Plantation Economies and Slavery in the Declaration of Independence

00:00:07: He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him.

00:00:17: Captivating them carrying into slavery another hemisphere.

00:00:21: This piratical warfare is the Warfare Of The Christian King of Great Britain determined to keep an open market where men should be bought and sold.

00:00:50: Welcome to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

00:00:53: a podcast commemorating The show is sponsored by the American Centrum in Hamburg, Germany and I'm your host Andrew O'Soula.

00:01:04: We often forget that there were twenty-six British colonies in the Americas not just the thirteen colonies that became the United States.

00:01:12: The British also colonized islands throughout the Caribbean including Jamaica Barbados, the Leeward Islands Granada and Tobago St Vincent and Dominica.

00:01:23: What united all of these islands besides was that they all adopted the plantation economic system with its near total reliance on enslaved labor.

00:01:35: These island colonies and continental colonies were deeply interconnected, perhaps even more so than today.

00:01:42: Don't forget in this period of time, the vast majority of people living within the thirteen colonies lived within two hundred miles of the Atlantic coasts.

00:01:56: Every day ships set sail from Boston, Philadelphia or Charleston heading to Jamaica Barbados Or St.

00:02:03: Vincent.

00:02:04: Far from preventing commerce and communication the Atlantic Ocean was actually The easiest way for the North American colonies To interact with their fellow Caribbean islands.

00:02:16: So today we will be discussing the origins And development of the plantation system both in the British Caribbean and also In the north american colonies.

00:02:25: What were the similarities between the colonies?

00:02:28: what were the differences?

00:02:30: How did their interests align and how did they diverge?

00:02:34: Why did American plantation owners opt for independence, And why do the Caribbean Plantation Owners remain loyal to King George.

00:02:51: Paul is Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

00:03:02: He specializes In the Political Economy Of Early Plantation Societies, North America and The Caribbean.

00:03:09: His book Urban Dreams Rural Common Wealth?

00:03:14: The Rise of Plantations Society And Chesapeake's was published by University of Chicago Press.

00:03:25: You started this episode by reading that famous deleted passage of the Declaration of Independence about slavery, which we have discussed in some other episodes.

00:03:36: This is interesting because of course Thomas Jefferson's critique of slavery belies the fact he himself had six hundred enslaved people throughout his life.

00:03:47: So, why when talking about the Caribbean and plantation economy did you choose to begin with that famous deleted

00:04:00: passage of in particular, and it opens up for us I think these questions about the future.

00:04:23: The nature of the plantation economy and its future which are being kind of debated in the seventeen seventies both in the Caribbean an in the mainland what we would call them a land plantation colonies.

00:04:34: that places where there were large numbers have been saved people growing agricultural commodities.

00:04:39: so i think that we can see in Jefferson's quote not just the morality of slavery overall, but this real divergence and debate that is going on as the colonies are wrestling with their economy.

00:04:57: They

00:04:59: really like the fact that here when we're looking at this, We're taking a sort of very almost cold historical approach and saying okay There's a lot more in this passage than our modern understanding Of whether or not.

00:05:11: We should revere Thomas Jefferson Or not.

00:05:13: so just I just want to put That as an important caveat.

00:05:16: Can i Just follow up on that?

00:05:17: And say that I think The important part To there is that little passage where it says he has prostituted his negative for suppressing legislative attempts.

00:05:28: We see this as a dialogue that Jefferson is having with himself and it's going to influence his later writings in the seventeen nineties, in the early part of the nineteenth century about slavery.

00:05:38: But he's really responding here in both seventeen sixty nine and seventeen seventy two to either put a heavy tax on the importation of inslave people or actually completely outlaw it which the british crown had vetoed.

00:05:56: And he's trying to weave that into his various critiques.

00:05:59: all what the crown is doing here saying we've attempted stop the slave trade i mean those efforts have actually passed unanimously in fact in virginia house of burgesses That's not true of every plantation society.

00:06:13: it certainly not true.

00:06:14: in the Caribbean its not true.

00:06:15: and carolinas.

00:06:16: but here this is sort of keying us into the fact that jefferson responding to a very particular moment in.

00:06:22: The chesapeake in virginia maryland where debate about the nature of the slave trade.

