the profile of slavery as a global evil that required a global response would not fully emerge until after the First World War.

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2. Anti-Slavery: Post-Practice Universalisation of the Norm and Shifting Preoccupations (1926) The first universal organisation, the League of Nations, started to tackle the question of slavery by establishing a Temporary Slavery Commission on 12 June 1924. The main task of the Commission was the exploration and assessment of the existence of slavery around the world. At the completion of its evaluation, the Commission had found sufficient evidence for the existence of slavery, with the implication that a concerted League action against slavery was warranted. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that by the mid-1920s the institution of slavery, understood mainly in terms of chattel slavery, had been largely confined, both de jure and de facto, to parts of Africa and the Middle East, with a few notable exceptions in East Asia42. In other words, progress in multilateral efforts to eliminate slavery largely coincided with the relative marginalisation of the practice of slavery in and around the global centres of power. Despite the nineteenth-century long «internationalised» abolitionist activism, an agreed-upon legal definition of slavery did not appear until the adoption of the Slavery, Forced Labour and Similar Institutions and Practices Convention (25 September 1926) under the auspices of the League of Nations43. The definition of slavery had caused controversy since the beginning of the abolition process for two reasons: First, there had been differences of opinion about which practices should be considered slavery. Secondly, a state’s formal subscription to any particular definition would also bring along special legal conse41

Ivi, p. 86. In its commentary on the League’s preparations for a slavery convention, «Time» (14 June 1926) would report that slavery existed in «Abyssinia, Tibet, Afghanistan, the Hejaz, Morocco, Tripoli, the Libyan Desert, Rio de Oro, Liberia, China, Arabia, Egypt, the Sudan, Eritrea, French, British and Italian Somaliland, Angola and Mozambique, in most independent Mohammedan States, and in Nepal and the Philippines». 43 Hereafter: the Slavery Convention. 42

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quences as well as socio-political obligations44. The nineteenth-century disagreements about the most appropriate international strategies to eradicate slavery can be attributed, at least in part, to the lack of consensual definition and interpretation under international law. Article 1.1 of the Slavery Convention, a binding international legal instrument, defined slavery as «the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised». Article 1.2 went on to define the slave trade: «all acts involved in the capture, acquisition or disposal of a person with intent to reduce him to slavery; all acts involved in the acquisition of a slave with a view to selling or exchanging him; all acts of disposal by sale or exchange of a slave acquired with a view to being sold or exchanged, and, in general, every act of trade or transport in slaves». Article 5, on the other hand, pointed to a category that might develop into a condition analogous to slavery, namely, «compulsory or forced labour». Various forms of slavery had been already identified and partially defined in the report of the Temporary Slavery Commission. Subsequently approved by the Council of the League of Nations, this report made reference to enslavement, slave raiding, slave dealing, the slave trade, serfdom (domestic or predial), and practices restrictive of the liberty of the person, or tending to acquire control of the person in conditions analogous to slavery. This last category explicitly included the «acquisition of girls by purchase disguised as payment of dowry (it being understood that this does not refer to normal marriage customs); adoption of children with a view to their virtual enslavement or the ultimate disposal of their persons; all forms of pledging or reducing to servitude of persons for debt or other reasons; and compulsory labour (public or private, paid or unpaid)». Considered against this backdrop, the Slavery Convention’s references to «any or all of the powers of ownership» and to the «abolition of slavery in all its forms» may lend tacit support to the view that the League’s notion of slavery was in fact comprehensive, and went beyond traditional chattel slavery45. As Joel Quirk notes, however, largely due to the concerns of the colonial powers, the consequences of the Convention’s definition were in practice very much confined

44 For an analysis of slavery-related African claims against colonial powers, see Max du Plessis, “Historical Injustice and International Law: An Exploratory Discussion of Reparation for Slavery”, «Human Rights», 25, 2003, pp. 624–659. 45 Emphases added.

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to traditional slavery46. In any event, the Commission report of 1924 had offered merely a pragmatic compilation of descriptions based on existing practices. It had lacked any systematic effort to identify commonalities and similarities between the different manifestations of slavery-like institutions47. Following the work of the Temporary Slavery Commission and the subsequent adoption of the Slavery Convention, the League established, first, a temporary Committee of Experts on Slavery (1926), and then replaced it with a duly permanent Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery (1929). The work of both committees was considerably hindered by the organisation’s confidentiality agreements with various states as to what documents and data could and could not be publicly revealed. Despite the expansive list in the previous Commission report and the Slavery Convention’s permissive wording in the first-ever international legal definition of slavery, these ensuing committees, and ultimately the League, seemed to subscribe to a narrow interpretation of the concept. A report of the Committee of Experts in 1932, for example, would refer to: certain kinds of social status in which men are not yet in enjoyment of full civil freedom, but which are in no sense inhuman, and which in certain ways (assistance to the sick and infirm) even present advantages. A social status of this kind cannot be equitably assimilated to slavery in the usual sense of the term without running the risk of giving the civilised world an incorrect and unfair impression48.

Under the League of Nations, when anti-slavery finally became endorsed as a global legal norm, its reference point was little more than chattel slavery49. Following the de jure abolition and de facto eradication of traditional slavery in and around the global centres of power, the League era also witnessed the emergence, in international public discourse, of a variety of slavery-related categories and models that the colonial powers (ab)used in order to escape international attention for their ongoing slavery-like practices. In Africa, in particular, 46

Quirk, cit., note 7, p. 568. See K. Bales and P. T. Robbins, “No One Shall Be Held in Slavery or Servitude: A Critical Analysis of International Slavery Agreements and Concepts of Slavery”, «Human Rights Review», 2, 2001, p. 22. 48 Quirk, cit., note 7, p. 591. 49 While, for example, the first international convention concerning the traffic of women for prostitution referred in its title to the «white slave trade» in this period, this reference would not prove consequential in international law and relations for some time to come. 47

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the concept of «domestic slaves» was promoted and as carefully distinguished as possible from «trade slaves» and «plantation slaves»50. On the other hand, wherever the existence of remnants of chattel slavery was admitted, a variety of gradualist models were employed instead of immediate and unconditional abolition, for example, apprenticeship programmes (involving continued servitude for specified periods of time), «free birth» laws (involving freedom for persons who are born after a specified date), and the so-called «Indian model» (involving informal master-slave relationships in the absence of recourse to the law in these terms)51. The Slavery Convention did not create any international mechanisms to evaluate and pursue allegations of violations of its provisions. Neither did it establish any procedures for periodic review of the question and practices of slavery. Despite these weaknesses, the League of Nations did facilitate, through publicity as well as pressure, the legal abolition of slavery in such countries as Nepal (1926) and Burma (1928)52. Britain’s abolition of slavery in Sierra Leone (1928) also coincided with the League’s efforts. The eventual outbreak of the Second World War, however, would completely interrupt all of the League’s work. At the end of the Second World War the elimination of slavery was included in the extensive list of international responsibilities that the United Nations (UN) had taken over from the League. As early as 1948, the prohibitions set out in the Slavery Convention were given significant normative support by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 4 of the Declaration – technically a non-binding legal instrument – expanded the notion of anti-slavery by introducing the category of servitude: «No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms». While the Ad Hoc Committee of Experts on Slavery did not find sufficient reason for amending the definition in Slavery Convention53, it drew attention to the existence of other equally repugnant forms of servitude that had to be prohibited. The Committee, therefore, recommended 50

Quirk, cit., note 7, p. 590. Ivi, p. 589. 52 On the other hand, while slavery would not be abolished in Ethiopia until the subsequent Italian occupation, intense discussions about slavery were observable during the country’s admission to League membership. One of the conditions was that Ethiopia provide information on slavery; see Quirk, cit., note 4, p. 86. 53 This four-member committee was appointed in 1949 by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). 51

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the drafting of a supplementary convention to cover practices analogous to slavery, many (but by no means all, or even most) of which had been already identified by the League of Nations54. As a first step, the UN General Assembly, in Resolution 794 (23 October 1953), approved a protocol amending the Slavery Convention so that its references to the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice were replaced by respective references to the successors of these organisations, namely, the UN and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Subsequently, a Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (7 September 1956) was adopted at a special conference convened by the ECOSOC Resolution 608 (XXI)55. The new convention supplemented the original convention most importantly by introducing and expanding on the category of «servile status» (Article 7)56. Under this category, debt bondage and serfdom were now legally defined and prohibited. In addition, and with specific reference to women and children, Paragraphs (c) and (d) of Article 1 obliged states to abolish a number of institutions and practices whereby, for example, «a woman… [would be] promised or given in marriage on payment…»; or «the husband of a woman… [would have] the right to transfer her to another person…»; or «a woman on the death of her husband [would be] liable to be inherited by another person»; or «a child… [would be] delivered… to another person… with a view to the exploitation of the child…». From one angle, the Supplementary Convention clearly fell short of expectations. However, given the intricacies of the international relations underlying the formation of international law in this particular instance, this instrument looks like a remarkable achievement. In the lead-up to the preparatory conference in Geneva, when ten governments met in New York to discuss the draft convention prepared by the British government, the global East-West and North-South divides had manifested themselves in three bitter disagreements57. First, Ecua54 Another worthy recommendation, namely, the setting up of a Standing Committee of Experts on Slavery, would not yield any result; see Welch, Jr, cit., p. 94. 55 Hereafter: the Supplementary Convention. 56 While the Slavery Convention made reference to «conditions analogous to slavery» (e.g. in its Preamble and Article 5), the Supplementary Convention clarified that states parties should seek the complete abolition or abandonment of the identified institutions and practices where they still existed and whether or not they were covered by the definition of slavery provided in the original convention. 57 See Welch, Jr. cit., pp. 95–97.

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dor, Egypt, and India (with the backing of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union), pushed for an additional paragraph in the draft’s preamble, which, if accepted, would have affirmed the principle of economic assistance from the developed to developing countries. Secondly, Egypt and the Soviet Union objected, again unsuccessfully, to the draft’s notion «progressive» abolition. Thirdly, Ecuador, Egypt, and Yugoslavia (backed by the Soviet Union) took serious issue with the British idea of potential exemptions, which eventually resulted in the adoption of a compromise text drafted by Turkey. The two comprehensive and landmark human rights conventions of the mid-1960s, further elaborated on the question of slavery. Considered in combination with the Universal Declaration and the Supplementary Convention, they also helped to transform the League of Nations’ (hence the original Slavery Convention’s) narrow focus on traditional slavery. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) prohibited slavery and servitude (Article 8); considered freedom from slavery as a non-derogable right (Article 4.2); and also prohibited, with certain exceptions, the use of forced or compulsory labour (Article 8). On the other hand, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognised, among others, «the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts». (Article 6.1). Thanks to the East-West détente, the UN managed to create a Working Group on Slavery in 1975. This was a meagre achievement, since the UN membership had, in effect, refused to create a committee equipped with monitoring powers58. The only competence of the ensuing five-member group was to propose resolutions to its parent bodies, namely, the Sub-Commission and the Commission on Human Rights59. Not surprisingly, the recommendations of this relatively weak body would be repeatedly blocked throughout the subsequent three decades, either at the Sub-Commission or at the Commission level. In 1983 the Commission refused a proposed new name for the group: the «Working Group against Slavery, Apartheid, Gross Human Exploitations and Human Degradations». However, in 1988, placed in the fast-changing geo-political climate, the group was successfully (and less 58 Put differently, the Working Group is qualitatively different from the treaty bodies specifically created to oversee the implementation of particular treaties (as in the case of the ICCPR). 59 In 2006, this latter organ was replaced with a UN Human Rights Council linked directly to the General Assembly rather than ECOSOC.

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ambitiously) renamed as the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery on the grounds that this new name was more in keeping with the Group’s actual interests at that point in time, namely, exploitation of sex, debt bondage, sale of children, and Apartheid. To its credit, the Working Group, despite all its institutional shortcomings, has managed to adopt and advocate an open-ended and expansive approach to the meaning and implications of slavery60, both in terms of handling a wide spectrum of issues and allowing wider participation61. The expansion in the international notion of slavery as well as the strengthening legal support to the anti-slavery norm was also evident in the past decade. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998) explicitly incorporated the «trafficking of persons, in particular women and children» into its conceptualisation of slavery. The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2000) made reference to «the exploitation of the prostitution of others, or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs». Against this backdrop, today it seems perfectly reasonable to argue, as Cherif Bassiouni does, that slavery, slave-related practices, and forced labour all constitute «a common international crime when committed by public officials or private persons against any person»; «a war crime when committed by a belligerent against the nationals of another belligerent»; and, perhaps more importantly, «a crime against humanity when committed by public officials against any person irrespective of circumstances and diversity of nationality»62. Such a conclusion, however, might be a little too quick, and caution might be in order. It is true that the prohibition against slavery is today considered part of the customary international law. This implies, crucially, that international actors can be held accountable whether or not they have entered into specific treaty obligations regarding slavery. Freedom from enslavement is now considered so fundamental a right that all states have standing to bring offending states before the ICJ63. Furthermore, the ICJ has already identified protection from slavery as 60

Quirk, cit., note 4, pp. 28–29. “Because its meetings are open, the Working Group has become a magnet for NGOs, with a dozen or more in attendance”; see Welch, Jr, cit., pp. 118. 62 C. Bassiouni quoted in Weissbrodt and Anti-Slavery International, cit., pp. 3–4. Article 7.2(c) of the Rome Statute characterises enslavement as a crime against humanity falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. 63 Weissbrodt and Anti-Slavery International, cit., p. 3. 61

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one of the two examples of «obligations erga omnes [owed to humanity as a whole] arising out of human rights law»64. Nevertheless, the unquestionable reference point in all these normative developments seems to be traditional slavery, understood narrowly as in the original context of the Slavery Convention and relying on a consensual basic interpretation as to what slavery involves. Even if anti-slavery is believed to have attained the status of jus cogens [peremptory norm] in public international law, it is doubtful whether this proposition can be extended to include all related practices, since the precise content and legal standing of «slave-related» or «slavery-like» practices and institutions are still far from clear in international law and relations.

3. Conclusion Recent estimates place the number of modern «slaves» in the world as high as 200 million or as low as 12 million65. If part of the variance between different estimates can be legitimately attributed to the differences in accessing and processing data, part of it would need to be ascribed to diverging notions and definitions of what slavery is. On the surface, James Walvin’s following observation looks like a comment on unawareness, but, at a deeper level, it also subtly hints at the discrepancies between conceptualisations: When people first learn about the London-based Anti-Slavery International, the modern descendant of the Anti-Slavery Society founded in 1839, they often seem bemused. Why campaign against slavery today? Slavery surely disappeared a long time ago. In fact at the time of writing, in 2006, the society has more work than it can handle campaigning against slavery in various corners of the globe66.

Efforts to conceptualise «contemporary slavery»67 frequently need to face slavery’s original criterion of ownership. This criterion, one respected study has argued, might well obscure some of the other, perhaps more important, characteristics of slavery associated with the complete control over a person68. In the modern context, the ques64

The Barcelona Traction case (1970-71). See Quirk, cit., note 7, p. 578, and Martinez, cit., p. 556. 66 J. Walvin, A Short History of Slavery, London: Penguin Books, 2007, p. 230. 67 C. van den Anker (ed.), The Political Economy of New Slavery, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, especially pp. 1–36; and Quirk, cit., note 4, pp. 102–112. 68 See Weissbrodt and Anti-Slavery International, cit., p. 7. 65

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tion of enslavement may need to be re-considered with particular reference to, for example, the degree of restriction of an individual’s right to freedom of movement; an individual’s degree of control over his personal belongings; and the presence of an individual’s informed consent regarding his relationship69. According to another notable study, several practices can be associated with slavery based on three criteria: loss of free will, appropriation of labour power, and violence or threat of violence70. Such reasoning seems to have already penetrated the thought patterns of the pertinent international organisations. According to a fact sheet published by the UN Centre for Human Rights in 1991, such abuses as child prostitution, child pornography, the use of armed children in armed conflicts, the traffic in the sale of human organs, and certain practices under Apartheid, among others, are all connected to slavery71. A decade later, a comprehensive report sponsored by the UN Commission on Human Rights listed the following categories as «forms of slavery»72: serfdom, forced labour, debt bondage, migrant workers, trafficking73, prostitution74, forced marriage and the sale of wives75, child labour, and child servitude. The report also identified a number of «other issues», including incest76. Two-and-a-half centuries after the birth of abolitionism, the international community has today a broader notion, if not a clearer conceptualisation, of slavery. The combined legal definition set forth in the Slavery Convention and the Supplementary Convention still remain in effect, and have been merely complemented by various re-statements and elaborations in different international diplomatic and legal settings. At present, the international community’s collective preference seems

69

Ibidem. Bales and Robbins, cit., pp. 32–34. 71 Quirk, cit., note 7, p. 567. 72 Weissbrodt and Anti-Slavery International, cit., issued as UN Document “HR/ PUB/02/4”. 73 The report devoted significant space to the discussion of this category (paragraphs 60–82), and considered «trafficking in women» and «trafficking in children» as special subheadings. 74 Under this category, the report elaborated on forced prostitution, children and prostitution, sexual slavery, and sex tourism. 75 There was explicit reference to mail-order brides. 76 Even this comprehensive list does not manage to include all categories that are being currently associated with the concept of «slavery», e.g. forced labour for the state (as in Myanmar), «cult» slavery (as in western Africa), or abuses inflicted on prisoners; see Quirk, cit., note 7, p. 567. 70

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to be to «exploit» the anti-slavery norm – firmly established in international law and relations following the de jure and de facto elimination of large-scale chattel slavery – to the fullest. The norm is used, somewhat liberally and loosely, to discredit a wide range of disgraceful practices and institutions, without having to elevate the international status of any of these problems to that of the wide-spread chattel slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such amorphous categories as «slavery-like», «slave-related», or «analogous to slavery» may well be expressions of genuine international concern with a range of problems, but they are also testament to the fact that, in the face of delicate domestic and international political calculations and priorities, most of the institutions and practices in question have so far successfully eluded any meaningful international reaction in their own right. They have not (yet) given birth to their own, strong, individual normative counter-dynamics in international law and relations. To this day, the degree of international reaction that they attract seems to depend heavily on the extent to which they are being «rhetorically associated» with the category of slavery – still understood, as the Walvin quote above demonstrates, in its original traditional connotations77. Further refinement of the concept of slavery in international law and relations is warranted under the changing circumstances, but such refinement is no easy task given the increasing complexity and interconnectedness of the phenomena that are now being associated with this category78. On the other hand, the two difficulties that beset the unsuccessful nineteenth-century search for consensual definition, namely, differences of opinion as to content as well as concerns over potential obligations and legal consequences, have been equally at play since the adoption of the Supplementary Convention – this time in relation to a much wider set of inhumane practices and institutions79. Nevertheless, the record shows that the idea(l) of anti-slavery, 77 For an appropriate problematisation of literal versus rhetorical invocation of «slavery», see Ivi, p. 578. 78 Such complexity is extremely difficult to address even in the context of domestic law and regulations, let alone international law and relations; see, for example, B. Azmy, “Unshackling the Thirteenth Amendment: Modern Slavery and a Reconstructed Civil Rights Agenda”, «Fordham Law Review», 71, 2002, pp. 981–1061. 79 In the lead-up to the Supplementary Convention, for example, governments did their best to sideline any discussion of necessary attitudinal, cultural, and economic changes. They remained focused simply on the outlawing of slavery-like practices. They were also quite unwilling to add the burden of preparing regular reports to their responsibilities; see Welch, Jr, . cit., pp. 96.

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despite its amorphous content, has acquired a prominent status in the normative texture of the international community. It has become a dominant discourse.