00:06:27: They're certainly not trying to outlaw slavery but they are trying to make the slave trade harder because of their actual diagnosis.

00:06:33: What's going wrong with your own economy and society?

00:06:35: Not, Because that worried about the morality of slavery But because there were a doubt what it means for them nature.

00:06:41: if other whole society whether they are just an extractive place on the edge of empire that is just growing agricultural commodities per export or weather day hour at different kind of economy would be different sort future.

00:06:53: I just maybe want you to stick on this point and help explain it.

00:07:00: The distinction between outlying the slave trade but still having slaves seems a little bit of a soft distinction, why would they make such big points about outlying trading slaves?

00:07:14: You can still breed them as you would cattle in your plantation that's fine

00:07:20: Yes, so I think there are two things going on here.

00:07:23: firstly On the moral level that we could certainly take issue with in the contemporary world.

00:07:29: I Think in their view they would say That the actual process of the middle passage The horrors of the Middle Passage were distinct from the horrors Of everyday slavery.

00:07:38: and don't forget many of these people Are at least one-level In their own mind paternalistic.

00:07:44: They care for their enslaved People it's part of Their community etc.

00:07:48: I mean, to the extent that they really believe that themselves is obviously hotly debated by historians.

00:07:53: But they see that as a distinction from the experience of The Slave Crater and their slave traders – the ship captains who can vilify and see us particularly evil!

00:08:03: And even going back long into sort-of early modern history…the distinction between enslaving somebody yourself and purchasing an enslaved person whose already enslaved had been baked in since sort of the medieval times and other understandings.

00:08:17: So they do see a kind of moral distinction there, but fundamentally There's an economic distinction right which is that if you are A society where The enslaved population Is already through?

00:08:28: The facts Of the disease environment And the provision of food and the nature of the labor able to reproduce itself have its own.

00:08:35: should Have enslaved people having families and children and the population being relatively steady or in fact growing That it's less of an issue.

00:08:43: then, you can outlaw the slave trade and that is what going on here in Virginia.

00:08:47: They could outlaw a slave trade without really affecting their bottom line whereas other places where nature...and this was when we get to Caribbean right?

00:08:55: The nature of the slave plantation system at the Caribbean so brutal!

00:09:00: So destructive human life!

00:09:02: The requirements for production sugar, the nature disease environment just so brutal the rely upon a constant supply of new and safe people, they are literally just churning through human lives to produce sugar which is not happening in Virginia.

00:09:20: As always, as we'll have this conversation.

00:09:22: Always understand Carolina is kind of somewhere between the Chesapeake and the Caribbean.

00:09:27: And This Is not to say that there isn't a huge amount of human suffering in The Chesapee tied to slavery but just that the economic realities Of the enslaved population either being or Not Being Self-Reproducing.

00:09:38: It's really the fundamental distinction here over what your attitudes towards slavery versus the slave trade are.

00:09:45: In practical terms.

00:09:47: That's a super helpful explanation.

00:09:50: It is way of overlaying the moral solution on a labor shortage problem that they were not having, so they could say oh well we are reproducing our own enslaved people at a rate where you can start calling these other plantation owners and slave trade evil and we don't need it anymore, but there's really a strong economic route to that.

00:10:14: That is extremely helpful!

00:10:15: You mentioned the sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

00:10:20: so maybe now its time for us step off the thirteen colonies away from Virginia and Chesapeake and head over to the Caribbean?

00:10:30: Can you just help understand what this plantation island cultures were like?

00:10:36: how did they start?

00:10:38: whose big idea was it to say like, hey let's start plantations here and bring all these enslaved people over and make a lot of money.

00:10:47: Yes so just to say there is some diversity of the nature of the plantation system across The British Caribbean.

00:10:54: It's not uniformly similar.

00:10:56: I think.

00:10:56: what we could tell as a short story about how this begins in the seventeenth century Is that These innovations really kick off on the small island of Barbados, where in the sixteen forties and fifties.

00:11:08: The importation have enslaved people that consolidation of land into some spaces at roughly two to three hundred acres.

00:11:15: they introduced sugar primarily through the Dutch trade.