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Works cited Azmy B., 2002, “Unshackling the Thirteenth Amendment: Modern Slavery and a Reconstructed Civil Rights Agenda”, «Fordham Law Review», 71, 2002, pp. 981–1061. Bales K., 2005, Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bales K, Robbins P. T., 2001, “No One Shall Be Held in Slavery or Servitude: A Critical Analysis of International Slavery Agreements and Concepts of Slavery”, «Human Rights Review», 2, 2001, pp. 18-45. Bergad L. W., 2007, The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blackburn R., 1997, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800, London: Verso. Bolt C., 1969, The Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction: A Study in Anglo-American Co-operation, 1833-77, London: Oxford University Press. Burin E., 2005, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. Bush M. L., 2000, Servitude in Modern Times, Cambridge: Polity Press. Carey B., Kitson P. J. (eds.), 2007, Slavery and the Cultures of Abolition: Essays Marking the Bicentennial of the British Abolition Act of 1807, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Cateau H., Carrington S.H.H. (eds.), 2000, Capitalism and Slavery Fifty Years Later: Eric Eustace Williams – A Reassessment of the Man and His Work, New York, NY: Peter Lang. Clarence-Smith W. G., 2006, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark I., 2007, International Legitimacy and World Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Craton M., Walvin J., Wright D. (eds.), 1976, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Black Slaves and the British Empire – A Thematic Documentary, London: Longman. Diène D. (ed.), 2001, From Chains to Bonds: The Slave Trade Revisited, Paris and New York: UNESCO Publishing and Berghahn Books. Drescher S., 2002, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. du Plessis M., 2003, “Historical Injustice and International Law: An Explora-

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tory Discussion of Reparation for Slavery”, «Human Rights Quarterly», 25, 2003, pp. 624–659. Fehrenbacher D. E., 2001, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hart J., 2005, Contesting Empires: Opposition, Promotion, and Slavery, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Jennings L. C., 2000, French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802–1848, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaufmann C. D., Pape R. A., 1999, “Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-year Campaign against the Atlantic Slave Trade”, «International Organization>, 53, 1999, pp. 631–668. Keene E., 2007, “A Case Study of the Construction of International Hierarchy: British Treaty-making against the Slave Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century”, «International Organization», 61, pp. 311–339. Kielstra P. M., 2000, The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France, 1814–48: Diplomacy, Morality and Economics, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Knight J., 2000, Slavery throughout History: Primary Sources, Farmington Hills, MI: UXL. Martinez J. S., 2008, “Antislavery Courts and the Dawn of International Human Rights Law”, «The Yale Law Journal», 117, 2008, pp. 550–641. Oostindie G. (ed.), 2001, Facing up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe, Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers. Quirk J., 2006, “The Anti-Slavery Project: Linking the Historical and Contemporary”, «Human Rights Quarterly», 28, 2006, pp. 565–598. Quirk J., 2008, Unfinished Business: A Comparative Survey of Historical and Contemporary Slavery, Paris: UNESCO and WISE. Temperley H. (ed.), 2000, After Slavery: Emancipation and Its Discontents, London: Frank Cass. «Time» (14 June 1926), available online at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,751519,00.html?iid=chix-sphere (September 2008). Turley D., 2000, Slavery, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. van Cleve G., 2006, “Somerset’s Case and its antecedents in imperial perspective”, «Law and History Review», 24, 2006, pp. 601–645. van den Anker C. (ed.), 2004, The Political Economy of New Slavery, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Walvin J., 2007, A Short History of Slavery, London: Penguin Books. Watson A., 2006, “Lord Mansfield, Judicial Integrity or Its Lack; Somerset’s Case”, Scholarly Works, Paper 386, available online at: http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/386.

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Weissbrodt D. and Anti-Slavery International, 2002, Abolishing Slavery and Its Contemporary Forms, New York and Geneva: United Nations. Welch Jr. C. E., 2009, “Defining Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Updating A Venerable NGO”, «Human Rights Quarterly», 31, pp. 70–128.

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TRANSFORMING SITES OF HUMAN WRONGS INTO CENTRES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: THE BIRTH OF THE CAMPAIGNING MUSEUM Alex Robinson «Why is it so difficult to remember slavery?» – the words of Livio Sansone in response to a paper given at Re-thinking Postslavery, a conference held at the International Slavery Museum Liverpool (July 2010). The paper he was responding to, ‘Slave descendants in the southern highlands of Madagascar: an ethnographic account’1 examined the social exclusion of the descendants of slaves in the South Betsileo region of Madagascar. The fact was that they wanted to forget about slavery while their neighbours were only too keen to remember it and retain the marker of inferiority. Remembering and forgetting about slavery is as complex now as it always was, and for good reason. Sansone had shared with the conference a new concept in Museum practice – the museum with no owners – a digital museum in fact. We will be looking at this Fabrica des Ideas shortly but first some signposts. In this paper I will put Museums’ representations of slavery in the context of new departures in the field of memorialisation, which represent attempts to come to terms with histories that would in the past be deemed painful or shameful to remember. It might be interesting also to consider as a corollary to collective memorialisation the societal developments which have contributed to new approaches; the use of narrative therapy as a means of resolving long-term problems in 1 The paper, by Denis Regnier (LSE), showed how the avoidance of marriage with slave descendants is grounded in Betsileo ideas about descent, ancestors, pollution and collective tombs. It then described practical aspects of Betsileo kinship which make it easy to identify the slave descent of potential marriage partners.

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relation to individual memory and trauma, or conflict resolution in the field of non-violent communication are examples of new approaches, while the emergence of transnationalism on the global spectrum is an important context with the accent on shared experiences rather than separate histories. They have all impacted on new interpretations of what museums are for and for whom: purpose and audience.

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1. Remembering Slavery in Africa The human rights consequences of transatlantic slavery had an inestimable impact on the world: the denial of humanity to enslaved Africans, formalised in law and sanctioned by the state, was integral to the system. From the Valladolid debates of the 16th century2 to the 3/5th human status assigned by the American Constitution in 17873, and commodification as cargo, exemplified in the case of The Zong4, the legal status of ‘less than human’ would underpin Europe’s first encounters in the Americas and the operation of both the transatlantic slave trade and the plantation economy. Transatlantic slavery operated for almost five hundred years giving rise to an ideological system which served to justify white supremacy, a system which was perpetuated into the 20th century, as Eric Williams 2 The Valladolid debates (1550-1551) followed the papal bull declaring the indigenous people had souls (Veritas Ipsa or Sublimus Deus, 1537). The Spanish were looking initially for papal blessing for the murder of the Amerindians and the debate regarding the status of the indigenous people was protracted, and may be seen as a precursor to arguments about the humanity of Africans. Pope Paul III actually rescinded his decision in 1538. Twelve years later Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlvida led the two sides of the debate. Las Casas came to regret the fact that in his defence of the indigenous people he had encouraged the enslavement of Africans in the Americas. 3 Article 1, section 2 paragraph 3, 1787. 4 The corollary of this commodification saw «cargo» transformed as «a type of interest bearing money» (Baucom, Ian, 61 - see below). The slave ship The Zong was the subject of an insurance claim for the loss of 132 enslaved Africans. The Captain claimed he had jettisoned the ‘cargo’ because of a water shortage. The insurers appealed against the decision and Olaudah Equiano alerted Granville Sharp to the proceedings in March 1783. The case was not, as Sharp argued it should be, a prosecution for mass murder, but an attempt by the insurers to prove the loss was not covered by the terms of their contract. In fact the case exposed the truth about the slave trade which the West India lobby had been campaigning to conceal and although it did not cause an immediate public outcry, the campaign initiated by Equiano and pursued by Sharp created a reaction after the event, and contributed to the growing organised criticism of the slave trade. For an excellent indepth examination of The Zong affair see Ian Baucom’s Specters of the Atlantic, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005.

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observed in 1944: «The ideas built on these interests continue long after the interests had been destroyed and work their old mischief»5. The perception of ‘less than human’ would continue to legitimise the expansion of Europe into the continent of Africa – ‘la mission civilisatrice’; the descendants of slaves and, by implication, all whose skin was black, would be faced with this perception of themselves – as Other, as Fanon put it – and possibly entertain the notion that it was deserved. In dialogue with Caryl Phillips in 2005, Chinua Achebe put words to this aspect of the legacy – or his reaction to it: «I don’t come from a half made society [...] We’re not a half-made people. We’ve seen lots of problems in the past and we’re older than the problems. Drought, famine, disease, this is not the first time we are dealing with these things in Africa»6. Museums in West Africa and the UNESCO Slave Route Project have also addressed the subject over the last ten years or so but the legacy has many ramifications: it involves embracing the difficult perspectives of those who were enslaved and those who remained. Early in the 20th century the birth of Pan-Africanism had pulled Africans of the diaspora together: at the beginning of the 21st, Caryl Phillips observed the layers of difference within the diaspora today. Travelling to a Pan-African commemoration in Ghana, he became aware of his sense of displacement compared to a fellow traveller’s perceived sense of belonging: «Like me, he is an African. A Ghanaian. A whole man. A man from one place. A man who will never flinch at the question ‘Where are you from?’ [...] I envy his rootedness»7. The juxtaposition of the Caribbean British writer, Caryl Phillips, Pan-African Ghanians and Jamaican Rastafarians revealed the complexity of the situation today. In as much as people in the West are in different places on the subject of slavery, the same is true of Africans of the diaspora. The Rastafarians believed they were true sons and daughters of Africa but their behaviour scandalised the Ghanians, while Phillips and the Pan-Africanists were also at loggerheads. Pan-Africanism, insists Dr Ben Abdullah, is a simple concept which involves the solidarity and cohesion of all Africans and people of African descent:

5 E. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944, p. 211. 6 C. Achebe and C. Phillips at the Southbank Centre, October 2005. 7 C. Phillips, The Atlantic Sound, London: Vintage, 2001, p. 100.

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We have to look after our own interests. We have to rescue the continuity of our values from the past, values such as our art, the wisdom of our elders and our ways of doing things, because with the coming of foreigners and imperialism many things were thrown away. The intrusion of Europe produced Eurocentric Africans who don’t know who they are8.

Dr Ben Abdullah refers to the slave forts as holocaust shrines for people of the diaspora and suggests that they should be given to the people of the diaspora. Caryl Phillips had asked Dr Ben Abdullah what children in Ghana were taught about slavery –was it regarded as a European crime or did African people see it as something for which they had to take responsibility too. His response shocked Phillips: «It is taught with the understanding that those sold into slavery were not always that good, and that in some respects they got what they deserved. The people running the slave forts were people of God, for after all Cape Coast castle was the site of the first missionary school»9. The number of African Americans from the USA and, to a lesser degree, from the Netherlands and the UK, travelling to Africa is evidenced by the slave trade tours in West Africa. These are in fact museums for foreigners – such as the slavery museums at Maison des Esclaves at Goree Island, Senegal, at St George’s Castle and Cape Coast in Elmina, in the Gold Coast in Northern Ghana, and in Benin at Port Novo and Ouidah, where the slavery museum is accompanied by a slave route which takes on the character of a pilgrimage – four kilometres of memorials culminating in the door of no return. Ghana was the first state to market the slave tour destination, now there is a Roots Trail in Gambia with museums at Albreda and James Island, Nigeria at Badgary and Arodiutw and in Guinea at Boke there are further museums and slave routes. Both Caryl Phillips and Saidiya Hartman expressed some disquiet when they were greeted on their arrival at Elmina in Ghana with «You’re back». As if «the rupture of the Middle Passage is neither irreparable nor irrevocable, but bridged by the tourist who acts as the vessel for the ancestor. In short, the captive finds his redemption in the tourist»10. In 1999 the President of Benin got down on his knees during a religious service in Baltimore

8

Ivi, p. 114. Ivi, p. 117. 10 S. Hartman, “The Time of Slavery”, «South Atlantic Quarterly» 101/2002, pp. 75777. 9

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and begged forgiveness – others have followed example. How to represent a history which is fraught with such bitter memory?

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2. Remembering 1807 in the UK Historians and museologists started, in the latter part of the 20th century, to address the concealment of the history of transatlantic slavery. That re-write must take account of the nature of the silence on the subject, as Michel-Rolf Trouillot put it: «By silence I mean an active and transitive process: one silences a fact or an individual as a silencer silences a gun. One engages in the practice of silencing. Mentions and silences are thus active, dialectical counterparts of which history is the synthesis»11. Translated into a museums context, Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago editors of Grasping the World: the Idea of the Museum direct us quite unequivocally – […] no matter how strongly anyone insists that things ‘represent’ who or what we imagine ourselves truly to be, something will always be missing. Given what is available now about the lingering, largely unacknowledged debts of contemporary museums and academic endeavour to ‘racial science’, it is from the position of what is missing that an ethical critique of society must now originate12.

For historians, archivists and museum personnel, the commemoration of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in March 2007 was a focus which had the potential to effect change. The way had been prepared by UNESCO’s Breaking the Silence project (1994), which operated a wide-ranging programme involving schools, archives and heritage institutions internationally, promoting research and the production of education resources. On another level UNESCO connected with politicians across the world for the World Conference against racism in Durban 2001, which put reparations on the political agenda for the first time13. 11

M.-R. Trouillot, Silencing the Past, Boston: Beacon Press, 1995, p. 49. D. Preziosi, C. Farago, Introduction to “Building Shared Imaginaries/Effacing Otherness”, in D. Preziosi, C. Farago, eds., Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, p. 235. 13 The conference proposed that transatlantic slavery was a ‘crime against humanity’ and called for reparations, but did not win a majority for this wording. 12

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These beginnings provided a context for the museum and archival projects of 2007 and from that cross-fertilisation a great deal has been achieved: UNESCO’s purpose was clear – to put the record straight – but in the UK there have been accusations of tokenism and unfortunately the lasting impression was of a Wilberfest – the domination of the commemoration by the very ideas which Williams complained about in the 1940s – Abolition as the supreme humanitarian act. The frustration with attempts by the British establishment to really deal with the legacy of transatlantic slavery was expressed by Toyin Agbetu when he protested in Westminster Cathedral about the failure to apologise for slavery and was no doubt absolutely sick to teeth of hearing about Wilberforce14. The blogs which followed his protest revealed the racist attitudes which are barely contained beneath the surface, bursting with righteous condemnation. Despite the criticisms and failings, 2007 has set an agenda and created some permanent exhibitions and sustainable research programmes: in Hull, Wilberforce House and the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), in Liverpool the International Slavery Museum and the Centre for the Study of International Slavery (CSIS), London Docklands and the African Caribbean Partnership Network Initiative (ACPN) and University College London’s Legacies of British Slave Ownership project and online database –The Encyclopaedia of British Slave Owners (2012). There were other responses, and in a number of different venues: regional TV companies produced a week of film around March 25th 2007, connecting their region with the slave trade; archives and museums across the country identified collections and individual documents which had not been catalogued or made available before, including an important catalogue of the records of the British Caribbean in the NRA Your Caribbean Heritage. Some of the research outcomes were exhibited and many were used in websites which appeared by the dozen. The result is that we now have an even clearer picture of the extent of the tentacles of the slave trade, we have discovered how many English stately homes were built or refurbished on the profits of slavery and have begun to trace the profits of slaveholders in the development of the British economy: we also have evidence of an African presence in 18th century Britain which far exceeds earlier estimates. 14

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/mar/27/race.world1.

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The websites are still up but the documents and objects which were brought out for 2007 have, many of them, returned to storage, and the funding for research and conferences is drying up. Slavery is no longer the favoured subject it was in 2007. National Museums in Scotland did not take it on at all – the new National Museum of Scotland made no reference to slavery and this despite the fact that Scots were in the Caribbean in massive numbers; the Scottish stately homes of plantation owners are testament to this involvement and the tobacco and sugar trade with North America and the West Indies was the stimulus for the massive expansion of Glasgow in the 18th century15. In the absence of a lead from the top however, there were exhibitions in a number of regional museums and libraries. So the progress has to be balanced against the gaping absences – the silences which are still a feature of the 21st century representation of the subject; the picture is patchy, at best.

3. Remembering and Forgetting Slavery in the USA A 2002 study of plantation house museums in the Southern states of the US reveals Trouillot’s silence par excellence persisting into the 21st century. The study, conducted by Jennifer Eichstadt and Stephen Small, appraised the plantation houses, exhibits, tours, brochures, postcards, video, gifts and use of language: they concluded that the past of slavery and the enslaved was «confined to oblivion»16. The results demonstrated that slavery/enslaved Africans were not mentioned at all in 25% of the plantation house museums and only one to three times in more than 50%. There were thirty one times more references to furniture in plantation houses and where the references were greater, the language employed served to obfuscate rather than inform (e.g. the use of «they» or the passive, «food was prepared», referring to workers or servants rather than slaves: the «invisible hands»). This despite the fact that the term plantation house in the US owed its existence to slavery – it was applied to a farm with above twenty enslaved Africans. Instead, 15 Research has been conducted into slavery connections with individual Scottish country houses and libraries, an exhibition at Carnegie Inverurie Museum, Dumfries and Galloway, and the National Library of Scotland has a website, but National Museums Scotland have not addressed the subject. 16 J. Eichstadt, S. Small, Representations of Slavery: Race and Ideology in Southern Plantation Museums, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002, p 2.

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they found euphemisms – the slaves are referred to as servants, with some confusions, such as the estate employed 100 slaves. These museums either erased all references to slavery or trivialised it; where there was fuller reference it was presented separately and marginalised. In only 3.3% of the sample was there a real effort to incorporate the two stories. Small and Eichstadt sent more than one group of «visitors» to the same museum on some occasions, altering the racial mix. This elicited a different story from the guide quite often and in one case an omission: «The guide had described everything in the hall including all the furniture in minute detail with the exception of two statues of Black servants [...] At about eight and a half feet tall and with candelabras on their heads the statues were hard to ignore»17. Slave cabins were rarely included in the museum’s interpretation of the plantation, often they were abandoned, occasionally used as rest rooms or advertised for bed and breakfast. One is quite different, the Cabin Restaurant, serving food typical of the time and in a decor supposedly fitting – newspaper as wallpaper and «exuding an aura of authenticity and realism». According to Small and Eichstadt, the majority of these museums present the grand narrative of celebration, grandeur, honour and romance which feed into the collective memory, helping shape identity and promote the racialised myth of white supremacy. Slavery and the struggles of Africans and their descendants are consigned to oblivion, contemporary inequalities are legitimised, bolstering a sense of white pride in an exclusive history, all encompassed in the 1940s film ‘Gone With The Wind’ which is still playing, figuratively, and in some cases literally. The single narrative told is one of the hard work, ingenuity and civility of the plantation owner. Enslaved Africans rarely appear except as an adjunct to the master and described as loyal and faithful – reflecting on the owner rather than the African. And of course slavery is presented as a benevolent institution; 19% of the sites had examples or stories demonstrating the ‘Sambo myth’ – not only were the slaves happy in their unfreedom, they chose it in one instance rather than freedom according to a label accompanying the will of Hannah Coalter, Chatham Manor Fredricksburg, 1857. Mrs Coalter manumitted her ninety-three slaves and ordered her executors to finance passage to «wherever they wanted», including Liberia, or if they so chose to select an owner from her relations. The label reads: 17

Ivi, p. 118.

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This fine residence and farm was sold at public auction...We understand that most of the Negroes of the estate have chosen Mr Lacey as their master, preferring slavery, and a residence on the old plantation, to their freedom in a strange country [...]. Freedom-Shriekers please take note of this18.

In fact the truth was worse. Mrs Coalter’s relatives contested the will and the section relating to the manumission was deemed invalid on the grounds that only humans could make choices and slaves were defined in the US constitution as less than human. Eichstadt and Small’s survey covered one hundred and forty two former plantation houses, now tourist centres, in Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. In the North, the Civil Rights Movement had inspired the emergence of African American Archaeology projects, which would counter the impression created by museums in the South. The contrast between conditions for Europeans and enslaved Africans had persisted beyond the grave; slave graveyards were not preserved and disappeared post slavery. It was not until these archaeological projects were undertaken that the material culture of the enslaved could be examined and another silence broken. The artefacts unearthed objects which people used in their daily lives, and make a link with similar sites excavated across the Americas. They speak to us directly, without the distorting lens of the European observer and they can help us reconstruct the lives of people whose own testimony is seldom heard. In the case of the New York Lower Manhattan burial ground, excavated in 1991 (above four hundred graves) there was more than just a sense of connecting with this past, there was the horror that the citizens of New York felt about the truth that was emerging: slavery, they thought, went on down there in the South. For the descendants of the enslaved there was the possibility that their ancestors were buried there or in one of the two hundred graves in the three-hundred-year old graveyard discovered in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (described as the whitest city in New Hampshire). The work of archaeologists was accompanied by the emergence of Black Museums which started to appear in the U.S.; one of the first, The Anacostia Community Museum, Washington DC, founded in 1967, continues with its groundbreaking approach today, while in Virginia the founding in 1981 of the Black

18

Ivi, p.152.

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History Museum in Richmond commemorating the lives and accomplishments of Blacks in Virginia 1981, was a landmark in the creation of African American sites of memory which serve to give African Americans control over their own heritage. The list of similar institutions now total more than sixty five and the planned National Museum of African American History and Culture, in association with the Smithsonian, is due for completion in 2015; an online site is already in place.

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4. Museums and Identity in the Caribbean Independence for the Caribbean states over the last fifty years would theoretically empower them to take control of their patrimony. Resolving post-colonial issues and shaping heritage is crucial, according to Stuart Hall it is «one of the ways in which the nation slowly constructs for itself a sort of collective social memory»19. Alessandra Cummins, has written widely on museums and identity, and continues the theme: «Both formal and community-based museums wrestle with issues of identity versus insularity, self-worth and self-empowerment in the task of constructing histories and heroes, as part of the process of nation building»20. She does not underestimate the enormity of the task: «Caribbean museums thus faced the special challenge of the management, interpretation and care of collections of material culture (the majority of which represented 500 years of European domination) which seemed largely irrelevant to a society forcibly dispossessed of its original culture»21. The government archivist in St Kitts adds a further perception that it is a population which «is often resentful of its past but cannot escape it»22. In 2010 the Museums Association of the Caribbean MAC conference focused on the theme “Caribbean Curatorship and National

19 S. Hall, “Whose Heritage? Un-settling ‘The Heritage’. Re-imagining Post-nation”, The Third Text Reader on Art, Culture and Theory, R. Araeen, S. Cubitt and Z. Sardar eds., London: Continuum, 2005, p. 74. 20 A. Cummins, Caribbean Museum Development and Cultural Identity, ICOM-INTERCOM, Study series 12, 2005, pp. 14-17. Online. http://www.museum.or.jp/icom/study_ series_pdf/12_ICOM-INTERCOM.pdf Cummins is International Council of Museums (ICOM) former President (2005-2010), Director of Barbados Museums, and present Chair of UNESCO Executive Board. 21 Ibid. 22 V. O’ Flaherty, Their Archives and… Ours! Relevance of archives in post-colonial St. Kitts, unpublished thesis, 2008.

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Identity”. Cummins considered the centrality of the museum past and present which became the accepted model for the construction, control and communication of knowledge throughout the colonial world. The role of the museum had been to inform and shape perceptions here and over there (according to the metropolitan perspective), to affirm the conditionality of over there, a secondariness which extends to the people, the subaltern. Privileging the European past was therefore the pattern for museums in the Caribbean and indeed museums throughout European imperial possessions. In order to move forward therefore it is necessary to deconstruct, prior to reconstructing public identity, and Cummins argues that the Museum and the Gallery operate as ‘public articulations’ of identity. While post independence it was possible for national governments to seize patrimony and in some cases obliterate memory of the colonial past – in Zaire for example the authenticité policy which oversaw the destruction of colonial buildings in the 1960s – the proposition is not so straightforward in the Caribbean. The majority of Caribbean museums are actually housed in colonial buildings and national governments are still involved in a complex relationship with the metropole, a relationship which is skewed by the importance of tourism. The circum-Caribbean must negotiate that relationship with the ex colonial authority and the new commonwealth of the USA, directly involved in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and exerting soft power in the rest of the region. My own experience of working on a museum in the Caribbean was instructive in this respect. This was the restoration of a Great House, which has now opened as a visitor centre, set in botanical gardens23. I was responsible for the historical interpretation which was, as it transpired, extremely productive: the house had been built and purchased by a range of owners from slaveholders, slave traders to UK sugar distributors and they provided the perfect example of the trajectory of families from humble beginnings rising to the upper echelons of British society via participation in slavery – a Governor of the Bank of England in one case and elevation to the aristocracy in another. The house served also as an excellent vehicle for the history of the island and its slave-trading past. This was not however the story which some of the team wanted to tell and there was resistance to the material «spoiling» a beautiful house museum. 23

Fairview Great House, St Kitts, 2010.

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Despite the difficulties, museums in the Caribbean are developing out of community-based programmes, initiatives promoting intangible heritage and a range of outcomes, such as The Museum of African Art and Ethnology in Guyana, the ICWI Science Learning Centre – fighting poverty through knowledge – the Bob Marley Museum, the Marcus Garvey Museum, the Ocho Rios-based Reggae Xplosion in Jamaica, George Washington House (one house museum which does include the enslaved) and the Folk Heritage Museum in Barbados. The picture for the smaller islands, however, is rather more mixed: the funding for heritage is a problem, as is the difficulty of accessing records from the metropolitan centre and the conservation of the records which are on-island. The importance of the tourist sector often means the colonial landmarks continue to dominate the picture and the majority of plantation great house museums remain silent about the enslaved. The founding of the Museums Association of the Caribbean (MAC) and CARICOM’s Caribbean Regional Museum Development Project were important steps: more recently, funding from UNESCO for Breaking the Silence and the Sites of Memory projects and now in 2011 the Memory of the World Programme has been a key stimulus to new departures across the region and particularly in the development of digital projects which should mitigate the disadvantages under which the smaller islands have operated until recently.

5. The Trope of the Holocaust Museum and Sites of Memory Representing transatlantic slavery has developed naturally into the emergence of the campaigning museum and the attempt to transform sites of human wrongs into sites for human rights. Memorialisation of the Holocaust has probably been the greatest inspiration to these new departures – the first in the world, the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum was established in Jerusalem in 1949. Since then, holocaust memorial museums have proliferated across the globe, the most recent opening in Mexico last year: it was announced earlier this year that Italy’s first Holocaust Museum would be built in Villa Torlonia in Rome, close to Mussolini’s villa and the Jewish catacombs24. All three museums reveal the strands emanating from holocaust remembrance 24

Another holocaust Museum is under construction(2011) at Ferrara due for completion 2015.

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which feed into the evolution of museums of conscience: the Ghetto Fighters’ House established a tradition of memorialisation – revealing the atrocities but telling also a story of resistance; Villa Torlonia in Rome indicates a responsibility for complicity and takes the position that Italy was a partner of Nazi Germany, not a victim – it will contribute to a facing up to a past which has remained hidden: the Mexican Memory and Tolerance Museum uses the history of the holocaust to promote tolerance and diversity in Mexico in the present. Thus, the globalisation of holocaust memory has provided templates for a diverse range of museums which engage with modern atrocities and difficult pasts on the basis of collective mourning, or as vehicles for catharsis and reconciliation or, moving on from there, via memorials and exhibitions to collective responsibility for past events and present injustices. Quite how this new tradition would play out in the 21st century could not have been predicted, particularly in terms of the response from the grassroots: nor does the trope of holocaust monopolise memorialisation: in Cambodia, within a year of the defeat of the Khmer Rouge, in Phnom Penh, the Toul Sleng S 21 interrogation centre was opened as a museum in 1980. This had no connection at all with holocaust memorialisation but it did exhibit evidence of atrocities, the torture instruments, and incriminating documentation, including prisoner inventories and coerced personal confessions. The 15-30,000 prisoners were mostly exterminated before the warders fled. The exhibition, however, was not initially open to the Cambodians, the victims of this atrocity, and was in fact intended for foreigners, which adds another layer to the complexities surrounding memorialisation: who is it for? In this case, the intended audience was the international community from whom the Vietnamese were looking for aid. It was thirty years before this museum space was taken forward to another stage in the process with sessions of the Extraordinary Chambers in Cambodian Courts (ECCC), renaming victims and giving voice to their personal histories, while perpetrators are obliged to reveal in front of the whole nation the functioning of the Khmer Rouge «death machine». Here the museum figures in a documentary film25, which shows a reconstruction of typical traumatic events which took place, conducted by some perpetrators, together with two survivors. According to Patrizia Violi and Cristina Demari,

25

The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, made in 2003 by Rithy Panh.

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Cambodia represents a particularly interesting case for the study of the forms in which the collective memory of a traumatic past is represented, elaborated, manipulated for political and other reasons, and transformed over time in relation to different “politics of memory. Here “what happened”, is both revealed and withheld by specific images, in a style often referred to as “traumatic realism”, which seeks to give body to absence and confront disappearance26.

The three strands identified above that have shaped memorialisation in the late 20th century, that is collective mourning, facing up, catharsis and reconciliation, are traceable in the museums of South Africa which are in the vanguard of change. In as much as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a landmark in the history of Conflict Resolution, the museums of South Africa have embraced the potential for catharsis, reconciliation, and the promotion of social cohesion. Wandile Goozen Kasibe, Public Programmes Co-ordinator for Iziko, a national museum group addressing South Africa’s diverse heritage described museums’ new role: In post-conflict societies such as South Africa, museums have grasped the urgency of assuming responsibilities as catalysts of socio-culture change and inclusivity. Fostering social cohesion is a founding principle of South Africa’s new democratic dispensation. South African museums have begun to assume a leading role in opening a space for this dialogue through education and public programmes: Museums as an evolving concept: a space for development, critical enquiry on contemporary issues and ultimately societal change.27

In 1999, the District Six Museum (South Africa) and eight other Museums from Europe, Asia, North and South America founded the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience with the following statement: […] it is the obligation of historic sites to assist the public in drawing connections between the history of our sites and their contemporary implications. We view stimulating dialogue on pressing social issues and promoting humanitarian and democratic values as a primary function.28 26 ‘Memory of a Genocide: Spaces, practices and images: a case study from Cambodia. Paper delivered at Goldsmiths London, Transcultural Memory, 2010. 27 W. G. Kasibe, cit. in Richard Freedman, Creating a Voice for Human Rights: the Work of the South African Holocaust Foundation in Holocaust Education in South Africa, FIHRM Conference, Liverpool, 2010. 28 http://www.sitesofconscience.org/

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The Coalition is currently made up of 17 accredited sites of conscience and more than 260 individual and institutional members. Supported by this organisation and led by District Six Museum, the Africa Sites of Conscience Network is using histories of citizen action to develop post-colonial and post-conflict democracies and collaborate with historic sites in Southern, East-Central, and West African nations experiencing post-colonial and post-conflict transitions. The Slave Lodge Museum in Cape Town South Africa demonstrates the transformative theme in its essence. One of the oldest buildings in Cape Town, now viewed as a slave site in its entirety, was opened as a museum in 1966 and became the SA Cultural History Museum. It is now a museum in transition and is part of the iziko, which is developing a Museum and Memory Centre at the Slave Lodge – in the words of the project: Iziko Museums has embarked on a major project which will transform the Slave Lodge into a permanent museum of slavery, using the building itself as a significant artefact. The focus of the exhibits will be on family roots, ancestry and the peopling of South Africa. We aim to increase awareness on issues such as human rights, equality, peace and justice. We plan to transform the Lodge from a site of human wrongs to a one of human rights, to pay tribute to those who have been forgotten, denied and stigmatised.29

Echoing the transformative theme, the Constitutional Court judges of South Africa selected the Old Fort prison in Johannesburg as the site for the new Constitutional Court building: The prison complex, which once symbolized the worst of the old apartheid regime and held Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, would now be viewed worldwide as a beacon of hope. Constitution Hill now includes a museum interpreting the history of the prison and issues of justice past and present, public spaces for dialogue, and the Court building itself. The Court building allows visitors to experience South Africa’s transition to democracy, observe the process by which freedom is now protected and learn how South Africa is building the future on its past30.

The old prison cells are now transformed into an interactive museum that provides a realistic impression of what life would have been 29 30

Iziko Museums of Cape Town http://www.iziko.org.za/slavelodge/over_ex.html. http://www.sitesofconscience.org/

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like here if you had been a prisoner and video footage shows prisoners once held there, re-telling their experiences. Capetown’s first Holocaust Museum in Africa examines the history of racism and antisemitism in the context of South African as well as European history drawing on the commonality within the ideologies of Nazism and apartheid and is particularly effective in engaging with local communities via a searching education programme. The connection with holocaust remembrance played a very important role in the creation of the extraordinary Kigali Memorial Centre, the result of a partnership between Kigali City Council and the UK based Aegis Trust (which was responsible for the Holocaust centre in Nottingham). The Kigali centre is built as a memorial to the 250,000 people buried on the site who were massacred in the genocide of Rwandan people which resulted in the extermination of 85% of the Tutsi people. It offers a place for relatives to grieve for their loss but also to participate in the process of rebuilding the nation. Rwanda has a number of other memorials to the genocide of 1994 – The Murambi Memorial to the genocide of 50,000 Tutsi is more than a landscape of bones; the building which was a technical school now exhibits the dead who were exhumed from the mass graves, human bodies with the skin still intact, deceased individuals whose facial expressions, size, position and manner of death is apparent. The outside of the centre – the school building – stands as a permanent warning somehow of what happened there, as if it is stuck in time. While holocaust memorials have served to promote museums as sites of conscience, they are not implicated in all new initiatives in this area of museum practice at all. In the case of Chichiri Museum in Malawi a unique programme is the outcome of a partnership between children and curatorial staff. According to the museum’s curator Michael Gondwe, Malawi is one of the ten least developed countries in the world. It faces many challenges such as high rates of HIV/AIDS and malaria, issues of hunger, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, high population density and severe pressure on land from agricultural practices. The rural areas suffer the most from these challenges, where over 80% of the population lives below the poverty line and 36% are illiterate31.

31

M. Gondwe, Promoting Human Rights and Social Justice – The Museums of Malawi, FIHRM Conference, Liverpool, 2010.

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Today, the Museums of Malawi have become agents of change in human rights and focus on actions and events that will encourage restoring dignity in society. They operate with an outreach system in rural areas and by attempting to alter the curriculum at teacher-training level. The challenge is to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty via education programmes to fill in the gaps and address the deficit of an education system which takes under 30% of the population beyond elementary schooling. The museum is at the centre of developing education programs concerning crosscutting issues like malaria prevention, HIV/AIDS, food security, children’s rights and poverty. They are using an arts and culture programme as a vehicle for addressing cultural entitlement and raising aspirations. When I asked the Curator of the Museums of Malawi, who set up the education department in the Museum of Chichiri in 1983, what had prompted the new trajectory he told me that the idea had come from the children themselves after the department had visited fifteen schools in 2006 and asked over 900 school children to name the most significant issue they faced in their lives. The resounding response was poverty. The aim of the visits had been to find out what problems affected children in their daily lives. Further, the museum discovered how children comprehend poverty, its effects on their rights and how they could take action against it. The visits to schools led to the production of the Culture Connection magazine. This magazine gives children’s ideas and perceptions in the form of poems, short stories and some artwork that depict their feelings in response to how culture can combat poverty. One poem addressed to poverty says it all: You Are No More You have been fighting our parents You have been successfully defeating them You have been using your weapons Starvation, bad shelter and poor education Our parents had no weapons To successfully Struggle against you But what I can tell you is that You are no more Our warriors are very strong They have the weapon in their hands That is culture

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The key to fight against you, poverty Its bullets are very destructive Environment, art works, dances And education You have nowhere to hide Since we have shot all your warriors I, as a child, have used culture to fight you SO YOU ARE NO MORE

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Peter Gomani. Namadidi 32

Museums in South America reflect some of the issues we have encountered in the Caribbean. Dominated in the past by colonial landmarks, heritage was in the hands of an elite and distanced from the masses. New departures are evident in the museums of the Bolivarist states, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil, which now include ethnographic collections and exhibitions devoted to the indigenous peoples. In Brazil the Museuo Afro Basiliero in Bahia Salvador pioneered the collecting and exhibiting of the material culture of Afro-Brazilians and in 1997 the Centro de Afro-Orientais Universidade Federale de Bahia assumed responsibility for it. Here also a grassroots movement has filled in the gaps using Churches which served also as headquarters of the Brotherhoods in the 19th century, which now emerge as venues for community-based collecting, for example the Church of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Black Men. The church was started in 1704 and built by enslaved Africans for their own use. A movement over the last thirty years devoted to the memory of the silent martyred slave Anastacia has also demonstrated the power of an image on the streets and in people’s homes. The cult of Anastacia, Black slave and martyr, focused on an image of a slave wearing a facemask, which became the object of popular devotion. The impetus for community collecting here was from the ground, responding to the gap, in response to the need for heroes/heroines and to exorcise the memory of slavery. The next step is Museu Digital da Memória Afro-Brasileira also created by Fabrica de Idéias, Centrio de Estudos Afro-Orientais, a museum without owners33. Noted for its 32

«Culture Connection» magazine. See footnote 31. Fabrica de Idéias website includes some filmed debate revealing the evolution of the project which is ground breaking in trajectories as well as technological application. http://www.fabricadeideias.ufba.br/seminarios.php. 33

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democracy and inclusion, encouraging interaction between minority ethnic and marginalised groups and encouraging cultural exchange, this project has been built upon interchange between the Luso-African states and Brazil, a South-South discourse which promises to re-think the meaning of Africa in the world as it anticipates the end of the Euro/American hegemony in the field of ideas. Another example of non-institutionalised approaches to public memory has grown out of public mourning of the disappeared after the Argentinian dictatorship (1976-1983). The Escuela Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), the military school used as a detention centre, has become the informal site of mourning. A paper given by Cecilia Sosa at the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory Goldsmiths London, February 2010, informs us that while the authorities and relatives of the victims debated whether to demolish the site or create a museum, one of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, set up a strange performance: «Cooking and Politics», a weekly open venue where she gave lessons in political activism alongside practical recipes of «combative food. While Bonafini cooks, the public debates local politics and exchange food recipes. At the end they all eat and drink together»34. Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet inaugurated the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in January 2010. There had been a long debate about the story it would tell and a reluctance to touch upon the experience of the Pinochet seventeen- year dictatorship. The museum offers an «invitation to reflect on attacks made on life and dignity from September 11, 1973 to March 10, 1990 in Chile», presenting human rights as a universal challenge, and drawing on the experience of other dictatorships and atrocities in Serbia, Bosnia, Uganda, Chad, El Salvador, East Timor, and dozens of others.

6. The Museum as a Freedom Fighter The first slavery museum in Europe opened in Liverpool in 1995 – against considerable opposition. Merseyside Maritime Museum braved the hostility of its own governing body in the first instance and of many local institutions to create the permanent exhibition entitled 34

Sosa, Cecilia «Cooking in Hell: A non-normative response to Argentina’s last dictatorship (1976-1983)». Online. http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/research/transculturalmemory.htm

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“Against Human Dignity”, – in the basement of the massive museum. A second exhibition was opened in 2007 – no longer in the basement; this one is more than two and a half times the size and will be, from 2012, self contained: this is the International Slavery Museum and the history it tells focuses on the African stories, the narratives and works produced by the enslaved Africans and their descendants, on resistance and on the legacies of slavery. The accent in the past had been on honour and glory, and museums tended to reflect the dominant ideology, ‘consecrating traditional values’ to present a single narrative, apparently in an objective manner, studiously avoiding making value judgements, but equally valorising the national story, celebrating achievement and omitting failure. A site of memory was all about national remembrance. Part of the object was to create a sense of belonging, which of course worked for some but the obvious corollary was exclusion for others. In 2005 The International Council on Monument Sites (ICOMOS) defined interpretation as “the carefully planned public explanation or discussion of a cultural heritage site, encompassing its full significance, multiple meanings and values” the idea of multiple narratives, or at least more than one; the idea was not new and had been put twenty years before by Raymond Williams in The Politics of Modernism: «if we are to break out of the non-historical fixity of post-modernism then we must search out and counterpose an alternative tradition taken from the neglected works left in the wide margin of the century»35. How history is represented has become a crucial consideration not just for museologists; the process as deconstructed by people like Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Hayden White is pervasive, again Raymond Williams: analysis of representations is not a subject separate from history but that the representations are part of the history, contribute to the history, are active elements in the way that history continues; in the way forces are distributed; in the way people perceive situations both from inside their own pressing realities and from outside them36.

Museums have an authority which has grown out of years of association with the establishment and the assumption that they convey 35 R. Williams, T. Pinkney, eds., The Politics of Modernism, London-New York: Verso, 1989, p. 35. 36 Ivi, p. 178.

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the national story and act as stewards relics of the past; as such, they have also been perceived as neutral spaces, the assumption being that they tell an objective story. As recently as 2006 the Transatlantic Slavery Gallery was criticised by the Times Culture correspondent, Jonathan Jones, for partiality, for, in fact, bias in favour of the enslaved Africans. I am reminded then of a similar judgement of the hundreds of slave narratives collected from the late 19th century and then during the 30s in the USA – that they were too biased – and this remained the case up until the 1970s when slowly they were rehabilitated and used by historians. I don’t remember any historians ever submitting holocaust survivors’ memoirs to the criteria of objectivity. There are some situations where the pursuit of objectivity is not appropriate at all. And the whole concept of objectivity has been unmasked. The British government began to actively promote inclusion after first the Swan report in 1992, then Bringing Britain Together in 1998, which introduced Policy Action teams and a requirement for museums to reach targets in order to obtain funding. Dr Benjamin’s article referred to below describes the response from the museum sector as full on assault against the social inclusion agenda in 2001 and was very much the dominant theme of the Cumberland Lodge Conference 2004. This has not diverted National Museums Liverpool from pursuing the concept of a museum which is not only divesting itself of its political neutrality but adopting the role of a campaigning museum – one which has not only challenged disinformation in the past but is taking it on in the present. The Head of the International Slavery Museum, Dr Richard Benjamin laid out his agenda in an article in «Museum id», «Museums and the Political Landscape»37, and the outcome is the FIHRM. This trajectory had always been there as part of the legacy section of the museum which comprises cultural transformation, global inequalities and racism and discrimination and was considered at the time of opening as a work in progress. The Museum itself challenges the myths and misconceptions which have surrounded the history of transatlantic slavery in the past and the present. Above all, it gives voice to the enslaved Africans and their descendants, rather than rely on the contemporary records which 37

R. Benjamin, “Museums and the Political Landscape”, «Museum id». http://www. museum-id.com/ideas-detail.asp?newsID=45

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were dominated by Europeans. The corridor leading into the museum has the words of former enslaved Africans and their descendants stamped into the walls. They have at last gone down in history; these are accompanied by the spoken word on a series of perhaps twenty videos. These video stories address not only slavery in the past but contemporary slavery, and include a number of children whose words are especially resonant. A thirteen-year-old Indian boy who had been enslaved at the age of six simply said ‘All children should be allowed to have bread, go to school and play’. David Fleming, National Museums Liverpool’s director, refers to ISM as a freedom fighter: the museum, he says, takes an ideological stance – it is not neutral, it exposes racism, intolerance, and human rights abuse in the past and in the present and seeks to transform visitors into freedom fighters too, determined to campaign against injustice today. The theme of freedom and the message that Africans emancipated themselves is clearly proclaimed in the Freedom! installation, also located in the museum’s introductory area. The Freedom! Sculpture is made out of recycled objects such as metal car parts and abandoned objects found in the dangerous slums of the capital, Portau-Prince. It was created by young Haitians and sculptors Eugène, Céleur and Guyodo from Atis Rezistans, in collaboration with the artist, Mario Benjamin. The Federation of International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM), which was launched in September 2010 by ISM to share practice and support museums across the world, is already more than just a network. Yes it will be a venue for debate, virtual roundtable discussions for example, but it also plans to lobby and launch active programmes. The council at the moment includes ISM, the Jewish Museum in Poland, the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. The Smithsonian Museum of Native American Indians and the projected National Museum of African American History and Culture are in the loop. The response for the inaugural conference has been overwhelming, including the Holocaust Museum, museums in South Africa, Vietnam, France, the USA and the Caribbean as well as the council. In terms of engaging with communities nationally and internationally this initiative is groundbreaking. The evidence is that what was happening, admittedly only in small pockets in the UK, was only part of something which was happening in a postcolonial world – the term sites of memory no longer identifies a site exclusive to national remembrance

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but one which may have more in common with sites outside the national boundary – a site with transnational resonance? Without question, global interactions have loosened the bonds between people, wealth and territories with a concomitant impact on the traditional definition of the state. If print promoted the creation of the nation, it is obvious that the internet offers a means of breaking down the barriers created by the nation state, while massive migrations of the 20th century have affected the whole question belonging, with the possibility of dual or multiple identifications, of being British and something else according to our recent census in the UK, or in fact of maintaining several national identities. So, Benedict Anderson’s imagined national communities are simply replaced by ‘the transnational imaginary’, which is supported by contemporary cultural production microelectronic and transnational in form. Transnationalism, alongside the proliferation of holocaust memorials is another source of the new departures in Museum practice and the emergence of sites of conscience. Transnational NGOs have their own impact – while Transnational Social Movement Organizations work for progressive change in the areas of the environment, human rights, and development as well as for conservative goals like opposition to family planning or immigration. The issues which concern TSMOs themselves are transboundary in character, and they draw upon what Robin Cohen has described as a «planetization» of people’s understandings. According to Cohen the majority of these are new and «we are witnessing an essentially new historical development»38. The freedom-fighting museum has been shaped from developments above and below – the move for cultural diversity and multiculturalism may be seen as contemporaneous with post-colonialism, a shift in perceptions and political organisation from above accompanied by new approaches from below. Sally Price analysed this new development in her review of Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their Public”, she referred to the 1990s as «Decade of the Museum» representing cultural realities through objects, or «exhibiting cultures» – trespassing «in the former no-man’s-land between Art and artifact, Culture and cultures»39. It was not only the content 38

R. Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction, London: UCL Press, 1997. S. Price, “The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their Public Stanford”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 94 issue 3, U P 1990. p. 550 (translation of earlier pub). 39

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of museum collections which was changing – the restricted access which had allowed the stranglehold the elite maintained on culture was also being broken down, allowing the excluded to be both part of and participants in cultural production. Interestingly, Bourdieu saw the thirst for dignity as the prime mover in this process, echoed in the approach of the Chichiri Museum in Malawi.