00:11:18: there's a lot debate about were precisely the sugar comes from but they introduce sugar cultivation than had been used it'd be developed.

00:11:25: Brazil as far back is the sixteenth century on course head its roots back in the Mediterranean.

00:11:31: They introduced this and they basically perfect it, what historians have called the integrated plantation complex.

00:11:37: So where?

00:11:38: in Brazil you had a whole kind of collection of different people involved in sugar production from the people who grew the canes to the mill owners who milled it?

00:11:47: And there were different sets of enslaved people working in these systems.

00:11:49: but it was a whole complicated set of economic transactions.

00:11:52: What English planters in Barbados in the sixteen forties perfect is that They work out the rough proportion of land that you need to grow enough sugar, keep one mill running basically constantly.

00:12:05: And it turns about two or three hundred acres.

00:12:08: and because of the nature of Barbados and its protected status vis-a-vis the rest of the Caribbean... ...because it's further east therefore able to evade a lot enemy attacks they have relatively safe space there to develop these systems, to perfect them basically and to perfect the exploitation of human labour in Barbados in the sixteen forties and fifties.

00:12:29: That system then is transferred from Barbados –in many respects–to lots of other places around The Caribbean And To Carolina.

00:12:36: Many Barbadians end up In Jamaica.

00:12:38: Many End Up In Carolina.

00:12:40: that system Of two-to-three hundred acre Lots with large numbers of enslaved people who are worked almost military-esque regimen.

00:12:50: Other scholars have compared this to kind of things like gulags, right?

00:12:53: These are these very intense economic systems but they're based around this idea of a plantation which is sort it doesn't have any restrictions or the customary rules that something like an English manor might have.

00:13:08: This unit had been understood in English history as basically a proto colony and so the term plantation.

00:13:16: therefore The people who develop these three hundred acre plots are able to claim that these things or plantations and therefore have the authority.

00:13:25: To exercise control over the labor, exercise control of the market basically perfect this system of capitalist exploitation off of these resources in new ways on.

00:13:36: that system is then taken to Jamaica where there's a larger area of land on Jamaica means it can be perfected more effectively because you've got bigger spaces where these systems can multiply.

00:13:49: It takes quite a while, scholars have pointed out.

00:13:51: it takes until the beginning of the eighteenth century before Jamaica really overtakes Barbados and the developments across in Carolina are taking a slower path too And that system is perfecting sugar cultivation by the middle of the Eighteenth Century though By time at The American Revolution you've got worked out version of this in Jamaica and you've got a slightly older version of it still operating very intensively in Barbados, some other islands.

00:14:19: And then right before the revolution after The Seven Years' War British capture or acquire after peace all these other islands that we mentioned at beginning our show today which they are trying even more straightforward Top-down way to impose this system.

00:14:37: They know already from Jamaica what works.

00:14:39: you need three hundred acres You build one mill, you have the system.

00:14:43: you built in safe quarters.

00:14:45: These are the laws that you need to control and save people.

00:14:47: they Have a playbook or ready?

00:14:49: And then they go to Grenada To Dominica and to St Vincent and try to put that on after the seven years was so.

00:14:56: This is a whole worked out system by The time of American Revolution That it's geared to extracting the maximum amount of sugar and balancing labor in a very cold, rational way.

00:15:07: How many people have to die to produce a certain amount of sugar?

00:15:11: Yeah I mean it's terrible to think about this and our modern terms we're going to sort- We have a business model that we are going to maximize its efficiency like Amazon workers or something.

00:15:24: but you know these are businesspeople right looking at their environment and figuring out markets, production strategies.

00:15:33: in all of this.

00:15:36: In a certain sixth sense it's good entrepreneurship innovative business practice.

00:15:43: I've never really thought about that way again.

00:15:46: its kind harrowing to think that way but so it was.

00:15:51: Yes there is a lot of cold hard calculation, then its course going to play even more in the nineteenth century In the ways that enslave people's lives and bodies are calculated for value mortgaged.

00:16:04: Of course.

00:16:04: underlying all this I mean The rationality is predicated upon racial assumptions about the values Black Lives That we shouldn't ever overlook.

00:16:15: But logic is one interconnected with this racism.