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At the 2009 INTERCOM meeting in Torreon, Mexico the 150 delegates acclaimed the following Declaration: INTERCOM Declaration of Museum Responsibility to Promote Human Rights: INTERCOM believes that it is a fundamental responsibility of museums, wherever possible, to be active in promoting diversity and human rights, respect and equality for people of all origins, beliefs and background.

One year later National Museums Liverpool launched the Federation for International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM). The Federation will enable museums which deal with sensitive and thought-provoking subjects such as transatlantic slavery, the Holocaust and human rights issues to work together and share new thinking and initiatives in a supportive environment. The inaugural conference will be held at the International Slavery Museum on 15-16 September 2010. NML hopes that some of the world’s leading museums and institutions within these fields will support the initiative and that this will encourage museums with fewer resources to join together in this international collaboration. The Federation is about sharing and working together, but it is also about being proactive – looking at the ways institutions challenge contemporary forms of racism, discrimination and human rights abuses. We believe that these issues are best confronted collectively rather than individually40.

The inaugural conference saw four areas in which museums could be active campaigners: Creating a voice for human rights: Memorialisation and contemporary human rights: Diversity, social justice and education in human rights museums: Making a difference: campaigning museums The ISM made it clear that it considered local audiences of equal importance and, as a means of effecting social change, engaging with 40

FIHRM inaugural conference, International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, September 15th-16th.

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local communities is crucial. Manchester Museum has recently taken on some community projects, which involve inclusion at several levels. In the field of interpretation museums were beginning to move away from the strict confines of systematic observation, classification and the production of ‘knowledge’. Some of these new departures harked back to earlier proposals: in 1957 Freeman Tilden argued rather boldly, «[t]he chief aim of interpretation is not instruction but provocation»41, encouraging an approach which included sound, smell, taste rather than simply sight/perception. In 1989, David Uzzell introduced the notion of interpretation which allowed for an emotional response and discussion. He called this hot interpretation42. A Revealing Histories’ exhibition, “Myths About Race” at Manchester Museum, 2009, is a good example of this sort of approach: here community groups took part in the selection and interpretation of objects ‘allowing them to find their own meanings’43, the exhibition responds to Homi Bhabha’s plea: A distinction must be maintained – in the very conventions of presentation – between works of art whose parts have known the colonial violence of destruction and domination, and works that evolved into antiquity of a more consensual kind... Without making such a distinction we can only be connoisseurs of the survival of art at the cost of being conspirators in the death of history44.

The process was not without difficulty and on the one hand members of the community could rightly complain that more value was given to staff interpretation and that community responses were addons rather than embedded or in some cases not included at all. This exhibition also threw up the requirement for museums not only to work with excluded groups but ‘with traditional audiences who ‘need help’ to untangle their preconceptions’45. Piotr Bienkowski, Deputy Director Manchester Museum, described a very violent reaction to another exhibition (“Lindow Man:

41 F. Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage University of North Carolina, North Carolina, 1957, p. 59. 42 D. Uzzell, Heritage Interpretation, Volume I, Methuen, London, 1989. 43 P. Bienkowski, “Museum Authority, Knowledge and Conflict”, «Museum id» 3, 2009. Online. http://www.museum-id.com/magazine.asp 44 H. Bhabha, “Double Visions” in Grasping the World: The Idea Of The Museum, D. Preziosi and C. Farago eds., p. 241. 45 P. Bienkowski, “Museum Authority, Knowledge and Conflict”.

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A Bog Body Mystery”): the response was negative in the extreme – albeit from a very small number who subjected the museum’s blog and another local one to ‘a sustained blast of invective’ a reaction in quantity quite out of proportion to the number of people affected. This does not mean that museums should back off – they are, as Bienkowski says, part of a vanishing number of ‘safe’ debating spaces, spaces for democratic exchange, and intercultural dialogue about memory, identity, community, belonging and loss46. It is quite clear, however, that ‘Museums’ traditional position of authority could be employed to influence and shape changing perceptions and in particular encourage social cohesion and consideration of global issues. Community action programmes are now part and parcel of most UK museums’ operations, in the case of the ISM, Richard Benjamin mentions his visit to a prison, an open prison in Lancashire, where he met some definitely racist arguments47. Museums in their efforts to engage with diverse audiences have more hope of altering perceptions and a focus on young people: one approach which points the way forward is partnership projects which target the involvement of young people. One example is a recent project I undertook with students aged 13-16 from six schools in Warrington, a town 18 miles from Liverpool. The outcome was a film which deals with the subject of slavery past and present – a collaboration between six schools, a film maker and a research historian. The project aimed to challenge misconceptions about a sensitive and controversial subject, Warrington’s links with transatlantic slave trade. The theme was conceived by the young people themselves in response to the publicity surrounding the commemoration of the Abolition of the slave trade in 2007. The students from six schools visited ISM and Warrington Museum and worked alongside a research historian and a filmmaker to produce a DVD of their findings. They conducted research and created the film. The DVD is an accessible and engaging documentary which has produced important research outcomes and transformed the participants’ attitude to heritage. It certainly raised the profile of this sensitive subject locally – they took it onto the streets and using the vox pops method actually involved 46

Ivi. R. Benjamin, Museums and the Political Landscape. http://www.museum-id.com/ideasdetail.asp?newsID=45 47

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local people in the documentary. It might be said that young people get a better reaction from adults when confronting them with myths about race and uncomfortable truths. One of the outcomes is that the museum in the town now includes a section in their exhibition which shows the town’s involvement in the slave trade. There was no reference to that involvement before the project; in fact the museum was an example of a 19th century approach to collections exhibiting a shrunken head and other plundered objects from the Empire. And anything which didn’t fit comfortably with that imperial narrative was put away in a cupboard – like a whip which had come directly from a plantation in New Orleans to Samuel Rigby’s cotton mill. The accession label simply read that the whip was found in a bale of cotton and given to the newly opened museum by Samuel Rigby in 1859. The town, we discovered, had a long history of antislavery campaigning and the whip was certainly not hidden away at that point in time. At some time in the next century the whip and the town’s connection with slavery and antislavery was hidden away. It goes without saying that for the young people involved in this project the experience was empowering and for many of them led to changes in the subjects they chose for the next stage of public exams. History and heritage became a subject with a practical outcome. Equally important was the development of interpersonal skills and relationships made across the different schools. Getting the balance right in these sorts of projects is essential: here the students were genuinely undertaking ground-breaking research, not unusual still in field of slave trade research, and they were working from what they knew, where they lived, the material culture first, the street names, the mansion houses, the remains of factories and gravestones, but the stories they were revealing were far from the generally held assumptions. The research produced results which have altered our thinking of the impact of the slave trade on Liverpool’s hinterland and contributed to the development of a new museum in Warrington – and the whip is now permanently out of store and part of that story. In 2012, the International Slavery Museum will launch CSIS – The Centre for the Study of International Slavery – a centre which will lead on an academic assault on the silences and the paradigm which made, as Bahbha would have it, connoisseurs of art but destroyers of history. Homi Bhabha like Trouillot, gives the example of the repackaging of 1492 so that «this museological fabrication of a culture of discovery

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became a palimpsest of the colonial destruction of cultures»48. The editors of Grasping the World: The Idea Of The Museum, Preziosi and Farago, argue that we must get beyond the ‘parallelisms and cultural coevalities’ which support the Western ideologies of time, progress and social and cultural revolution.

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Getting beyond this is what is most urgently needed in contemporary museology no less than in art history, theory and criticism. Yet, unless our academic endeavours are linked explicitly to the oldest and most fundamental questions of how our societies should be run, they will remain facets of the corporatized aestheticism of identity politics and of the infotainment and edutainment industries that constitute cultural practices in the epoch called globalization49.

Sites of memory, commemorative monuments, museum exhibitions, websites and research programmes have emerged throughout the diaspora and whatever the motivation - the result of political or economic pressure, guilt and shame, or as means of restitution and a genuine attempt to break the silence and allow healing, the results are incremental and take on a dynamic of their own. Having been the bulwark of the establishment in the West they are now emerging not only as venues for cultural mediation but also as centres which in fact challenge the establishment’s narrative –these museums stand self avowedly in the present, a present which they consciously seek to shape and alter, as is the case in the Museum on the Seam in Jerusalem which was established in 1999. While Jerusalem was divided (19481967), the building served as a military outpost (the Turjeman Post) which stood on the seam line between Israel and Jordan across from Mandelbaum Gate, the only crossing point between the two sides of the divided city. The house was damaged by war and its facade bears the pockmarked scars of bullets. The Museum, in its unique way, presents art as a language with no boundaries in order to raise controversial social issues for public discussion. At the centre of the changing exhibitions in the Museum stand the national, ethnic and economic seam lines in their local and universal contexts. The Museum is committed to examining the social reality within regional conflict, to advancing dialogue in the face 48 Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago’s interpretation of Homi Bhabha, “Double Visions”, in Grasping the World: The Idea Of The Museum, D. Preziosi and C. Farago eds., Ashgate, 2004, p. 234. 49 Ivi, p. 235.

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of discord and to encouraging social responsibility that is based on what we all have in common rather than what keeps us apart. Even in the midst of conflict, it seems, the museum can stand as a beacon of hope.

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Works cited Achebe C. and Phillips C., 2005, in discussion at the Southbank Centre, October. Benjamin R., 2009, “Museums and the Political Landscape”, «Museum id» 2 http://www.museum-id.com/ideas-detail.asp?newsID=45 Bienkowski P., 2009, “Museum Authority Knowledge and Conflict”, «Museum id» 3. Online. http://www.museum-id.com/magazine.asp/vol 03 Cohen R., 1997, Global diasporas: an introduction, Seattle: UCL Press. Cummins A, 2005, Caribbean Museum Development and Cultural Identity, ICOM-INTERCOM, StudySeries12. Online. http://www.museum.or.jp/icom/study_series_pdf/12_ICOM-INTERCOM. pdf Eichstadt J. and Small S., 2002, Representations of Slavery: Race and Ideology in Southern Plantation Museums, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Hall S., 2005, “Whose Heritage? Un-settling ‘The Heritage’, Re-imagining Post-nation” (1999-2000), in The Third Text Reader on Art, Culture and Theory, R. Araeen, S. Cubitt and Z. Sardar eds., London: Continuum, pp. 72-85. Hartman S., 2000, “The Time of Slavery”, «South Atlantic Quarterly» 101, pp. 757-77. O’ Flaherty V., 2008, Their Archives and… Ours! Relevance of archives in postcolonial St. Kitts, unpublished thesis. Phillips C., 2001, The Atlantic Sound London: Vintage. Preziosi D. and Farago C. eds., 2004, Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, Aldershot: Ashgate. Price S., 1990, “Review” of The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their Public Stanford University Press, «American Anthropologist» 94/3, p. 550. Tilden F., 1957, Interpreting Our Heritage, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Trouillot M. R., 1995, Silencing the Past, Boston: Beacon Press. Uzzell D., 1989, Heritage Interpretation, Vol. I, London: Methuen. Williams E., 1944, Capitalism and Slavery, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

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Williams R., 1989, Pinkney, T, eds., The Politics of Modernism, London-New York: Verso.

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10 THE THEATRE ‘HAS POWER – THE POWER TO MOVE’: ASPECTS OF SOCIAL CHANGE IN GEORGE COLMAN’S AND PAUL LEIGH’S INKLE AND YARICO1 Adrian Knapp

1. Introduction The 2007 bicentennial anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade was also the 220-year anniversary of the first performance of an influential play whose success overlapped with the earliest phase of the abolition movement and the foundation of the London Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787: George Colman the Younger’s Inkle and Yarico: An Opera, in Three Acts. As Mrs. Inchbald pointed out in her «Remarks» on the 1808 edition, the play «was popular [even] before the subject of the abolition of the slave trade was popular. It has the peculiar honour of preceding that great question. It was the bright forerunner of alleviation to the hardships of slavery»2. What is interesting about Mrs. Inchbald’s praise is not so much her critical assessment of the play’s great social impact – the play was staged a total of 164 times between 1787 and 1800 in the 1 This paper is part of Prof. Wolfgang Zach’s research project English Literature and Slavery 1772-1834: From the Beginning of the Abolitionist Movement to the Abolition of Slavery financed by the Austrian Research Council (FWF). 2 E. Inchbald, “Remarks” on Inkle and Yarico, The British Theatre, vol. 20, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808, p. 3. The popularity of the subject is also reflected in the fact that Richard Steele’s «original 1711 Spectator narrative [was] reprinted in The Times in 1787 when the drama first appeared». D. Worrall, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, 1787-1832: The Road to the Stage, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 83.

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London theatres alone3 – but her observation that it was popular in the first place. Was it popular because of its criticism of the slave trade, as one might romantically be enticed to believe, or was it rather something else that miraculously enchanted the audience? According to Julia Swindells,

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Colman could produce spectacularly successful dramatic material out of issues related to the abolition movement […] because drama can exploit the immediacy of visual impact and the implications of appearance and disguise for questions of racial origin and identity. […] Comedy could explore, through visual and oral disturbance, that territory of racial difference about which audiences were ignorant and actively or potentially prejudicial4.

But why was Colman’s play and its representation of the slave trade more popular than other dramas of the period also connecting slavery with what Peter Hulme calls the «the great theme of sentimental literature; sexual love and [...] the frustration of that love?»5 Mrs. Inchbald, again lavishly praising the play, partly answers this question: it [Colman’s Inkle and Yarico] might remove from Mr Wilberforce his aversion to theatrical exhibitions, and convince him that the teaching of a moral duty is not confined to particular spots of ground; for in those places, of all others, the doctrine is most effectually inculcated where exhortation is the most required – the resorts of the gay, the idle, the dissipated6.

Inchbald’s claim for the power of theatre to inculcate the doctrine of «moral duty» gains importance when one considers the turbulent 3 See F. Felsenstein, English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World: An Inkle and Yarico Reader, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999, p. 167. As David Worrall notes, «taking into account that summer seasons at the Haymarket were much shorter than the winter opening of Covent Garden and Drury Lane, Inkle and Yarico’s run of 20 performances in 1787 was impressive». D. Worrall, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, p. 85. What is more, considering the number of people seeing the play in the first decade after its premiere, Worrall estimates the number to be as high as one million, including performances in the provinces. See D. Worrall, Harlequin Empire: Race, Ethnicity and the Drama of the Popular Enlightenment, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 1. 4 J. Swindells, Glorious Causes: The Grand Theatre of Political Change, 1789-1833, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 67-8. 5 P. Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797, London and New York: Methuen, 1986, pp. 228-9. 6 Mrs. Inchbald, “Remarks”, cit., p. 3, my emphasis. Also see, J. Gratus, The Great White Lie: Slavery, Emancipation and Changing Racial Attitudes, London: Hutchinson, 1973, p. 184.

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political context of the late eighteenth century and the speed with which ideas of social change hit Europe in the form of the French Revolution. At a time of uncertainty resulting from the questioning of the social order as partly mirrored in the foundation of movements demanding equal rights for workers, women, and slaves7, Colman’s play could only have been so popular because it equally appealed to parties fighting for change as well as those fighting against it. In envisioning and at the same time also suppressing social change, Colman’s text, in a way which is similar to Edmund Burke’s defence of everything ‘British’ in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), bridges the gap between the opposing parties uniting them in their praise of a common superior British culture. In other words, Colman averts real change by devising a preordained Utopia that will come into being if the present power structures are kept in place, and in the context of abolition, when the ruling elite leads the fight against the slave trade. Paul Leigh’s musical The Curious History of Inkle and Yarico: A Musical Entertainment (1999) offers a modern metatextual reinterpretation of Colman’s play which depicts Colman fictionalising and dramatising William Wilberforce’s story of Inkle’s ‘factual’ account, thus connecting the literary with the political and social spheres. In reading Colman’s and Leigh’s texts side by side it is possible to analyse both the social change envisioned by Colman in the late eighteenth century and the kind of changes that Leigh’s reworking imagines as necessary from his turn-of-the-twenty-first-century perspective: two forms of imagined social change that, needless to say, are clearly anchored in their respective periods8. However, before we take a closer look at how the two plays go about questioning the status quo we have to reflect on theatre’s power in effecting social change.

7 For a brief outline of the American and French Revolutions’ social impact on the rights of women and slaves in Britain see M. R. Ishay, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, pp. 63-116; the beginnings of an organised workers’ movement in Britain are explored in E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Vintage, 1966, pp. 17-101; see also Thompson’s text for its discussion of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791/1792) as a «foundation text of the English working-class movement», pp. 90-101. 8 As Michael Freeden points out, «ideologies are always located in a particular context. Even when they employ the language of universalism and of abstraction, it refers to understandings that emanate from particular societies at a specific historical time». M. Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 60.

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2. Theatre and Social Change

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‘Social control’ sounds like a hard and repressive idea and it can, like any idea, be put to bad use. Does it sound different if we say that the social is control? […] that what we call freedom and fulfilment is as socially constrained as slavery and alienation. Social control is not some dark opposite to liberation and freedom, it is simply the ubiquitous condition of women and men (and children)9.

One might wonder why a section entitled ‘theatre and social change’ should begin with a lengthy quote on the ubiquity and normalcy of social control. However, it is necessary to define what is controlled and how this control functions to come to an understanding of how change becomes possible. As Brian Davis points out, «[t]he activity of becoming social is the activity of becoming acculturated, which always includes some means of acting back upon the culture which forms and controls»10. Trevor Noble argues similarly, «we are not passive victims, but active agents in the systems we confront and which, by our conformity or innovatory response, we sustain and create»11. So in socialising we determine the social rules and norms as much as these rules and norms determine us; thus what is perceived as normal is in reality a highly contested field and only of a temporary kind. It is this aspect, the permanent struggle over control in the social sphere, which brings us back to the topic of social change. In the field of social studies one generally distinguishes between two forms of social change, endogenous and exogenous change: As for social change, conflict theorists regard the momentary equilibrium which may be attained in a society at any given period as essentially precarious. The potential for endogenous change is always there in the struggle to reallocate the distribution of social advantage. Consensus theorists are likely to see change as exogenous, originating as an adaptation to culture contact, invasion or changes in the economic environment. The common interest of the members of the group, or the component elements of the wider society, then need to adjust in the light of the changing circumstances12.

9 B. Davis, Social Control and Education: Contemporary Sociology of the School, London: Methuen, 1976, p. 7. 10 Ivi, p. 23. 11 T. Noble, Social Theory and Social Change, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2000, p. 217. my emphasis. 12 Ivi, p. 7.