00:16:20: Okay, so you've given me a wonderful overview of the history and development of plantation economies in the Caribbean And now my thoughts are moving back to the thirteen North American colonies.

00:16:34: So how do we want to move this story along?

00:16:36: To get back to The North American Colonies

00:16:39: Yeah I mentioned at the beginning there's a real divergence going on here.

00:16:45: The system that we've just been talking about emerging and developing are perfecting in this horrible way, in the Caribbean across their eighteenth century is somewhat distinct from the development of what we think of as plantations in North America And they are many respects kind moving into divergent paths right around the coming of revolution.

00:17:07: This explains where Jefferson comes.

00:17:10: In the Caribbean, they have developed this scale and this profit system.

00:17:14: And then multiplying it across these islands that they've acquired but also very dependent as a result on The bottom line of sugar and they committed to the commodity of sugar at its price.

00:17:26: They made so much more money in some respects than North American planters who are primarily growing tobacco or in Carolina rice Caribbean planters by the middle of the eighteenth century.

00:17:38: The important thing to recognize is that many of the biggest and wealthiest of them are absentees, they're living in London.

00:17:45: some have even bought country houses on English countryside.

00:17:48: Many moved back to London.

00:17:50: Famously William Beckford who's a plantation owner has come back as Mayor of London.

00:17:56: These people are integrated into British society.

00:17:58: They have direct ties with parliament, connections So they have a lot more influence, and they are using that influence to shape their market.

00:18:09: A really good example of this in the seventeen sixties is there effort to get what was previously known as the molasses act adapted and changed into The Sugar Act which kind of protects Their Market.

00:18:21: it prevents North American colonists from trading with other European sugar islands like particularly the French Islands.

00:18:29: And so it's artificially, in some respects propping up the sugar price.

00:18:32: This is a merging of these really big businessmen and the Caribbean as planters with this state to get beneficial regulations.

00:18:40: North American planters don't have those connections or certainly not to the same extent.

00:18:46: So what you're seeing then?

00:18:47: Is a divergence in perspective because tobacco in particular is really struggling in the seventeen sixties and seventeen seventies.

00:18:55: The price of tobacco is falling, it's always been a difficult market to maintain because its pretty easy commodity grow when you can go on a lot places.

00:19:03: And so the tobacco markets really struggling that tobacco planters themselves have much less control over their market.

00:19:10: most at the tobacco by the middle of the eighteenth century had been sort of transitioned into trade but primarily ran through Glasgow and through Scottish merchants many if them connecting that she continental European market bundling up large quantities of relatively low quality tobacco and selling it onto Continental markets.

00:19:29: And so these Scottish merchants have set-up stores in the Chesapeake, they've run ChesaPeak planters into debt because price is falling.

00:19:37: They're able to wholesale buy their tobacco direct from them and cut them out.

00:19:41: So there's a lot economic problems with the tobacco trade less so than rice trade which still kind of growing and emerging.

00:19:49: So we think about this as a Chesapeake story, it's the story of a crisis at the tobacco market which is not anywhere near as protected as the British Caribbean sugar market.

00:19:59: so Virginia planters then are increasingly in debt looking To be honest, they have been thinking about it right the way through in the seventeenth century.

00:20:13: And some of my own work has sort of traced the way that they had always been anxious about the nature of tobacco as a simple extractive commodity and the idea that all your purpose for The Empire was to just grow tobacco and export it.

00:20:28: so you didn't have an internal economy but after the end-of-the-seventh year's war returned back into that big way and are really anxious what this means.

00:20:37: So somebody like Jefferson is in his attitudes towards the slave trade.

00:20:41: More enslaved people are being brought here, sold which is causing enslavers as planters to rack up more debt and produce a tobacco commodity at price of which it's falling.

00:20:51: And they're expanding toward the mountains, towards the Shenandoah growing more and more tobacco.

00:20:57: He sees this as an unsustainable economic model.

00:21:00: They really resentful Scottish merchants who are in their midst and they are really kind of trying to turn their economy, diversify it away from tobacco.

00:21:10: The most famous example is George Washington himself who's in this period trying to transition his economy away form tobacco farming at Mount Vernon almost entirely growing wheat which they see as a different commodity that will rely less on enslaved people.

00:21:25: And they are particularly, as I said, resentful of these Scottish merchants.

00:21:33: They're resistant to the debt and even going to the extent like trying cut them out of trade ultimately in lead up to revolution means that small towns or trading ports where Scottish merchants become a real flash point for the plantar class in Virginia, to the extent that by the end of seventeen seventy five they actually are going to attack and burn down the city of Norfolk because they claim it has all these Scottish loyalist merchants.

00:21:59: And so this is the biggest city in North America that gets destroyed as basically entirely destroyed by The Revolution.

00:22:05: It burnt completely to ground on its own done by the Patriots themselves what they see as an exploitative economic model.

00:22:19: And so these planters then are questioning the whole nature of the plantation system in a way that Caribbean planters just don't need to, at least not yet because

00:22:42: if you're just narrowly taking the position of a planter in southern colonies, whereas it's not an economic crisis on the Caribbean islands because they are producing different commodities entirely and for some reason have been able to manipulate market that will always remain profitable.

00:23:03: So giving up their influence over their market manipulation at London would would be much worse for them than what it would be, say a George Washington who might want to develop new commodity which then he could sell to whomever wanted not just other British colonies and not restricted.

00:23:23: So I'm beginning.

00:23:24: understand those differences but still seems like they have lot in common because if i remember correctly many of the islands had same problems after the Seven Years War with various regulations coming from King George and Parliament as The North American colonists did.

00:23:48: Is that correct?

00:23:50: Yes, there is certainly a lot of resentment an anger in the Caribbean about things like the stamp tax And the Tantan duties.

00:23:58: those resentments though for Caribbean planters.

00:24:01: They they have protests and they write letters Again, it's this crucial thing of having their own inside channel back to London.

00:24:12: They are able to articulate two authorities in London and they see the ability to pull the strings here.

00:24:18: They think okay well... ...they're satisfied by the idea that like if they passed the stamp tax we protested it.

00:24:26: then they removed it And say Well This is how the empire supposed work.

00:24:30: We don't need to worry about direct representation for the Caribbean.

00:24:34: The idea of virtual representation, the idea that the colonies are virtually represented by the fact their merchants and commercial interests all connected to Parliament in London.

00:24:44: For the Caribbean system works great!

00:24:46: I mean if you're a North American context then your listening reading about virtual representation thinking how on earth did they ever believe this was viable constitutional system?

00:24:56: Just look at the Caribbean these white elite planters saying yeah this is exactly how virtual representation work.

00:25:01: so it works out for us.

00:25:03: So they see these efforts to defeat the stamp tax and the hands-on duties as their system working exactly as it's supposed.

00:25:10: The North American colonists obviously are not going take that perspective because they see themselves less able to influence things in London.

00:25:19: But I do think that to say there are similarities, of course other core similarities in relation to the enslaved populations right here.

00:25:27: They're both dealing with large numbers of enslaved people and they're mixed.

00:25:30: so certainly other core commonalities.

00:25:34: Right i'm just still thinking about this relationship.

00:25:41: sort of look at the Caribbean and the North American Collins now from, as it were if we're sitting in London.

00:25:48: So is someone in London recognizing the profound difference between say The Colony Of Virginia And Jamaica?

00:25:57: Or Is this all just kind of lumped together As colonies over there?

00:26:03: No I do think that people In london are recognizing This distinction.

00:26:08: We see they recognize a debate between North American colonists and Caribbean colonists over the sugar act.

00:26:16: They are being bombarded if you were in London, in the ministry with interest groups speaking for both sides, speaking for what I shouldn't say both sides should think about this as multiple sites people speaking getting the benefit of that.

00:26:43: And then also southern mainland colonists who have got different horses in these fights, right?

00:26:49: Who are not tied to the sugar trade but who also have their own concerns about as we've seen with Jefferson and with the slave trade or so with a currency act because Virginia is trying to address some of these things by depreciating their own currency kind of all part and parcel of this debate about the nature of political economy, empire in this moment too.

00:27:13: So there are multiple sets of interest groups that they would have even coffee houses where they gather.

00:27:20: The Virginia Coffee House is different from the Caribbean Coffee Houses and the networks or agents which has a very well-developed system.