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Ideology is a decisive factor in both social control and social change, as «[c]onstructing, sustaining and reproducing ‘truths’ is essential to the maintenance [as well as the change] of power»13. In contrast to the dominant conception of seeing ideology as an ‘illegitimate force’ controlling social, political and cultural practice in the interest of an all-powerful elite14, it seems more useful for our purpose to regard ideology as a discursive phenomenon. Understanding ideology discursively, according to Dirk Klopper, means that it is not perceived «as a body of autonomous ideas but as processes of signification which are inscribed in different discourses as specific ways of perceiving and thinking»15. This approach makes all the more sense if one concurs with post-Marxist social criticism outlining that there is no ‘truth’ or ‘external reality’ outside language since language is linked to social practice only via ‘empty signifiers’. So instead of condemning «ideology as false, it should be recognized as a powerful indicator of the ways in which people actually construe the world»16. As meaning is regarded to be «perpetually deferred along a signifying chain», ideology then «is seen to mask [...] the social construction of meaning by positioning [itself as] natural meaning»17. So social change has to be preceded not so much by a change of ideas as by a different perspective on how these ideas generate ‘external truths’ and ‘meaning’ within language. Max Weber in his seminal study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has shown how such new «ideas become effective forces in history» and have «formative influences on conduct» due to their constituting the core of moral beliefs18. Lynn Hunt argues similarly in her 13

J. Giles and T. Middleton, Studying Culture: A Practical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999, p. 67. 14 See L. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” On Ideology, London and New York: Verso, 2008, pp. 20 and 56; T. Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism, London and New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 5. 15 D. Klopper, “Ideology and the Study of South African English Poetry,” «JLS/TLW» 3.4 (1987), p. 73. 16 M. Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 112. 17 D. Klopper, “Ideology and the Study of South African English Poetry,” «JLS/TLW» 3.4 (1987), p. 74. 18 M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Trans. T. Parsons, Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003, p. 90, 27, my emphasis. Discussing Weber’s analysis of the rise of capitalism, R. H. Tawney argues that «the change of moral standards […] converted a natural frailty into an ornament of the spirit, and canonized as the economic virtues habits which in earlier ages had been denounced as vices». R. H. Tawney, “Foreword,” The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber, Trans. T. Parsons, Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003, p. 2.

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reconstruction of the eighteenth-century debate leading to the rise of modern human rights discourse, but makes the important point that social change in addition to incorporating an «alteration of individual minds» also needs to be supported by «new kinds of feelings»19. In the eighteenth century this change of moral guidelines supported by new ways of feeling is mirrored in the change of meaning words like industry, democracy, class, art and culture underwent, as Raymond Williams has shown20. So social change begins inside ourselves and only later makes itself felt socially through our different actions generating a different ‘reality’. Since «the names we give to things, events, and people determine our behavior toward them»21, a change in naming «invariably [also] alters the image of the ‘other’, and vice versa; and either change alters the nature of the difference which they constitute, and by which they are constituted»22. In the eighteenth century the theatre played a crucial role in negotiating social change. As Ato Quayson points out, «[f]rom at least the sixteenth century, the theatre was arguably second only to the Church as a mass medium through which general cultural ideas were focalized and disseminated»23. Franca Dellarosa too maintains that the «theatre [was] a crucial public arena where the British empire-in-themaking found significant, as well as signifying, symbolic self-representation»24. In this respect, it makes sense to argue that the theatre in the eighteenth century had a decisive influence on the formation of what Emile Durkheim has called the conscience collective or commune, «the set of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a single society»25. The theatre thus, more than any other social institution, 19 L. Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History, New York and London: Norton, 2007, p. 34. 20 R. Williams, Culture and Society: 1780-1950, New York: Columbia University Press, 1983, pp. xiii-xx. 21 H. D. Duncan, “Introduction,” Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, Kenneth Burke, 3rd ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, p. xiv. 22 M. Crick qtd. in E. Hallam and B. V. Street, “Introduction: Cultural Encounters – Representing ‘Otherness’,” Cultural Encounters: Representing ‘Otherness’, Eds. Elizabeth Hallam and Brian V. Street, London and New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 6. 23 A. Quayson, Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice and Process? Oxford: Polity Press, 2000, p. 110. The formative influence of the church on social practice is outlined in M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, p. 27 and L. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” pp. 51-7. 24 F. Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage: Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830s, with an Anthology of Texts, Bari: Edizioni dal Sud, 2009, p. 50. 25 B. Davis, Social Control, p. 25, my emphasis. It is worth noting, however, that the formation of a common social consciousness was also assisted by the reading of epistolary

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facilitated a communal leap across «the boundaries of the imagined world of drama, and involve[d] the actual, historical audience in an extra-ordinary communicative dimension»26. This imaginary empathy evoked in the theatre is of interest to our analysis as a change in one’s feelings and beliefs necessarily also results in a change of identity and thus alters one’s group allegiance. Eighteenth-century theatre’s great influence on revalorising social practice is further mirrored in the age’s «unprecedented and perhaps unsurpassed interconnectedness of theatrical and political activity»27. David Worrall accords «theatrical subcultures» – that are partly modelled on Thompson’s ‘political subcultures’ – formidable constitutive power in influencing general culture through what he refers to as «sociability», a term «the Georgians would have [more] straightforwardly [referred to] as ‘conviviality’»28. This form of sociability is outlined by Gillian Russell in relation to the intense theatrical culture of the age, whereby the «metropolitan theatres formed a kind of Grand Central Station of eighteenth-century cultural and social networks, a place of meeting for individuals but also of ranks, circles and genders, where one might cross over from one defining category to another»29. It was this profound social mingling irrespecnovels, engendering an imaginary empathy between people. As Hunt points out, «It is imagined, not in the sense of made up, but in the sense that empathy requires a leap of faith, of imagining that someone else is like you». L. Hunt, Inventing Human Rights, p. 32. 26 F. Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage, p. 51. While the passage is specifically referred to the metatheatrical movement underlying the performance of the abolitionist “Epilogue” to The Padlock, spoken by the character of the comic black slave Mungo on behalf of enslaved Africans, it may be assumed to provide an apt metonymic image of the mechanisms of empathic identification theatre enacts, which were especially powerful in the theatrical culture of the age. Also using The Padlock as an example, Thomas Clarkson in his History makes a similar point about theatre’s power to move people (into action) when highlighting «that few theatrical pieces had a greater run than the Padlock; and that this epilogue, which was attached to it soon after it came out, procured a good deal of feeling for the unfortunate sufferers, whose cause it was intended to serve». T. Clarkson, History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament, vol.1, London: Taylor & Co, 1808, pp. 81-2. 27 J. Swindells, Glorious Causes, p. 138. As Gillian Russell points out, in political writings of Burke and Paine the public is also referred to in theatrical terms. G. Russell, The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics, and Society, 1793-1815, Oxford: Claredon Press, 1995, pp. 21-5. 28 D. Worrall, Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship and Romantic Period Subcultures 1773-1832, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 2-4. On the concept and the practices of Romantic sociability, see G. Russell, C. Tuite, Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture in Britain, 1770-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Included in that volume, J. Carlson’s contribution on “Hazlitt and the Sociability of Theatre”, pp. 145-165. 29 G. Russell, “Theatrical Culture,” The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740-1830, eds. Thomas Keymer and Jon Mee, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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tive of class that also facilitated the deliberate ‘misinterpretation’ of central theatrical passages for political purposes30. So the playhouse in functioning «a site for the articulation of social and political tensions»31 responded to and nourished a kind of «humanitarian sensibility»32 that was instrumental in the formation of collective consciousnesses, an «inclusive public»33, and of paramount importance in bringing about social change as exemplified in the «agitation for constitutional and humanitarian reform»34. In sum, the theatre in allowing for «theatricalized dissent»35 offered a stage for rehearsing and negotiating social change in Britain while elevating British society as a role-model for the world to follow. Generally speaking, one could argue that there are three dimensions of change that can be identified in most theatre performances, then at least as much as now: change of feeling, change of thinking, and change of action36. Let me briefly outline how these forms of change interlink. The most important and also most effective change to be effected in the theatre is the one resulting from the evocation 2004, p. 110. Despite this ubiquitous spirit of convivial exchange of ideas, one should not forget that «More often than not [...] the potency of the theatre as a political institution was directed in the service of the crown and the established order», thus supporting the status quo rather than endorsing change. Still, considering Georgian theatre in all its variety «from the palaces of the patent houses to the ‘dirty holes’ of the spouting clubs» one gets an idea of the power of theatre in Georgian Britain. G. Russell, “Theatrical Culture,” pp. 111, 102. 30 G. Russell, The Theatres of War, cit., p. 16. As David Worrall makes clear, «the species of drama which evolved in the London East End and Surrey side theatres [...] soon bec[a]me much more influenced by practise within their own sphere of production than by what went on outside». It is in this context that «theatricality was closely allied to plebeian self-fashioning». This is further illustrated in the different responses the portrayal of slavery «provoked [...] in London’s East End and West End playhouses». D. Worrall, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, 1787-1832: The Road to the Stage, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 38-9, 45, 68. Also see D. Worrall, Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship and Romantic Period Subcultures 1773-1832, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 222-4. 31 Ibidem. 32 J. Swindells, Glorious Causes, cit., p. 152, my emphasis. 33 Hadley qtd. in Ivi, p. 171. 34 Ivi, p. 153. This aspect of theatres facilitating social change is outlined by the fact that during the Age of Reform «the repertoire of the patent houses [...] moved closer to that of the illegitimate theatres» of the East End. E.P. Thomson, The Making of the English Working Class, cit., p. 183. 35 Hadley qtd. in Ivi, pp. 170-1. 36 It goes without saying that the three dimensions of change outlined above apply to both actors as well as spectators; that is, the ones ‘acting out’ the assigned roles according to how they seem fit and the ones ‘reacting’ in their own personal manner to what they see enacted on the stage.

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of formerly suppressed feelings. The trajectory of change is one from a general ‘incapacity to feel’ to ‘feeling for somebody’ to ‘feeling with somebody’. Secondary to the change of feeling is the change of thinking, that is, a change of beliefs resulting from a reappraisal of reality through reflection. The final change enacted and exercised on the stage is a change of action, namely from passive spectator to active agent of change. So in contrast to an analysis of the stabilising factors of society where one tends to focus on the dominant ideology justifying and controlling social action and respective feeling, an analysis of possible forms of social change has to concentrate on feelings questioning concepts of reality silently defended in the dominant belief system which limits possibilities of social action. So an analysis of theatre’s influence on social practice has to focus on theatre’s power to move, not only in the sense of making one feel, but taken literally, as in ‘move to action’, to change the dominant way ‘external reality’ is filtered and constructed through ideology, and enable new forms of social practice. So the stance taken in this analysis is that a change of mind needs to be based on a change of sentiments and this is what makes theatre so powerful an institution, as in addition to words uttered there is the important dimension of words (i.e. ideas) enacted allowing for a reunification of mind and body.

3. Aspects of Social Change in Colman’s and Leigh’s Inkle and Yarico Before discussing the two plays it is important to note that while Colman took up and adapted the legend of Inkle and Yarico to exploit the then popular subject of criticising the slave trade «as a moral issue to be tackled within the context of patrician authority and sociability»37, Leigh’s end-of-twentieth-century dramatic recontextualisation 37

D. Worrall, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, 1787-1832, cit., pp. 84-5. Although Worrall here refers to Bellamy’s The Benevolent Planters, his quote is still applicable to Colman’s play, not least since The Benevolent Planters was also first performed at the Colmans’ Haymarket Theatre, «who were tolerant of both the racist language of Inkle and Yarico as well as of the essentially anti-abolitionist stance of The Benevolent Planters». D. Worrall, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, 1787-1832, pp. 93-4. This stance is supported by Peter Thomson’s contention that Colman’s «Inkle and Yarico is no kind of clarion call for abolition, though it might have been seen as mildly supportive of the Committee’s campaign». P. Thomson, The Cambridge Introduction to English Theatre, 1660-1900, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 168. Daniel O’Quinn is more specific in averring

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of Colman’s play reimagines how abolition came about, thus decisively questioning a monologic, monocausal narration of abolition by conflating what is thought to be ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’38. Considering aspects of social change in the two plays one can identify all three forms of change as outlined above: besides allowing for a reappraisal of possible ways of feeling, both plays also attempt a re-examination of present ideology, of established ways of thinking, while also outlining new ways of collective ‘acting’. Let us now consider each of these changes in more detail.

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3.1. New Ways of Feeling [C]iting the statistics of slavery, terrible as they are, is not enough. […] People are not moved by numbers […]. Let a man read that a million people have starved to death in China, and he will say ‘How terrible’, and move on. Show him one starving child, however, and he will move heaven and earth to save it. […] Find me – find the cause – a story […] A true story, with real people. Something out of the ordinary. A story that has the power to move people – move them to action – as bare figures cannot39. that «Colman’s play performs a re-adjustment of the colonial encounter to fit emergent forms of biological state racism and as such plays a crucial mediating role between the constructions of race endemic to England’s mercantile economy and those which come into full hegemonic force in the early nineteenth century». In this respect Colman’s comic opera is regarded to constitute nothing but an «audience-pleasing exculpation of British colonial rule». D. O’Quinn, “Mercantile Deformities: George Colman’s Inkle and Yarico and the Racialization of Class Relations,” «Theatre Journal» 54, 2002, pp. 390, 392. 38 To prevent confusion a short sketch of Leigh’s musical shall be given here. The play is framed around William Wilberforce, the Evangelical MP and leader of the parliamentary struggle for the passing of the Abolition Bill, who presents his own ‘truthful’ version of the story of Inkle and Yarico to Colman during the break of a dress-rehearsal of Colman’s Inkle and Yarico. In this respect, Leigh’s play has a kind of ‘play-within-the-play’ structure where Colman’s theatrical adaptation of the story (which only features at the beginning of the musical) is juxtaposed to Wilberforce’s allegedly ‘true account’. In Wilberforce’s story Inkle sells Yarico to the planter Martin before leaving Barbados for England where, driven by guilt for what he has done to Yarico, he financially supports the Abolition Committee in effecting the abolition of the slave trade. Upon receiving a letter from Emma (his former betrothed) he returns to Barbados to make peace with Yarico, now the leader of a maroon society. After Yarico’s death, Inkle remains in Barbados but sends Wilberforce his personal story which is then used most effectively in the popular and parliamentary fight against the slave trade. 39 Wilberforce instructing Inkle in P. Leigh’s The Curious History of Inkle and Yarico: A Musical Entertainment, performed in Barbados in 1999, pp. 75-6 [copy of text electronically transmitted by the author and page numbers according to print out], hereafter referred to in the text as CHIY and respective page numbers. It is interesting to note that Leigh in this passage seems to be evoking John Ferriar’s argument outlined in the ‘Preface’ to

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Different ways of feeling are outlined in both plays by contrasting marriage for profit and marriage for love. While arranged marriage enhancing personal profit is depicted as accepted norm among the upper classes (Inkle and Narcissa/Emma) – «It was always an understood thing between us that we would be married one day» (CHIY 16) – it is marriage for love that is attributed to the lower classes (Trudge and Wowski/Alice)40. In this respect it is important to note that Inkle and Narcissa/Emma only come to a different understanding of what it means to feel when they are exposed to members of a ‘lower’ social order. Strikingly enough, while in Narcissa/Emma’s case Captain Campley/Harrison, a social upstart, succeeds in evoking ‘forgotten’ feelings in Narcissa/Emma41. Inkle is transformed by a woman of superior social rank (a princess) but different ethnicity, suggesting that only a woman of different colour and ethnic background is capable of making Inkle recover his lost humanity42. In Colman the importance of difference in class and ‘race’ in effecting this change is made clear in Inkle’s and Campley’s respective pleas: Inkle [addressing Yarico]: How wild and beautiful! Sure there is magic in her shape, and she has rivetted me to the place. his 1788 drama The Prince of Angola: «We talk of the destruction of millions, with as little emotion, and as little accuracy of comprehension, as of the distances of the Planets. But when those who hear with Serenity, of depopulated Coasts, and exhausted Nations, are led by tales of domestic misery, to the sources of public evil, their feelings act with no less violence for being kindled by a single spark». See F. Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage, p. 316. Later in Leigh’s play Inkle writes to Wilberforce from Barbados, «I have a story. It is a story of love and devotion, on the one hand; and of the basest ingratitude, the blackest act of betrayal, on the other» (CHIY 91). 40 To avoid confusion it is worth noting that Leigh’s play features different names from Colman’s, substituting Emma for Colman’s Narcissa, Captain Harrison for Colman’s Captain Campley, and Alice for Colman’s Patty; Colman’s Wowski, Yarico’s maid, and Colman’s Sir Christopher do not appear in Leigh’s reworking. 41 As D. O’Quinn has pointed out, Narcissa’s preferring the attractive soldier (Captain Campley) over the merchant (Inkle) «reflects a complex transition in colonial policy as Britain replaces earlier forms of mercantile imperialism with a more militarily active acquisition of territory». D. O’Quinn, “Mercantile Deformities,” p. 392. What is important is that the soldier is British and as such allows for a more controlling grip on power than the merchant. While the soldier stands for a shift toward strong armed nationalism, the merchant represents the anti-nationalist commercial arm of society focussing on what is good for trade (that is, himself as a merchant) rather than the nation. 42 In Colman this obsession with ‘exotic’ ethnic groups is mirrored in Trudge’s relationship with Wowski, for while Inkle rediscovers his humanity through Yarico, Trudge does so through Wowski. What is important, however, is that the social order is kept in place: outside the mother country (including Barbados), the upper classes are never openly intimate with the lower classes, highlighting the nationalist idea that social change, if to be swallowed at all, has to be initiated and grounded within and not outside society.

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Campley [addressing Narcissa]: […] the case stands exactly thus – your intended spouse is all for money; I am all for love. He is a rich rogue; I am a poor honest fellow. He would pocket your fortune; I will take you without a fortune in your pocket43.

In Leigh the awakening to the fact that «our feelings do not obey our reason»44 is more explicitly stated. While Inkle instructing Yarico in English becomes aware that there is a world outside language – «So many words […] But none of them […] Can hope to describe you […] Yarico – none of them […] Can capture you… As you are» (CHIY 34) – Emma conversing with Harrison experiences a sudden clash of heart and mind – «I’ve never felt so confused in my life» (CHIY 18). In both plays this change of feeling results in seeing the world differently, which in Inkle’s case is metaphorically outlined by his leaving the dark ‘cave of ignorance’45. But while Colman’s Inkle is forced to change his set of moral values, Leigh’s voluntarily «Open[s his] heart [and] Let[s] in the light» (CHIY 43). However, in contrast to Emma/Narcissa, Inkle in both plays has to defend his emotional awakening in racist Barbadian society – «remember, young gentleman, you must get her off your hands», as a planter points out when Inkle reaches the island (IY 203) – eventually re-subjecting himself to the dominant social norms by giving up Yarico. In both plays the image of the cave therefore contrasts ‘natural’ feeling and happiness – the reciprocal love uniting human beings – with socially constructed feeling and happiness – the love of money and power: «We Christians, girl, hunt money […] here, ‘tis money which brings us ease, plenty, command, power, […] and, of course, happiness» (IY 224). So it is feelings evoked and visualised in the image of the cave that show that there is more than one way of feeling opening ground for change.

43 G. Colman, “Inkle and Yarico: An Opera, in Three Acts.” English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World. An Inkle and Yarico Reader, Ed. Frank Felsenstein, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1999, pp. 185, 195; hereafter referred to in the text as IY and respective page numbers. 44 Edward Bulwer-Lytton qtd. in J. Swindells, Glorious Causes, cit., p. 164. 45 See IY 204; CHIY 40-3. Here both plays evoke Plato’s ‘allegory of the cave’ outlined in Book VII of The Republic, trans. R. E. Allen, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 227-261.

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3.2. New Ways of Thinking: Renegotiating Dominant Ideology

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Every word we speak, every thought that we have, originates and derives its meaning within the echoing labyrinths of inherited ideas, cultural allusions, moral and emotional commitments we have explored in the course of our lives, and which we still inhabit46.

Social change also presupposes new ways of thinking, new «congruent beliefs and values» that will constitute an «indispensable element in the continuity of the [new] social order»47 outlining what is acceptable social practice and what is not. Colman directly addresses the importance of ideology for social conduct in supplanting the (past) values of Inkle’s father with those (present) of Sir Christopher: «O curse such principles! Principles, which destroy all confidence between man and man – Principles which none but a rogue could instil, and none but a rogue cold imbibe» (IY 228). Interestingly enough, in supporting Narcissa’s cunningly arranged marriage to Captain Campley, Sir Christopher indirectly also criticises his own former dogmatic endorsement of the former arranged marriage48: «Thank you, thank you for cheating an old fellow into giving his daughter to a lad of spirit, when he was going to throw her away upon one, in whose breast the mean passion of avarice smothers the smallest spark of affection or humanity» (IY 227). While dealing with the marriage motif in a way not dissimilar from his source-text, Leigh also obviously undermines the beliefs of European superiority and African inferiority, as underlying the original text. By having African slaves fight for their own spiritual and physical freedom, revolt against their subordination, and form a maroon society in the mountains of Barbados, Leigh effectively breaks up the monolithic and monocausal idea of abolition constituting a benevolent and humanitarian act of superior British morality. In depicting Joseph – an African character who does not feature in the source play – and Yarico as rebellious slaves – «They are the ringleaders. Especially her. White women use her name to frighten their children» (CHIY 80) – Leigh revalorises the influence slaves had on abolition. Furthermore,

46

T. Noble, Social Theory and Social Change, cit., p. 225. Ivi, 213. 48 Talking to Medium earlier in the play Sir Christopher defends his stance, «have not I had this in view ever since they were children? I must and will have it so, I tell you» (IY 205). 47

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in contrasting Colman’s and Wilberforce’s accounts of the past, Leigh adds a new interpretive dimension. The conflation of what seems to be fact and fiction – as Colman avers, «I worked with what I had to hand […] The bare bones of the story. I had to invent much of it […] You came here intrigued by my story. Now I’m intrigued by yours. I’d dearly love to hear the truth of it» (CHIY 7) – highlights that both narratives, despite their different nature, are only important in so far as they are useful in bringing about a desired end. In Wilberforce’s case this is the end of the slave trade and in Colman’s the success of his play. This aspect clearly highlights the metatheatrical dimension of Leigh’s reworking since in juxtaposing Wilberforce’s ‘real’ account to Colman’s ‘invented’ version the distinction between reality and fiction is blurred and both version’s competitive underlying motive of (re)shaping public opinion foregrounded. As Colman points out, «I’ll warrant this piece will do more good for the anti-slavery cause than any number of pamphlets and broadsheets. […] This opera […] will do good business for both of us» (CHIY 6, 92).