00:27:28: so it's not to say some people who've got just general view over colonies.

00:27:35: but If you were really making these decisions, if you are in the government departments.

00:27:39: You understood that you had actually a bunch of different colonial interests at play here by the seventeen seventies.

00:27:47: Yeah just contemporary perspective I'm reading this through would be like special interest groups or identity politics.

00:27:54: and i was wondering also to what extent Virginia planter is identifying as being virginian not british?

00:28:04: or a Jamaican planter is identifying as being Jamaican, and not North American.

00:28:10: Not just another colonial but Jamaican and British or just Jamaican or just British you know?

00:28:16: Just trying to work out that weird constellation of self-identification it's really tricky.

00:28:24: Yes yes It's definitely the case Of course.

00:28:27: And this where absenteeism comes in right because so many of these Caribbean planters are going back and forth quite a lot.

00:28:35: Or they are, in fact not even ever going to the Caribbean or... They would often go as young men maybe before they inherited the estate Go and visit spend a year or two there.

00:28:45: I mean this is broad generalization.

00:28:46: some of them never goes.

00:28:47: Some don't go back-and-forth regularly depending on how their own estate Is going How much money it's making.

00:28:54: There also then other class of sort of administrators Overseers Attorneys who manage these systems who are going back and forth, so there's a real integration here.

00:29:06: They see themselves as British as much as Caribbean.

00:29:10: And the Virginians are different in that respect.

00:29:13: they're going back to Europe.

00:29:15: many of them are going Back to train although more than actually go into Scotland because Because of those Scottish connections because of the Scottish merchants.

00:29:24: but they Are seeing themselves as Virginia right?

00:29:26: I think they have families.

00:29:28: this is where their tradition Virginia families by the time of The Revolution is already baked in.

00:29:35: What we would think about, by the nineteenth century as sort-of southern leading families.

00:29:39: big planters to carters for example you know who have had a bigger state and handed it down through multiple generations of families.

00:29:46: there's also a good deal of entail going on in Virginia.

00:29:49: scholars has pointed this out and recognized

00:29:51: that.

00:29:52: what's entail?

00:29:53: oh so entailers where You can basically In your will assign Your estate not To your children, but to your progeny going forward so that you're your son or daughter who inherits the estate Can't break it up.

00:30:09: They can't sell it.

00:30:10: they are not really the owners of It.

00:30:12: there's a guardians of it and so they all they do is pass it on to their Children.

00:30:16: what?

00:30:16: What it means as if its stops basically these large Plantation estates being broken up or sold into small pieces for profit.

00:30:24: it means they have to remain big Estates.

00:30:26: it's a way of kind of preserving this this one unified family, and it's a vestiture of feudalism really.

00:30:34: And it had been introduced in Virginia in the late seventeenth early eighteenth century and really kind of gains momentum there is entail in The Caribbean but its an important point that there are entailed estates.

00:30:47: so actually on the flip side Jefferson is famously opposed to entail.

00:30:51: once this end as part his effort modernize this Virginia economy he wants break up these bigger states go to a world of agrarian small farmers.

00:31:02: so this is part of the question about.

00:31:05: So if virginia is gonna move away from a plantation system what's it going be replaced with?

00:31:09: and you kind of commercializing will that looks more like the north which maybe people like madison are looking for or, The famous jeffersonian vision that we associate with the louisiana purchase and westward expansion witches lots of small independent farmers who are not as tied to the market.

00:31:27: So if you imagine, the plantation is something that it's tied in a subservient way and some respects dependent on British imperial systems You get this crisis in Virginia And really coming out of it...you have debate about.

00:31:40: well If your'e gonna do either cut yourself off more from the market which is sort of Jeffersonian independent small farmers less dependant upon a market Or are you going to move as kind of?

00:31:53: Madison, in fact really tries to push the Virginia economy and the seventeen eighties towards a more commercialized way which we're integrating with the Atlantic economy but in less subservient ways developing industries.

00:32:06: And your own local merchant community not dependent upon like Scottish or English merchants on those kinds.

00:32:14: Fascinating, you mentioned so much there.

00:32:16: and we're getting now kind of into the Declaration of Independence.

00:32:21: And The War Of Independence period.

00:32:23: So what your arguing is that already in the thought process of Jefferson and Madison and other founders as they are making a decision for all different reasons to declare independence the war has been going on for fifteen months.

00:32:43: They're already trying to imagine a world where they have their own flagged merchant marine, American ships.

00:32:53: These are no longer Virginian ships under the British Crown or Massachusetts ships under The British Crown.

00:32:59: There aren't any imagining a world were... ...they don't have to take orders about trading sugar and molasses with whomever-or not?

00:33:09: Or trading tobacco with whomever-not...?

00:33:11: The Declaration of Independence is also a declaration of economic commercial independence.

00:33:18: Would that be accurate?

00:33:21: Yes, I think they really see this as the moment where... the Chesapeake economy and I should sort-of say ChesaPeake.

00:33:28: Maryland planters are thinking similarly here in these similar terms.

00:33:32: They're seeing it an opportunity to transform their political economy In ways there already trying with transition to wheat with some of these other things, but this is part of what they see as an opportunity to sort-of throw off the shackles.

00:33:45: And it's no surprise that like... It is the Potomac where people like George Washington in particular see this expansion happening right?

00:33:53: They want to dredge The Potomak and make it navigable inland!

00:33:57: Its Virginia planters who are really invested in westward land speculation.

00:34:02: its Virginia has the biggest Westwood Land claims.

00:34:04: Of course eventually there gonna give those up at the constitution, but they have big westward land areas.

00:34:11: People like Washington are really invested in land speculation and envisioning a new economic future that is tied to these rivers and particularly to Potomac because I see it as most westerly reaching and connects with Shenandoah into mountains.

00:34:26: Ultimately of course we know that's in the nineteenth century development of Hudson as main artery.

00:34:32: then Erie Canal will be what unlocks internal Westwood trade.

00:34:37: if you're sitting in the seventeen seventies and seventeen eighties, You are seeing the Potomac as potentially a major artery to the west.

00:34:45: A new economic future for Virginia which is of course ultimately not where things work out.

00:34:52: but we can see these planters trying think about what their future might be

00:34:58: And it seems just obvious.

00:35:00: Concerns about westward expansion would never be relevant for someone in a small island like Jamaica or Barbados, or anything.

00:35:09: Their expansion had reached its limits years before.

00:35:16: there was pretty much nothing else that they could do.

00:35:19: They developed this very sort of efficient economy of sugar and you can't squeeze any more out.

00:35:28: the idea of becoming stronger and more independent was basically impossible.

00:35:34: Yes, nor did they want to right?

00:35:36: And this is the important point that they recognize in our comfortable with the position that there are in an with a broader political economic calculus involved here.

00:35:45: like they famously very resistant at the end of the seven years war put their thumb on scale for the British keeping Canada, as opposed to acquiring Guadalupe and The Exchange.

00:35:58: Because they say we don't want any more sugar islands right?

00:36:04: We already have all of these incentives in the British system To make the sugar were growing profitable And so why would you want more sugar territory?

00:36:14: Right I mean eventually that will shift a little bit but They really are quite concerned about keeping their monopoly on the sugar trade and limiting expansion.

00:36:22: And this is where I think we see both in Carolina, the existence of being on the North American continent and receiving larger numbers of immigrants and new colonists every year.

00:36:37: This deeper sense of mission or expanding westwards as part of a deeper civilizing mission that they have had since the seventeenth century continues to shape the way they think.

00:36:51: And also, of course constantly dealing with indigenous nations on the boundaries means that there's always pressure to push and there is this kind-of way in which new migrants are going too even if Virginians didn't want to move westwards.

00:37:05: and Carolinians actually are somewhat resistant right?

00:37:09: The wealthy elites you can grow rice in land anyway so their quite happy.

00:37:15: the blood of migrants pushing westwards is always drawing these places, Carolina and Virginia into negotiations with indigenous people.

00:37:23: Into conflict with Indigenous

00:37:24: People.".

00:37:25: And that's always then on their mind like they recognize this plantation system.

00:37:30: it's not the end-of-the story right?

00:37:32: You can imagine different futures if you're in the Caribbean or Jamaica by the seventeen seventies.

00:37:38: The System Is What It Is!