3.3. New Ways of ‘Acting’: A Question of Virtue and Necessity [A] conscience collective [denotes] a sense of belonging within a community of similar people. The members of such a society share the same beliefs and attitudes, the same ways of doing things and the same moral values. They identify with their community and are likely to speak of ‘what we think’, ‘what we always say’ or ‘how we do things’49.

To effect social change action must be united and based on a common identity, a strong conscience collective, and new forms of ‘acting’ must be distinguishable from former social practice. In both plays desired change is brought about by combining virtue and necessity in a mutually reinforcing way. In Colman’s play Narcissa and Patty coordinate their actions to outwit Sir Christopher. As Patty points out, «[m]y business is to prevent young sobersides, young Inkle, from appearing, to interrupt the ceremony» (IY 211). In a similar way Trudge questions Inkle’s design of selling Yarico, openly taking sides: «I have lived with you a long while; I’ve half a year’s wages too due the 25th ult. for dressing your hair, and scribbling your parchments; but take my scribbling; take my frizzing; take my wages; and I, and Wows, will 49

T. Noble, Social Theory and Social Change, cit., p. 147.

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take ourselves off together – she saved my life, and rot me, if any thing but death shall part us» (IY 223). In siding with Yarico he in a way also summons the audience in the fight against established social practice and its justification of slavery and thus, contrary to Inkle, resists the planters’ racist reasoning attempting to lure Inkle into selling Yarico: «what return can the wench wish more than taking her from a wild, idle, savage people, and providing for her, here, with reputable hard work, in a genteel, polished, tender, Christian country?» (IY 202) Leigh dedicates more space to the subaltern voicing critique and uniting in action as outlined in the short exchange between Trudge (servant) and Joseph (slave) – «You don’t need to call me ‘sir’, Joseph. […] It makes me nervous» (CHIY 13). In a like manner a strong bond is forged between Joseph and the rest of the slaves on Martin’s plantation: «When I first came here, none of the other slaves would talk to me. I wasn’t one of them. […] But the other day […] they let me see the truth. They sang to me. There’s a power there. A hunger. And there are so many of them… of us. All it would take is a leader» (CHIY 48). Having found his new identity – «The white man sees only the skin. And the black man sees only the lace» (CHIY 48) – Joseph, who later renames himself Matumi, no longer sees himself exclusively as an individual but also as part of a social collective whose characteristics are mirrored in the image of the sugar-cane – «Sugar-cane is precious / Sugar-cane grows free / Sugar-cane is sweet for some / But bitter toil for me. […] Sugar-cane grows to the sky / Roots are strong and thick / When you cut the sugar-cane / At least you cut it quick» (CHIY 69).50 In addition to picturing slaves and servants uniting in their action Leigh also sketches collective action in the brief episodes portraying parliamentary debates. While antiabolitionists unite in song – «Rule, Britannia! / Britannia rule the waves / Britons ever, ever, ever / Shall keep slaves» (CHIY 72)51 – abolitionists join forces in Wilberforce’s defence of honour and grace – «Never, never will we desist until we extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, […] a disgrace and dishonour to this country» (CHIY 70). 50

While Leigh depicts Joseph as a revolting slave he still paints a picture of Joseph as not demanding, but like a child ‘asking’ for his identity, «tuggin’ on your sleeve» (CHIY 70). 51 Here the change of emphasis from the original of James Thomson’s Alfred: A Masque (1740), «Britons never shall be slaves» to an avowal that «Britons ever shall keep slaves» is worth noting as it foregrounds the new nationalist and imperial paradigm outlined by O’Quinn. See above, note 41. For a different analysis of Thomson’s song and its use in theatrical representations of slavery, see F. Dellarosa, Slavery on Stage, cit., pp. 56-57.

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3.4. Authoritarian/Elitist vs. Democratic/Popular Change

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The radical breakthrough in the conceptualisation of humanity’s place in the world that was the Enlightenment meshed with a new emphasis on the cultivation of feeling and sensibility; on fostering an empathetic an imaginative response to suffering, and on each individual’s moral duty to alleviate it 52.

Having discussed how the different dimensions of change are depicted in both plays we now have to take a look at how this desired social change is brought about. In Colman’s case, the prologue of the play hints at the ‘parental hand’ that is thought necessary in bringing about change: «not in spleen or anger done, an anxious parent’s hand corrects a son» (IY 173). It hardly needs to be emphasised that in having Sir Christopher force Inkle to renounce his former beliefs, Colman does not criticise but defends contemporary social order as change is ordered from above by the wise aristocrat, who, in asides, openly commands the audience to follow his reasoning53. Similarly, in alluding to his emotional state at the end of the play – «What the plague’s the matter with my eyes» (IY 229) – Sir Christopher not only orders the audience to follow suit54 but his emotional outburst also gives further sanction to his authoritarian reform of Inkle and reward of Yarico, as tears, which are generally perceived as natural signs of true, that is, natural emotion, also raise his authority to the realm of the natural. Joan Hamilton observes how this ordered and sentimental mode of reform «allowed [the] audience to feel pity but it did not challenge prevailing ideas or beliefs»55. At the end of the play «audiences can leave feeling good about themselves because they have joined with the chorus of voices […] who have called Inkle ‘Liar! Cheat! Rogue! Imposter!’»56. Forgotten is Sir Christopher’s earlier con52 H. Waters, Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representation of Slavery and the Black Character, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 33, my emphasis. 53 This also reflects Colman’s general stance on the legitimacy of the prevailing social order, as Barry Sutcliffe notes: for Colman «any challenge to legitimacy, either in theatre or in any other aspect of life, would simply have been inconceivable». B. Sutcliffe qtd. in J. Hamilton, “Inkle and Yarico and the Discourse of Slavery,” «Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research» 9, 1994/1, p. 18. 54 Brycchan Carey calls this ‘the quintessential sentimental moment,’ that is, when the villain is transformed into a better human being and «one or more [...] characters begin to weep» indicating to the audience to follow the lead and begin to weep as well. B. Carey, British Abolitionism, cit., p. 18. 55 J. Hamilton, “Inkle and Yarico,” cit., p. 19. 56 Ivi, p. 28.

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descending stance volunteering to buy Yarico as a slave for Narcissa, since «she’s a delicate girl, above the common run, and none of your thick-lipped, flat-nosed, squabby, dumpling dowdies» (IY 221)57. Just as Patty’s comment concluding the play uneasily recognises both the potential and danger of inter-ethnic marriages in fostering the creation of a new norm that transcends social divides, Sir Christopher’s authoritarian control at the end of the play is not curbed but rather extended now, not only ordering people when and where, but also how to feel. So the risk Colman’s play runs is what Wendy Rose calls the «tourism of the soul» and Minnie Bruce Pratt refers to as «cultural impersonation», namely «borrowing the identity of the other to avoid guilt or pain»58. In this sense the ruling elite simply co-opts the criticism it is confronted with thus effectively stealing the opposing party’s thunder and ensuring the maintenance of the status quo disguised in a different dress; a kind of social change O’Quinn calls «a modulation from one form of [paternal social] imperialism to another»59. Where in Colman’s play Inkle’s change can easily be attributed to the paternal authority of Sir Christopher, Leigh’s end-of-twentiethcentury reworking focuses on Yarico and the effect her presence has on others. As Emma concedes, «she’s wrought a change in you that was beyond my powers. She must be an extraordinary woman. […] When you see her, tell her… tell her that I admire her» (CHIY 59, 84). Or as the planter Martin, having fallen victim to «a slavery […] of the feelings, of the spirit, of the senses» (CHIY 83) only reluctantly admits, «I have tried to break away / But with every passing day / The more you draw me further in» (CHIY 82). In focussing on how Yarico’s presence affects the life of characters and thereby challenges established social conduct – Inkle flees from Barbados emotionally crippled and Martin drowns his disconcerting emotions in alcohol – Leigh manages to offer a relevant and devastating critique of the slave system, as no one can maintain his/her sanity and self-respect in a debased society living on the exploitation of slave labour. However, where the play is 57 One should not forget that in ‘manumitting’ Yarico and treating her like a daughter, Sir Christopher’s «act of sentimental benevolence [...] cannot but elicit sentimental response in the former slave». So in addition to force-feeding the ‘new’ moral code down Inkle’s throat, Yarico is depicted as eagerly submitting to Sir Christopher as a new master substituting a ‘freed’-slave’s voluntary servitude based on gratitude for her former violent enslavement. 58 Wendy Rose and Minnie Bruce Pratt, qtd. in F. Nussbaum, “The Politics of Difference,” «Eighteenth-Century Studies» 23, 1990/4, p. 380. 59 D. O’Quinn, “Mercantile Deformities,” cit., p. 396.

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less convincing is in forcing the role of benevolent African on a rebellious slave60. By turning Joseph/Matumi into an Equiano-like figure, happily jettisoning his gained freedom in order to assist Wilberforce as «a most eloquent voice on behalf of the cause» (CHIY 94), after he has cuttingly attacked the present social order – «I am a runaway slave. A criminal. But at least I am a free criminal» (CHIY 92) – Leigh compromises the play’s power of radically retelling the abolition myth. Having the free-spirited Joseph/Matumi cut himself back in order to fit into an ‘alternative’ conservative British culture severely dampens the radical potential of the play, not least since depicting a foreigneducated slave connecting himself to the ‘mother country’ conjures up by contrast the image of Toussaint L’Ouverture silently rotting away in a French dungeon. Remembering C. L. R. James’s comment in The Black Jacobins foreshadowing Toussaint’s fate – «[his] devotion [to the French Republic] will in the end lead him to an untimely and cruel death»61 – Joseph/Matumi’s future fate as lackey of an exploitative colonial power does not look very promising. What is more, the educated former African prince and ex-slave Joseph/Matumi’s free submission to a new ‘master’ in the British metropole also disregards and downplays the predicament many freed slaves found themselves in after the end of the apprenticeship period in 1838 when the high hopes in the freed slaves’ eternal gratefulness for their emancipation were disappointed and a ‘new’ era of ‘scientific’ racism saw the light of day62.

4. Conclusion: An Exogenous-Endogenous Change In summary, both Colman’s version of Inkle and Yarico and Leigh’s reworking present an interesting blend of exogenous and endogenous change. Yarico, the stranger to European colonial culture, who evokes 60

Although one could argue that this refashioning of the rebellious slave reflects Wilberforce’s conservative anti-rebellious political attitude, it is worth noting the Joseph/Matumi’s character is not restricted to Wilberforce’s narrative as such. Thus, in appearing in Colman’s playhouse towards the end of the play, Joseph/Matumi effectively links the two narrative strands of Leigh’s play reuniting the ‘fictional’ moment of Wilberforce’s account with the ‘real’ moment of Colman’s dress rehearsal. 61 C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nd ed., New York; Vintage, 1989, p. 213 62 See J. N. Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Culture, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992, pp. 60-2.

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non-rational, emotional feelings in Inkle and the other characters of the play, constitutes an exogenous factor which society has to adjust to. So the central conflict is between Inkle, representing Europe’s ‘powerful mind’, and Yarico, embodying the other’s ‘powerful emotions’. Furthermore, both plays illustrate how this initially exogenous and foreign influence is soon incorporated into new local codes of feeling, thinking and ‘acting’, into what Max Weber calls «instrumentally and value rational action», as this new form of conduct is soon perceived as «the right thing to do, regardless of the consequences»63. In this respect one could say that Yarico generates an ‘emotional revalorisation of rational values’ that is then instrumentalised, as in both plays the foreign influence triggers emotions that result in ‘new’ rational ideas, a ‘new’ ideology of social conduct. Nevertheless, Colman’s eighteenth-century play in its depiction of social relations contesting for hegemonic ‘rule’ does not succeed in questioning the status quo, as ideas of reform are silently co-opted by the dominant social power (Sir Christopher) so as not to give room to speculation regarding the fading of its control over society. Leigh uses a different approach by supplanting the father-like figure of the benevolent governor with the contesting and competing Members of Parliament. In preferring Parliament to the Monarch and his lackeys, Leigh is aware of the fact that social change has to be considered ‘necessary’ at all levels of society. So the kind of change he envisions is slow, and implies convincing one’s opponents of the justness (not mere necessity) of one’s actions. Whereas Colman’s comic rendering of the tale addresses contemporary issues such as the slave trade, women’s rights, and the economic restructuring of society in a typically patriarchal-authoritarian fashion, Leigh opens up Colman’s confined approach by allowing (African) slaves and women to speak ‘for themselves’ and by historically contextualising the process of writing, rehearsing and performing Colman’s play64. As Nick Fraser makes clear, «what people remember in films are not facts, but emotions. Good films are graphs of contemporary sensibility»65. In this sense, 63

T. Noble, Social Theory and Social Change, cit., p. 120. The theme of silencing and ‘unsilencing’ has been central to the story since Steele’s version of 1711 in which Arietta defends women against accusations of fickleness. See F. Felsenstein, English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World, An Inkle and Yarico Reader, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1999, pp. 82-88. 65 N. Fraser, “A Change of Heart Starts in the Dark,” «The Guardian Weekly», 9 May 2008, p. 33. 64

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Colman’s and Leigh’s plays have great potential in outlining different ways of feeling, thinking and ‘acting’; that the extent of change envisioned differs so greatly says more about their different periods of production than their inherent power in assisting the world in slowly «mak[ing] its way out of the cave» (CHIY 97).

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Works cited Althusser L., 2008, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, On Ideology, London and New York: Verso, pp. 1-60. Carey B., 2005, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760-1807, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Clarkson T., 1808, History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols, London: Taylor & Co. Colman G., 1999, “Inkle and Yarico: An Opera, in Three Acts”, English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World, An Inkle and Yarico Reader, ed. F. Felsenstein, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, pp. 172-233. Davies B., 1976, Social Control and Education: Contemporary Sociology of the School, London: Methuen. Dellarosa F., 2009, Slavery on Stage: Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830s, with an Anthology of Texts, Bari: Edizioni dal Sud. Duncan H. D., 1984, “Introduction”, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 3rd ed, Kenneth Burke, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. xii-xliv. Eagleton T., 2002, Marxism and Literary Criticism, London and New York: Routledge. Felsenstein F., 1999, English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World, An Inkle and Yarico Reader, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press. Fraser N., 2008, “A Change of Heart Starts in the Dark”, «The Guardian Weekly» 9 May 2008, pp. 32-33. Freeden M., 2003, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Giles J. and T. Middleton, 1999, Studying Culture: A Practical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell. Gratus J., 1973, The Great White Lie: Slavery, Emancipation and Changing Racial Attitudes, London: Hutchinson. Hamilton J., 1994, “Inkle and Yarico and the Discourse of Slavery”, «Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research» 9, 1994/1, pp. 17-33.

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Hallam E. and B. V. Street, 2000, “Introduction: Cultural Encounters – Representing ‘Otherness’”, Cultural Encounters: Representing ‘Otherness’, Eds. Elizabeth Hallam and Brian V. Street, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1-10. Hulme P., 1986, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 14921797, London and New York: Methuen. Hunt L., 2007, Inventing Human Rights: A History, New York and London: Norton. Inchbald Mrs., 1808, The British Theatre, vol. 20, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster Row. James C. L. R., 1989, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nd ed., New York; Vintage. Leigh P., 1999, The Curious History of Inkle and Yarico: A Musical Entertainment [copy of text electronically transmitted by the author]. Klopper D., 1987, “Ideology and the Study of South African English Poetry”, «JLS/TLW» 3, 1987/4, pp. 76-93. Noble T., 2000, Social Theory and Social Change, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. Nussbaum F., 1990, “The Politics of Difference”, «Eighteenth-Century Studies» 23, 1990/4, pp. 375-386. O’Quinn D., 2002, “Mercantile Deformities: George Colman’s Inkle and Yarico and the Racialization of Class Relations”, «Theatre Journal» 54, pp. 389-409. Pieterse J. N., 1992, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Culture, New Haven: Yale University Press. Plato, 2006, The Republic, trans. R. E. Allen, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Russell G., 1995, The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics, and Society, 17931815, Oxford: Claredon Press. Russell G., 2004, “Theatrical Culture,” The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740-1830, eds. Thomas Keymer and Jon Mee, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 100-118. Russell G. and C. Tuite, 2002, Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture in Britain, 1770-1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swindells J., 2001, Glorious Causes. The Grand Theatre of Political Change, 1789 to 1833, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tawney R. H., 2003, “Foreword,” The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber, Trans. T. Parsons, Mineola, NY: Dover, pp. 1-11. Thompson E. P., 1966, The Making of the English Working Class, NewYork: Vintage. Thomson P., 2006, The Cambridge Introduction to English Theatre, 1660-1900, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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Quayson A., 2000, Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice and Process?, Oxford: Polity Press. Waters H., 2007, Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representation of Slavery and the Black Character, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber M. 2003, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Trans. T. Parsons, Mineola, NY: Dover. Williams R., 1983, Culture and Society: 1780-1950, New York: Columbia University Press. Worrall D., 2006, Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship and Romantic Period Subcultures 1773-1832, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Worrall D., 2007, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, 1787-1832: The Road to the Stage, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Worrall D., 2007, Harlequin Empire: Race, Ethnicity and the Drama of the Popular Enlightenment, London: Pickering & Chatto.

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AFTERWORD VESSELS

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Annamaria Sportelli Recent scholarship has highlighted how the prevailing representations of the «cause and consequences of the legal abolition of the slave trade and slavery» tend to treat a complex phenomenon as single events, while the emerging picture of abolition is still too often viewed «as resulting from the morality and magnanimity of the British»1. Taking up the contention, that complex history is observed here within an itinerary of possible imagined communities, whose discursive articulations testify to their derivative nature, while inscribing the migratory subject among the transplantable community, and proposing as necessary «to look again at the paradoxes embedded in national histories that have first enslaved and then liberated persons of African descent, and continue to discriminate against them at home and abroad»2, denying them «access to material resources, political power, social equity or social honour»3. As an appropriate epitome of the controversial attitudes coexisting within the abolitionist stance, S.T. Coleridge’s lecture “On the Slave Trade”, delivered in June 1795 at the Assembly Coffee-house, Bristol, will be analysed in relation to the five points constituting the core of the objections to the abolition of the slave trade «pressed on the public even to satiety»4. Thomas Clarkson’s Es1 K. Nimako, S. Small, “Collective Memory of Slavery in Great Britain and the Netherlands”. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 14 August 2010, p. 2. Online. http://africam.berkeley.edu/events/NIMAKO-SMALL.pdf 2 C. Kaplan, “Introduction”, in Imagining Transatlantic Slavery, C. Kaplan and J. R. Oldfield eds., Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 1. 3 K. Nimako, S. Small, “Collective Memory of Slavery in Great Britain and the Netherlands”, cit., p. 2. 4 S. T. Coleridge, Lecture “On the Slave Trade”, in P. Kitson ed., Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, London: Pickering & Chatto,

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say on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1788), which will also be examined in this paper, as it offers an exemplification of how abolitionist writing tackled the site where contradictions emerged most blatantly, with its graphic representation of life on board the slave ship. No place related to transatlantic slavery indeed, whether material or symbolic, is charged with such pathos, as a most tragic locus of past suffering, as well as a haunting metaphor for appalling journeys present.

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1. Nations and communities5 In his redefinition of terms such as nation, nationality and nationness as cultural artefacts which were created towards the end of the eighteenth century as the «spontaneous distillation of a complex crossing of discrete historical forces», Benedict Anderson attributes to them a «modular» quality which makes them «capable of being transplanted […] to a great variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological constellations»6. The breaking of the classical communities originated modern nations, the explosion of the huge realms cancelled the sacred language and gave rise to closed defined territories and to vernacular languages, initially in need of the ideal-ideological apparatus which makes of a nation, a nation-state. One of the outcomes of Anderson’s successful idea of a community as a modular entity historically justifies the process of de-territorialization, that phenomenon comparable to medieval spontaneous migrations as well as to the modern forced wandering across borders, territories, languages, which then evolves to become physical as well as mental, pertaining to space as well as to time and the self. From Anderson’s perspective, relating territories 1999, p. 213. The anthology reproduces the print edition of the talk, that appeared in «The Watchman» for March 1796, in a shorter form and with substantial variations with respect to the talk. The two versions are included in volume I (Lectures 1795 on Politics and Religion, ed. L. Patton and P. Mann, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971, pp. 231-52) and II (The Watchman, ed. L. Patton, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971, pp. 130-140) of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6 vols., ed. K. Coburn, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. 5 This part of the present article relies on my essay “From the Nation State to the Nation People: Politics and Language Politics”, in A. Sportelli, S. Jones eds., Re-Imagining Communities: The European Union and the Public Sphere, Bari: B. A. Graphis, 2008, pp. IX-XXVII. 6 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities, London: Verso, 1983, p. 4.

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and languages, «‘uncivilized’ vernaculars» characterized modern communities and «began to function politically as the Atlantic Ocean had earlier done: to ‘separate’ subjected national communities off from ancient dynastic realms»7. The attempt here is to convert the implied diegetic perspective adopted by Anderson into a stadial development of the ‘imagined community’, where subjects are constructed in their identities along parallel lines and bi-univocal relations through politics, on the one hand, and language politics and discursive formations, on the other. As «identities are constituted within, nor outside representation», discourse and difference, ‘identity’ is the temporary meeting point, the point of suture, between particular discourses on particular subjects, and the processes which produce subjectivities and «which construct us as subjects which can be ‘spoken’»8. The survey proposed, then, draws an itinerary traceable along a path which gradually bends to seal a point of intersection, which leaves the self trapped in a «disorder of identity»9. The circle obtained marks a passage which is also a coincidentia: from religious communities to the global community and from the sacred silent language to the “monolingualism of the other”. That occurs through a middle passage which conjures up an erratic re-centring of meaning as well as a scattered and pervasive intersubjectivity. From this perspective, the following track is proposed for further investigation: 1.The classical community, which held together vast territories through the sacred language – the sacred silent languages which were the media through which the great global communities of the past were imagined. This language was characterised by the non-arbitrariness of the sign, that is, by the epistemological equivalence between subject and object. 2.The national community, whose correlative is the people, born of an act of transcendence such as a covenant or a ‘contract social’, is a constructed form of closure into a territorial unit which responds to a politics of location, that functions because of its capacity to exclude,

7

Ivi, p. 196. S. Hall, “Who needs ‘identity’?”(1996), in S. Hall, P. du Gay eds., Questions of Cultural Identity, London: SAGE Publications, 2002, p. 4. 9 J. Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, p. 14. 8

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to leave out, to render abjected10. Its language is the vernacular – the national language – originated by the fragmentation and territorialization of the sacred language. In Bhabha’s words, «the narrative of the nation can only begin […] once the notion of the arbitrariness of the sign fissures the sacral ontology of the medieval world»11. 3.The transplantable community, which is pervasive and de-territorialized, migratory and unhomely, mobile and transatlantic12. A swarming multitude excluded from transcendence, the abjected of the national community, caught up in the interplay of desires and interdictions. They «speak their own speech with a distinctive pronunciation, lexicon, and grammar made up of slang, jargon and pidgin»13. 4. The global community, whose correlative is the nation-people. Born of pure immanence, it marks the end of boundaries and territories which regulated the power relation between nations as well as the end of the ‘garrison mentality’, end of the outside enemy – although sometimes conflict returns as the ‘just war’ or ethnic cleansing, ultimate figure of modernity. The trope of the conflict as active division is internalised and rhetorically constructed within a subject that is caught by the desire to recover a ‘lost’ language of origin and the ambition to master the language of the other. The community conventionally identified here as ‘transplantable’, appears crucial in its manifold perspectives of possible socio-politicaldiscursive formations as not only does it encompass its loss of territory, language, identity and of the ‘total culture’, but it also pre-figures the construction of a new subject, a subject repository of an ‘unthinkable’ and ‘unimaginable’ community, the one represented by those migrants of modern times who – in T. S. Eliot’s words, surprisingly insightful to us – «have transplanted themselves according to some social, religious, economic or political determination, or some peculiar mixture of these»14.

10

S. Hall, “Who needs ‘identity’?”, cit., p. 6. H. Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation”, in Nation and Narration, H. Bhabha ed., London: Routledge, 1990, p. 308. 12 As outlined by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Boston, MA.: Beacon Press, 2000. 13 Ivi, p. 153. 14 T. S. Eliot, Notes towards the Definition of Culture, London: Faber & Faber, 1949, p. 64. 11

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2. On the Slave Trade Modernity had already experienced, however, the cruellest form of migration, that forced migration which infamously represents the quintessential form of the capitalist exploitation of human labour. Dating back to the last half of the seventeenth century, British dominance of the trade relied on the forced transportation of human beings, whose emblem became the vessel – the machine of empire and the prototype of factory – where large numbers of men and women were organised «under slavish, hierarchical discipline in which human will was subordinated to mechanical equipment»15. Dawning European imperialism brought heterogeneous masses of individuals together. Speakers of different languages, as a testimony of 1689 reports, «find they cannot act joyntly, when they are not in a Capacity of Consulting with one another, and this they cannot doe, in soe farr as they understand not one another»16. In order to communicate, then, they had to develop a language of their own, which was a combination of nautical English, Mediterranean dialects, cant talks of the ‘underworld’ and West African grammatical construction17. This combination produced creole, the language of the oppressed that became in the tumultuous years of the slave trade the essential language of the Atlantic. From the general climate of radicalism and reaction of the 1790s, an interestingly double and antagonistic discourse on slavery and abolition emerged. S.T. Coleridge’s lecture “On the Slave Trade” may serve here as a synecdoche of the amount of opposite opinions involving politics, economics, religion, science, anthropology and humanitarianism. Coleridge’s stance towards the Abolition debate underwent a shift over time: from the years coinciding with the impact of the French Revolution on British public opinion and the egalitarian sensibility it promoted, to the more complex and contradictory periods of the poet’s more mature years, when a more definite conservatism replaced the previous attitude. Delivered on June 16, 1795 at the Assembly Coffee-house, Bristol, the lecture promoted abolition by the dual strategy of legal restriction and economic boycott while reassuring the audience that the author «will not mangle their feelings […] by 15 16 17

P. Linebaugh, M. Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra, cit., p. 150. Richard Simson, quoted in ivi, p. 152. Ivi, p. 153.

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detailing enormities, which the gloomy Imagination of Dante would scarcely have dared attribute to the inhabitants of Hell»18. Opening up on a double interrogation, the answer to which is unique and incontrovertible, the lecture enacts from the beginning a rhetorical organization founded on the interaction with the audience, as it shows the features of an oral presentation: Whence arise our Miseries? Whence arise our Vices? From imaginary Wants. No man is wicked without temptation, no man is wretched without a cause. […] What Nature demands, the will supply, asking for it that portion only of Toil, which would otherwise have been necessary as Exercise. But Providence, which has distinguished Man from the Lower Orders of Being by the progressiveness of his nature, forbids him to be contented. It has given us the restless faculty of Imagination. (211)

Providence makes perfectibility, with its restless workings, the quality which distinguishes man from lower beings, indeed it is the very trait of «Man, a vicious and discontented Animal», whose perpetual uneasiness urges him «to develope the powers of the Creator». Lines 206-225 (with the omission of line 223) from his Religious Musings are quoted here by the author to highlight «all inventive Arts that nurse the Soul/To forms of Beauty; and by sensual wants/unsensualize the mind, which in the Means/ Learns to forget the grossness of the End”, to conclude that «From Avarice thus, from Luxury, and War/Sprang heavenly Science, and from Science Freedom»19. Composed between 1794 and 1797, Religious Musings may be considered «a repository of his beliefs and cherished opinions»20 and was often quoted, or referred to, by Coleridge in the period when he was working on it. Among the evils deriving from imaginary wants, the most dreadful exemplification is the slave trade, the inhuman traffic which is immediately identified as a bargain: unnecessary articles, «idle superfluities» against the work of men in captivity, an «enormity» which has been perpetrated with «impunity»:

18

“On the Slave Trade”, cit., p. 212. Further references will be given in the text. The quotation form Religious Musings is only present in the print version for «The Watchman». 20 The Collected Works of S.T. Coleridge, Poetical Works, Vol. I, Part 1, edited by J.C.C. Mays, Princeton University Press 2001, p. 173. For a reconstruction of Coleridge’s sources for his discussion of Imagination at this stage, see H. Thomas, Romanticism and Slave Narratives: Transatlantic Testimonies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 89-95. 19

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We receive from the West India Islands Sugars, Rum, Cotton, Logwood, Cocoa, Pimento, Ginger, Indigo, Mahogany, and Conserves. Not one of these articles are necessary […] and not one of them is at present attainable by the poor and laboring part of Society. In return we export vast quantities of necessary tools, Raiment, and defensive Weapons, with great stores of Provision. So that in this Trade as in most others the Poor are employed with unceasing toil first to raise, and then to send away the comforts, which they themselves absolutely want, in order to procure idle superfluities for their Masters (p. 212).

The explicit reference to the inadequate terms of the exchange and the condemnation of the evils deriving from imaginary wants bring to the fore Coleridge’s debt, among others, to Thomas Clarkson’s Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, as does his final appeal to those who, caught by imaginary needs, still profess themselves as Christians, and are instead comparable to slave traders, the «assassins» who mingle food «with the blood of the Murdered». (218) This trenchant critique of burgeoning consumerism21 is shown to be Coleridge’s crucial argumentation against all those «Facts [which] have been pressed on the Public even to satiety» (213), that is the objections to the «Abolition of this Commerce», reduced by the writer to five points: First, that the Abolition would be useless, since though we should not carry it on, other nations would. II That the Africans are better treated and more happy in the Plantation than in their native Country. III That the Revenue would be greatly injured. IV That the Right of Property would be invaded. V That this is not a fit opportunity. (213)

As to the response to the first claim, the complex material at hand shows its historical topicality when Coleridge refers to the argument «adduced by the French Planters» of St. Domingue and addressed to the French Legislature, that is, that, in case of abolition, «the profits which may result from [the slave trade] to the French commerce should be transfered [sic] to foreigners». Facts would indicate otherwise: the slave revolt which had been going on since 1791, and whose leader Toussaint L’Ouverture became an icon for Romantic poets, ended with the proclamation of the Republic of Haiti in 1804. Coleridge maintains that humanity cannot rely on axioms such as «the 21

See J. Brewer, N. McKendrick, J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England, London: Europa Publications, 1982.

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universal depravity of Mankind» to justify the sleep of its conscience: to end any evil, «[s]omebody must begin» (213) As to the second claim, Coleridge deconstructs the anti-abolitionist argument by ironically summoning all the agents of the trade on both sides of the Atlantic («Slave merchants, slaveholders, and slave-drivers together with the manufacturers of neck-collars and thumb-screws», 214), to bear testimony of the life conditions of the enslaved. The passage singles out Coleridge’s full awareness both of the economic dynamics underlying the slavery business, and of the ethical and logical limits of the proposition. On the other hand, to confirm his argument, Coleridge offers as evidence the fact that slaves multiply in their native country and «do not multiply in the West-India Island; for if they did, the slave-trade would have been abolished long ago by its inutility» (214). He backs up his argumentation through the narration of the life of Africans in their native country. From Coleridge’s purely romantic perspective, they are «situated beyond the contagion of European vice […] innocent and happy , [t]he peaceful inhabitants of a fertile soil [who] cultivate their fields in common, and reap the crop as the common property of all». They are endowed with acuteness of intellect «which the Mechanic whom the division of labor condemns to one simple operation is precluded from attaining» (214). Incidentally, one cannot help highlighting Coleridge’s attention on the dehumanization implied in the working conditions of the labour classes and his familiarity with the recent conceptualization of the idea itself of the division of labor22. The third argument against abolition – that «the Revenue would be injured» – revolves around the principle that «the Revenue must be always in proportion to the wealth of the nation» and that there is evidence of the fact that «the West-India trade is more often a losing than a winning trade» a trade which is the grave of «our seamen». (215) In his answers for IV and V – that «the Right of Property would be injured» and «that it is not a fit opportunity» – Coleridge shows a more cautious attitude towards the assumed rights of slavers23. The thorny question of the supposed violation of the right of property which would be enacted if the law had passed is declared as non-exist22 Helen Thomas goes as far as to suggest that the lecture presents «a shift in focus away from the plight of the African victims», by relocating «the traumatic experience of slavery onto the hardships suffered by the locals». Romanticism and Slave Narratives, cit., p. 92. 23 See C. Sonoi, “Coleridge and the Slave Trade”, The Coleridge Bulletin, New Series 27 (Summer 2006), p. 31.

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ent, as emancipation is not contemplated in «Mr. Wilberforce’s bill». However, despite this cautiousness about the interests involved, he tackles the deepest core of the slave-master relation: that which depicts the owner «forcing men to work for him […] forcing men to leave their friends and their country, and live slaves in a climate so unwholesome or beneath a usage so unnatural, that contrary to universal law of life they diminish» (215). The argument implicitly reinforces his point for II. This is the proposition where he interrogates the planters as those who «can possess a right to commit actual and virtual murder […] to shorten and prevent existence», those whose behaviour is labelled as tyranny, through an accurate rhetorical organization of the discourse, which relies on accumulation – of rhetorical questions, assertions, increasingly gloomy details. Significantly, in proposition for V, Coleridge analyses all the «cosmetics» with which «our parliamentary orators have endeavoured to conceal the deformities» of the human commerce, whose «enormities» arose a debate in 1786 and as a consequence in the following years «petitions poured into parliament from various parts of the kingdom, requesting it’s abolition». And yet these enormities in favour of the slave trade «at which a Caligula might have turned pale», were authorized by English laws (216). With his mounting rhetorical argumentation Coleridge gets to the identification of the acting cause of the slave trade, «the consumption of it’s product» and of «kidnappers and assassins». Significantly, guilt is not simply ascribed to the trade’s most obvious agents, i.e. the «brutalized hearts» of the slave captains and slaveholders, but to the consumers, thus involving the potential audience in a collective charge of complicity. The final paragraph of the lecture significantly lingers on one of the most telling cultural issues of the period, the difference between a «false and bastard sensibility» which suggests that the hypocrite many «remove those evils and those evils alone, which by hideous spectacle or clamorous outcry are present to their senses and disturb their selfish enjoyments» (218) and «benevolence», which impels to action and is accompanied by self-denial. The first case, the most common, is that shown by the «fine lady», whose «nerves are not shattered» by the tortured Africans’ shrieks, while she «lips a beverage sweetened with human blood, even if she is weeping over the refined sorrows of Werter or Clementina. Sensibility is not Benevolence» (219). A variety of aspects are involved here, and the ironic reference to sterile Sensibility – i.e., a purely aesthetic feeling, deprived of human authenticity – runs parallel to the representation of the lady’s sipping of her sweetened

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tea, a seemingly innocent act which turns sinister once the conceptual overlapping of blood and sugar is conjured up24.

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In 1808, Coleridge reviewed Thomas Clarkson’s History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, where he had the opportunity to define the history of the abolition as [th]e history of a war of more than two centuries, waged by men against human nature, a war too carried on, not by ignorance and barbarism against knowledge and civilisation; not by half-famished multitude against a race blessed with all the arts of life […]; but […] waged by unprovoked strength against uninjuring helplessness, and with all the powers which long periods of security and equal law had enabled the assailants to develop – in order to make barbarism more barbarous, and to add to the want of political freedom the most dreadful and debasing personal suffering25.

The semantic chiasmus consistently developed throughout the passage is chosen by the author as a strong ideological device, insofar as it transforms parallelism into divergence, order into disorder, pity into cruelty, law into anarchy and aligns, in opposite order, also civilisation and barbarism, modernity and archaism. This uncanny reciprocity is a recurring trait of abolitionist writing, and the sign of its inner contradictoriness. The dantesque middle passage envisaged by Coleridge’s Bristol lecture had been minutely described in Clarkson’s Essay on Slavery and Commerce of Human Species as drawn by a circular line which, from a British port, bends to the coast of Africa to move West, to the destined ports in the colonies. The vexed and wandering humanity – which, in Clarkson’s narrative was viewed as a «cloud of dust», advancing rapidly «accompanied with dismal shrieks and yellings, to make the very air, that is above it, tremble as it rolls along» when on the coast of Africa – acquires, once on the vessels, more precise traits26. The 24

This is clearly a powerful trope in the period, which has been widely explored. Amongst others, along with Rosemary Tate’s chapter in this book (pp. 37-53), see Timothy Morton, The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 25 S. T. Coleridge, “Review of History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade by T. Clarkson” «Edinburgh Review» XII (1808), in P. Kitson ed., Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999, p. 223. 26 T. Clarkson, Essay on Slavery and Commerce of Human Species (1788), in P. Kitson ed., Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999, pp. 39-40. Further references are given in the text.

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mobile site of their sufferings is defined as to size and capacity, the dimension of what Clarkson calls «apartments» is in itself a means of punishment and torture. The height makes, in fact, it impossible for the occupants to stand erect. They must sit down, and contract their limbs within the limits of little more than three square feet. And yet the traits of their characters emerge and make of them a community able to produce a project, of rebellion and of conquest: «[t]he people of Africa have different traits in their character, as well as the inhabitants of other nations. […] Those of the Windward Coast, consisting of a nation of hunters, and trained to war, are bold and intrepid, and on all occasions attempt to punish their enslavers at the hazard of their own lives» (52). The narration proceeds with a focus on a slave from that area, tortured under the charge of «exciting his companions to rebel» (ibid.). The torture inflicted, ironically in contrast with the long period of equal law developed by the «assailants», as mentioned by Coleridge, was only worthy of the most barbarous of the societies, but as a matter of fact mirrored that juridical form of punishment which had long been acquired by the establishment to protect itself against anarchy, before, as Foucault notes, the entire economy of punishment was redistributed in the late eighteenth century, a time of great ‘scandals’ for traditional justice, a time of innumerable projects for reform27. On the vessels, instead: Without any further ceremony, the [slave’s] feet were put into irons, and confined to one of the ring-bolts upon the deck. At the same time […] [h]e was so stretched in a perpendicular posture, that almost every joint was dislocated. In this situation, every licentiousness, that wanton barbarity could suggest, was permitted to be practised upon him. When the operation was over, he was taken down, and thrown into the sea (p. 52).

The impression on the surviving companions is great but not so great as to make them renounce their thoughts of an insurrection: Two of the slaves, who were remarkably stout men, broke their irons, and advanced to revenge their injuries. They were instantly fired upon by the seamen, who had been stationed for the purpose. But, having now their arms at liberty, they were not to be intimidated by their enslavers, though in a wounded state. They advanced gallantly on, followed by the 27

M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin Books 1991.

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shackled crowd, broke open the barricade door, forced thy cutlass from the sentinel, and after a brave conflict on the quarter-deck, obliged the seamen to retract to the tops. – They were now masters of the vessel— (p. 53)

The narration tells about their final defeat and about the massacre which left only ninety slaves living to be transported to Barbadoes. And yet at the emergence of that moment of danger, when punishment far surpasses in savagery the assumed crime, that same punishing agency which has appointed itself as the repository of difference, while betraying the uncanny structure of cultural difference, engages in a war of position, whose terms shift the ground of knowledge, signalling that barbarism is, with Vico, at once anterior, contemporary and belated.

Works Cited Anderson B., 1983, Imagined Communities, London: Verso. Bhabha H., 1990, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation”, in H. Bhabha ed., Nation and Narration, London: Routledge, pp 291-322. Brewer J., McKendrick N., Plumb J. H., 1982, The Birth of a Consumer Society: Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England, London: Europa Publications. Clarkson T., 1999, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1788) in P. Kitson ed., Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. 2: The Abolition Debate, London: Pickering and Chatto, pp. 37-73. Coleridge S.T., 1999, “On the Slave Trade” (1796) in P. Kitson, ed., Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. 2: The Abolition Debate, London: Pickering and Chatto, pp. 211-220. Coleridge S. T., 1999, “Review of T. Clarkson, History of Abolition of the Slave Trade” (1808) in P. Kitson, ed., Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, Vol. 2: The Abolition Debate, London: Pickering and Chatto, pp. 221-247. Coleridge S. T., 1971, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 1: Lectures 1795 on Politics and Religion, ed. L. Patton and P. Mann, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Coleridge S. T., 1971, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 2: The Watchman, ed. L. Patton, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Derrida J., 1996, Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Eliot T. S., 1949, Notes towards the Definition of Culture, London: Faber and Faber. Foucault M., 1991, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin Books. Hall S., 2002, “Who needs ‘identity’?”(1996), in S. Hall, P. du Gay eds., Questions of Cultural Identity, London: SAGE Publications, pp. 1-17. Kaplan C., Oldfield J. R., 2009, Imagining Transatlantic Slavery, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Linebaugh, P., Rediker, M., 2000, The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Boston, MA.: Beacon Press. Morton T., 2000, The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nimako K., Small S., 2010, “Collective Memory of Slavery in Great Britain and the Netherlands”, Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 14 August 2010. Online. http:// africam.berkeley.edu/events/NIMAKO-SMALL.pdf Sonoi C., 2006, “Coleridge and the Slave Trade”, The Coleridge Bulletin, New Series 27, pp. 27-37. Online. http://www.friendsofcoleridge.com/ MembersOnly/CB27/CB27%20Sonoi.pdf Sportelli A., 2008, “From the Nation State to the Nation People: Politics and Language Politics”, in A. Sportelli, S. Jones eds., Re-Imagining Communities: The European Union and the Public Sphere, Bari: B. A. Graphis, pp. IX-XXVII. Thomas H., 2000, Romanticism and Slave Narratives: Transatlantic Testimonies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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INDEX

Abdullah, Ben Dr, 195, 196 Achebe, Chinua, 195, Addington, Henry, 30 Agbetu, Toyin, 198 Aksu, Eşref, 11, 169, 259 Aldridge, Ira, 38, 72, 96, 103, 125 Alexander, Claire, 164, 165 Alexander, Czar, 176 Anderson, Benedict, 14, 215, 246, 247 Angeletti, Gioia, 6, 7, 95, 98, 102, 124, 259 Anstey, Roger, 32, 34, 77, 90 Armstrong, Nancy, 44, 45, 62 Bachelet, Michelle, 211 Bales, Kevin, 170 Bassiouni, Cherif, 186 Bate, Henry, 7, 102, 107, 109, 114 Bates, William, 102, 114, 116 Baucom, Ian, 194 Bayly, Zachary, 62 Beattie, James, 21, 34 Beckford, William, 5, 55, 56, 67-72 Behn, Aphra, 101 Benjamin, Mario, 214 Benjamin, Richard, 213, 218 Bentley, Samuel, 59, 73 Bhabha, Homi, 217, 219, 220, 248 Bickerstaff, Isaac, 7, 98, 102, 103, 144 Bienkowski, Piotr, 217, 218, 221

Birkett, Mary, 3, 44, 45 Blackburn, Robin, 1, 31, 34, 169, 190 Blake, William, 108 Blouet, Olwyn M., 65 Bolivar, Simon, 88 Bonafini, Hebe de, 211 Bourdieu, Pierre, 215, 216 Bradford, John, 5, 87 Brewer, John, 38, 52, 251, 256 Brown, Christopher William, 23, 34, 165 Burke, Edmund, 82, 89, 129, 130, 136, 138, 139, 144, 147-150, 225, 229 Burke, Jordan, 25 Burney, Frances, 9, 128, 130, 131, 132, 143-148 Burrell, Sir Peter, 130 Calderon, Maria, of Trinidad, 25 Canning, George, 31 Carey, Brycchan, 1, 84, 89, 94, 179, 190, 238, 242 Carlson, Julie, 6, 7,101,102, 125, 145, 147, 229 Casid, Jill, H., 63, 64, 66, 71, 72 Céleur, Jean Hérard, 214 Cervantes, Miguel de, 103 Césaire, Aimé Fernand David, 20 Charles II, 99 Choudhury, Mita, 131, 133, 147

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260

INDEX

Claris de Florian, Jean-Pierre, 113 Clarkson, Thomas, 32, 35, 50, 77, 89, 106, 107, 110, 125, 229, 242, 245, 251, 254-256. Coalter, Hannah, 200, 201 Cobb, James, 9, 10, 151, 159-165 Cohen, Robin, 215, 221 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 3, 14, 40, 41, 45, 46, 245, 246, 249257 Colman the Younger, George, 13, 14, 98, 124, 223-225, 231-236, 238-243 Cowley, Hannah, 9, 98, 128, 131137, 141, 145, 147-149 Cowper, William, 51, 162 Cox, Jeffrey, 6, 95, 98, 102, 116, 119, 120, 124, 145, 147 Crisafulli, Lilla, Maria, 8, 82, 89 Cugoano, Quobna, Ottobah, 110, 125, 261 Cummins, Alessandra, 202, 203, 221

Ellis, Markman, 68, 72 Equiano, Olaudah, 194, 240 Eugène, Andre, 214 Fanon, Frantz, 20, 195 Farago, Claire, 197, 217, 220 Finkelman, Paul, 75, 90 Fleming, David, 214 Foote, Samuel, 133, 148 Foucault, Michel, 255 Fox, Charles, James, 129, 136, 138, 149 Fox, William, 40, 52 Francis, Philip sir, 129 Fraser, Nick, 241 Freneau, Philip, 85, 86, 90

D’Ezio, Marianna, 8, 9, 127, 148, 260 Daniel, George, 160, 231 Dante (Alighieri), 112, 250 Davis, Brian, 106, 125, 226, 228 Dekker, Thomas, 101 Dellarosa, Franca, 1, 75, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 145, 160, 228, 229, 233, 237, 259 Demari, Cristina, 205 Dibdin, Charles, 7, 103 Ducharte, Pierre Louis, 119 Durkheim, Emile, 228

Garencières, Theophilus de, 44 Garrick, David, 100,113 Garrison, William Lloyd, 5, 75, 8790 Gates, Henry Louis, 104, 112, 113, 119, 125 Geggus, Davis, 30, 33, 35 George III, 22 Gillray, James, 46 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 45 Gomani, Peter, 210 Gondwe, Michael, 208 Grainger, James, 5, 43, 44, 47, 52, 55, 56, 66-72 Green, K. S., 129, 139, 141, 143, 148 Grenville, William Wyndham, Lord, 31, 32, 119 Guyodo, (born Frantz Jacques), 214

Edwards, Bryan, 4, 5, 52, 57, 62-66, 71, 72, 142 Eichstadt, Jennifer, 199, 200, 201 Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 248 Ellis, C. R., 31

Hall, Catherine, 13, 14 Hall, Stuart, 202, 221, 247, 248 Hamilton, Joan, 238, 242 Harrison, Lowell H., 87 Hartman, Saidiya, 196, 221

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INDEX

Hastings, Warren, 23,127-131, 135, 136, 139, 141, 143, 144, 146149 Herbert, William, 25-27 Howard, John, 139 Hunt, Lynn, 227-229

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Inchbald, Elizabeth, 8, 9, 13, 128, 129, 131, 132, 136-141, 145148, 223, 224 James, Cyril Lionel Robert, 240 Johnson, Samuel, 67, 68, 80, 90, 103 Jones, Jonathan, 213 Kasibe, Wandile Goozen, 206 Kitson, Peter, 1, 37, 52, 95, 125, 145, 148, 179, 190, 245 Klopper, Dirk, 227, 243 Klotter, James C., 87 Knapp, Adrian, 13, 14, 162, 166, 223, 260 Knapp, Isaac, 5, 87, 88, 90 Knowles, Caroline, 164, 165 Kucich, Greg, 19, 144 L’Ouverture, Touissant, 30, 34, 240, 243, 251 Lamming, George, 20 Lee, Debbie, 37, 38, 52, 95, 125, 145 Leigh, Paul, 14, 223, 225, 231-237, 239-243 Lewis, Gordon K., 56, 57, 73 Ligon, Richard, 3, 41-44, 47, 52 Long, Edward, 4, 5, 55, 57-62, 72, 73, 108, 109 Macartney, Lord, 29. Marmontel, Jean-François, 113 Marsden, William, 139

112,

261

Marx, Karl, 76 McConnell, James, 14 McKendrick, Neil, 38, 52, 251, 256 Melo, Angela, 12 Middleton, Charles, sir, 24 Midgley, Claire, 46, 50, 52 Mill, John, Stuart, 60 Milton, John, 5, 61 Mintz, Sidney, 39, 44, 52 Molyneux, Crisp, 25 Moody, Jane, 6, 99, 100, 125, 128, 145, 147, 149 Moore, Henry, Sir, 58 Morgan, Kenneth, 58, 73 Morgan, Philip D.,152, 166 Morton, Timothy, 40, 52, 254, 257. Moseley, Benjamin, 3, 4, 38, 42, 44, 52. Moskal, Jeanne, 130-132, 143,149 Neill, Anna, 158, 164, 166 Nichols, John, 4, 59, 73 Nimako, Kwame, 245 Nussbaum, Felicity, 6, 96, 97, 103, 104, 108, 110, 121, 126, 145, 149, 239, 243 O’Brien, John, 100, 101, 111-113, 126 O’Brien, Karen, 73 O’Connell, Daniel, 88, 90 O’Quinn, Daniel, 6, 128, 134, 136, 138, 145, 147, 149, 150, 231233, 237, 239, 243. Oldfield, J., R., 1, 13, 103, 106, 126, 245, 257 Opie, Amelia, 37, 38 Paine, Thomas, 86, 225, 229 Pallua, Ulrich, 9, 10, 151, 162, 166, 261

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262

INDEX

Pannarale, Filomena, 4, 5, 55, 261 Peacock, Thomas, Love, 46, 52 Perceval, Spencer, 28, 32 Phillips, Caryl, 195, 196 Phillips, James, 47 Pirandello, Luigi, 116 Pitt, William, the Younger, 32, 130, 136 Plumb, J. H., 38, 52, 251, 256 Pope, Alexander, 113 Pratt, Linda, 96 Pratt, Minnie Bruce, 239 Preziosi, Donald, 197, 217, 220 Price, Richard, 82, 90 Price, Sally, 215 Quayson, Ato, 228, 244 Quilley, Geoff, 70, 73 Quirk, Joel, 181 Ramsay, James, 3, 24, 25, 27, 35, 47-52 Ravenscroft, Edward, 101 Reeve, William, 115 Riccoboni, Luigi, 112 Rich, John, 113 Rigby, Samuel, 219 Robertson, George, 70, 73 Robinson, Alex, 2, 12, 13, 19, 60, 193, 262 Rodwell, James Thomas G., 123 Rose, Wendy, 239 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 86 Rushton, Edward, IX, 2,5, 75-90, 260 Russell, Gillian, 229, 230, 243 Ryan, Simon, 153, 166 Said, Edward, 20, 132, 150 Saint Pierre, Jacques Henri Bernardin de, 9, 10, 151, 153-155, 163, 166 Sancho, Ignatius, 96

Sandiford, Keith, 42, 52, 56, 67, 68, 70, 74 Sansone, Livio, 193 Schieffelin, Hannah, Lawrence, 86 Schieffelin, Jacob, 86, 90 Senghor, Léopold, Sédar, 20 Shakespeare, William, 96,100, 111, 113, 125, 145, 160 Sharp, Granville, 48, 106, 194 Shelley, Percy, Bysshe, 46 Sheridan, Richard, Brinsley, 114, 129 Small, Stephen, 199, 200, 201, 245 Somerset, James, 48, 162, 172-174, 191 Sosa, Cecilia, 211 Sportelli, Annamaria, 9, 14, 245, 246, 257, 262 Stanley, John, 24 Starke, Mariana, 9, 98, 107, 128134, 139, 141, 142, 145, 146, 149, 150 Stephen, James, 2, 19-22, 24-35, 262 Stothard, Thomas, 63 Strode, Wadham, 25 Strong, Jonathan, 48 Sussman, Charlotte, 39, 40, 52 Swindells, Julia, 6, 9, 99, 126, 160, 224, 229, 230, 234, 243 Sypher, Wylie, 97, 98, 126 Tate, Rosemary, 3, 37, 262 Teale, Isaac, 5, 62-64 Tilden, Freeman, 217 Tobin, James, 24, 35 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 13, 15, 197, 199, 212, 219 Tuckett, William, 23 Uzzell, David, 217 Vico, Giambattista, 256

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INDEX

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Violi, Patrizia, 205 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), 67 Walcott, Derek, 15 Wallace, James, 77, 91 Walvin, James, 30, 35, 95, 126, 176,187,189-191 Washington, George, 2, 5, 75, 76, 79-91, 98, 204 Waters, Hazel, 6, 96, 101,124, 126, 145, 150, 238, 244 Weber, Max, 227, 228, 241, 243, 244 Weissbrodt, David, 179, 187, 188 White, Hayden, 212 Wiencek, Henry, 83, 91 Wilberforce, William, 3, 14, 21, 2533, 35, 50, 71, 106, 198, 224,

263

225, 232, 233, 236, 237, 240, 253. Williams, Eric Eustace, 19, 172, 190, 194, 195, 198 Williams, Helen Maria, 9, 10, 151, 153-155, 166 Williams, Raymond, 212, 222, 228, 244 Williamson, Karina, 64 Wilson, Kathleen, 2, 39, 53, 56, 74, 96, 126, 145, 149, 152, 153, 165, 166 Wilson-Tagoe, Nana, 55, 57, 74 Woolf, Virginia, 27 Wordsworth, William, 78, 262 Worrall, David, 6, 8, 13, 100, 116, 119, 126, 145, 150, 223, 224, 229-231, 244

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Es¸ref Aksu is Lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research and teaching involve global governance, normative international relations theory, and foreign policy analysis. Aksu’s book-length publications include: Es¸ref Aksu (ed.), Early Notions of Global Governance: Selected Eighteenth-Century Proposals for Perpetual Peace (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008); Es¸ref Aksu, The United Nations, Intra-state Peacekeeping and Normative Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003); and Es¸ref Aksu and Joseph A. Camilleri (eds), Democratizing Global Governance (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Gioia Angeletti is a Lecturer in English and Anglophone Literatures at the University of Parma. She is the author of Eccentric Scotland: Three Victorian Poets. James Thomson (“B. V.”), John Davidson and James Young Geddes (2004), a book on theories of poetic translation, published in Italian under the title Teorie target oriented della traduzione poetica: trans-creazione e riscrittura dell’alterità (2004). She is the editor of Emancipation, Liberation, and Freedom: Romantic Drama and Theatre in Britain, 1760-1830 (2010), and with Valentina Poggi, coeditor of a volume on the Scottish playwright Joan Ure (2010). She has published critical articles on various English and Scottish poets and playwrights of the Romantic and Victorian periods. Her current research also focuses on contemporary Scottish theatre written and produced by women, in particular by Joan Ure, Rona Munro, Sue Glover, Jackie Kay and Liz Lochhead. She is presently completing a book on Byron entitled The Discourse of Otherness: Essays on Byron, and working on an edition of plays by the Scottish dramatist Archibald MacLaren. Franca Dellarosa is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Bari. Her publications include the monograph study and anthology

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Slavery on Stage: Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s1830s (2009), the edited collection of international essays Poetic and Dramatic Forms in British Romanticism (2006) as well as Drama on the Air, a monograph study on British radio drama (1997). She is author of various articles on eighteenth-century and Romantic studies, contemporary literature and cultural mediation. She is currently completing a book-length study on Liverpool abolitionist poet Edward Rushton. She is also working on an edition, with Italian translation, of George Eliot’s selected non-fiction prose. Marianna D’Ezio completed a PhD in English Literature at the University of Rome “Sapienza” and has been Adjunct Professor of English in several Italian universities (Cassino, Perugia and Rome). She lives and works in Italy, where she also worked as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of California Rome Study Center and is currently teaching International Baccalaureate literature courses at Marymount International College. Her research interests focus on eighteenth-century literature and travel writing, with special attention to women writers. She participated in many conferences worldwide (India, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain), and has published many articles on eighteenth-century women travelling to Italy – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Berry, Elizabeth Gaskell – as well as miscellaneous articles on various topics. She edited a collection of essays entitled Literary and Cultural Intersections during the Long Eighteenth Century (2008) for Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and her monograph on Hester Lynch Piozzi was published in August 2010. She also wrote a grammar book of English for Italian speakers (Mondadori 2010) and recently translated Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (Giunti 2011). Adrian Knapp is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. His dissertation focuses on the depiction of revolting African slaves in literary texts of the period of abolition and their (re)configuration in literary texts of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. From 2005 to 2008 he worked on the project English Literature and Slavery 1772-1834 based at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and funded by the Austrian Research Council analysing argumentative patterns of the pro- and anti-slavery debate in The Times. His recent publications include “Images of Africa(ns): Racism and Ethnocentricity in the British Aboli-

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tion Debate: 1787-1834”, “Three Children’s Critical Perspectives on Aspects of the Contemporary East African Social ‘Web of Relationships’: Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them” and (Re)figuring Human Enslavement: Images of Power, Violence and Resistance (co-edited with Ulrich Pallua and Andreas Exenberger) incorporating the article “Resisting ‘Humanitarian Romanticism’: Thomas Pringle’s ‘Pangola: An African Tale’”. Ulrich Pallua is Assistant Professor at Innsbruck University, Austria. He completed his Ph.D. on Eurocentrism, Racism, Colonialism in the Victorian and Edwardian Age in 2005. He worked on a project entitled “Slavery and English Literature: 1772-1834” funded by the Austrian Research Council focussing on the image of African slaves in different literary genres. His publications include “The Acceptance of the Evils of Slavery as a Social Phenomenon: an Indicator of a Pro-Slavery Approach” (2007), “Images of Africa(ns): Racism and Ethnocentricity in the British Abolition Debate: 1787-1834” (2008), “Images of Africans in British Slavery Discourse: Pro- and Anti-Slave Trade/Slavery Voices in The Gentleman’s Magazine and The Monthly Review, 1772–1833” (2009), (Re)Figuring Human Enslavement: Images of Power, Violence and Resistance (2009), “The Ambiguity of Europe’s Colonizing Mission. The Subservient Slave in James Miller’s Play Art and Nature, 1738 (2010)”, Racism, Slavery, and Literature co-edited with Wolfgang Zach (2010), “Amistad Kata-Kata: A Re-Evaluation of the Materiality of the Body” (2011), and “Anti-Slave Trade Propaganda in 1788: The African’s Complaint in Contrast to Britain’s Vision of Liberty” (2011). Forthcoming in 2012: “Refiguring the Past, Rewriting Identity: ‘Visual’ Imagery in Moses Isegawa’s Snakepit and Viviane Sassen’s Flamboya”. At the moment he is working on his habilitation entitled “IMAGES OF AFRICA(NS): Racism and Ethnocentricity in British Drama, 1696-1838”. Filomena Pannarale has recently completed her P.h.D in Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Bari, Italy. Her dissertation focuses on the analysis and partial translation into Italian of Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787) by African writer Quobna Ottobah Cugoano. Between 2007 and 2009 she took part in the Inter-University Research Project An Italian in London: the Italian presence on the British Stage from the Renaissance to Romanticism, contributing to the construction of a database of plays and documen-

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268

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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tary materials regarding Anglo-Italian theatrical relations. Her research interests include Colonial History and Literature, Romantic Theatre, Slave Narratives and Translation Studies. She is the author of «Thy power is in the fear of thy votaries». Obeah nella cultura dell’età romantica inglese, 1760-1830 (Bari, 2008). Alex Robinson teaches part time for the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures at the University of Liverpool. After teaching History in Liverpool 8 for thirty years, she undertook a research project into slavery and resistance ten years ago. She was Regional Learning Officer for the Understanding Slavery Initiative 2003-2005, Content Team leader for the development of the Life in the Americas and Fight for Freedom and Resistance sections of the International Slavery Museum 2005-2007. In 2010 she was responsible for the historical interpretation of Fairview Great House in St Kitts West Indies. She is presently researching and writing a biography of the abolitionist James Stephen (1758-1832). Annamaria Sportelli is Professor of English at the University of Bari. She has published extensively on genre and literary theory, Romantic studies, Samuel Beckett. Her publications include Il long poem nell’età di Wordsworth. Percorsi critici e testuali (1999); Questioni di poetica e di poesia. I testi del dibattito teorico da G. Vico a T. S. Eliot (2nd ed. 2004); Aesthetics, Philosophy and Politics (ed.), Special Issue of La Questione Romantica (10, 2003); Ai confine dei Generi. Casi di Ibridismo Letterario (co-ed. A. Destro, 1999); Generi Letterari, Ibridismo e Contaminazione (ed. 2001). She is a founding member of the Centro Interuniversitario per lo Studio del Romanticismo, and general editor of the series «Archives», published by Edizioni dal Sud, Bari, and «Studi per le scienze della mediazione linguistica e interculturale», B.A. Graphis, Bari. Rosemary Tate has recently completed her doctorate, entitled ‘The Aesthetics of Sugar: Concepts of Sweetness in the Nineteenth Century’ at the University of Oxford. Rosemary was one of the organisers of the conference ‘Bodies and Things: Victorian Literature and the Matter of Culture’, which took place at the University of Oxford in 2008.

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T

bis book is.... .... nal cross-discipJinary colledion of essays, critiailly in the historiad and con discourses of sJavery. History, literary criticism, cultural and musewn studies and intemational reJatioos prol'ide the main discipJinary fields and · for a traos-historiad investigation that · both a wide time-span two and a half centuries long - as well as complex and often thomy conceptual andlor historiad nodes. .M the post-2007 critiad scenery records the significant expansion of in the plural fields of sJavery-related studies, this volwne to add to the present critiad discussion, in the wake of the new critiad directioos s by recent scholarship.

ROMANTICISMO EDINTORNI 2

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rancaiJtilarosaiwldJe; Eng·

lish Literature at the University qf Bari. Her publications indude the monograph studies Slavery on Stage: Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s-1830s (2009) and Drama on the Air (1997), the edited collectiort Poetic and Dramatic Fonns in British Romanticism {2006), as well as various articles on eighteenth-century andRomantic studies, contemporary literature and cultura/ mediation. She is cu17'ently completing a book-length study on Liverpool abolitionistpoet Edward Rushton. She is also working on an edition, with Italian translation, ofGeorge Elwt's sekcted non-fiction prose. Front cover illustration: "Negro strike at Sierra Leone", Jbe mustratedLondmz

News, ]an. 10, 1874. Private collection.

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