00:37:40: That kind how its going to remain.

00:37:42: by and large Of course abolition is, by this point brewing in Britain and in public discourse.

00:37:51: And we see it there in Jefferson and these kinds of things.

00:37:54: but the economic system that sugar is going to be how you make your money.

00:37:58: It's pretty much locked-in in ways that its not at the North

00:38:01: Super interesting.

00:38:02: That helps me understand again that passage that we began with.

00:38:07: There was a middlepoint The Virginia or Carolina planters could imagine between ending the slave trade but carrying on with slavery.

00:38:17: that was much different from the Caribbean model, which cannot survive without The Slave Trade and Slavery because there are no other options.

00:38:27: You can't grow anything else you Can't make money doing anything else.

00:38:31: they're locked into this system And it has No opportunity to expand or change Since we brought up slavery again.

00:38:39: maybe We can just talk about the importance of these developments as the revolution is starting in the first year or so before The Declaration of Independence comes out, how slavery and fears about freed slaves.

00:38:55: And

00:38:56: fears about slave revolts are affecting Virginia on the Carolinas in Maryland one hand also this being understood by the sugar islands let's call them and the Caribbean.

00:39:09: yes The reality here is that in both of these systems you are keeping a large percentage of your population by force, it's always going to be the back-of-the-minds of planters and all white settler members.

00:39:29: Some scholars have noted slavery as almost constant state warfare.

00:39:35: And so you would think, well as I alluded to a little earlier that like maybe that creates the certain degree of commonality.

00:39:41: In terms of culture and spread of information.

00:39:43: it certainly does right?

00:39:44: News about a slave revolt in The Caribbean is certainly going make its way back to Virginia ,to Carolina.

00:39:50: they're gonna be acutely sensitive to it .

00:39:51: They are going to be reading and thinking about it and understanding themselves as recognizing themself's being into same business.

00:39:57: but cuts very opposite directions.

00:39:59: infact on the ground the incentives line up In fact, oddly in opposite directions right because.

00:40:07: In the Caribbean because they number of enslaved people because you've got this absenteeism and a lot of us being managed by small class of attorneys and white overseers an then even like insane people kind on the second tier management.

00:40:22: even managing these systems The ratios of unsafe people to the white population in the islands is very skewed.

00:40:29: It's not quite so much in Barbados, but once you get to Jamaica this skew was pretty big...

00:40:34: What are we talking about?

00:40:35: Like five-to-one or

00:40:37: ten-to one...?

00:40:38: Five-to One also at six or seven or eight two on in Jamaica maybe in Barbadoes But by time you got places like the Leeward Islands almost Ten To One.

00:40:49: So ten in safe people for every one White person on these islands Every free person even just every three persons because of course there's some free people of color small numbers of them.

00:40:59: But so you've got like a ten to one ratio almost in those situations.

00:41:03: these People who are managing and holding the system together?

00:41:07: Realize that they're only doing.

00:41:08: So by sheer force of brutality They are never really able to be under the illusion That they are managing our kind of peaceful community, they might say that but they recognize that it's only sheer force and terror, then we had seen that in the seventeen sixties.

00:41:23: In Jamaica in particular with a massive they've uprising known as tacky's revolt that have taken place over the course of seventeen sixty one that has swept across large parts of jamaica.

00:41:34: The violence or suppression is indicative of this sense that they see themselves needing to use force and crucially than they recognize They are desperately trying to get more white settlers, actually.

00:41:47: There's all these rules in the Caribbean saying that you can't bring in more enslaved people unless you also import one white servant or overseer like they've been trying this for a hundred years but by time of revolution basically concluded there were making enough money so they could afford to bankroll the British government and send troops back them up right?

00:42:09: So building garrisons forts, right?

00:42:13: They are enthusiastically encouraging the British army to station more and more people there.

00:42:19: And when you think about that in comparison to the North American colonies at their concerns about quartering and they're concerned about a standing army You see two totally different like so in the Caribbean.

00:42:29: Like they love a standing Army!

00:42:32: They wouldn't exist without...they recognize they wouldn't exists.

00:42:35: Their system-their money would not exist Without a Standing Army.

00:42:38: In The North American Colonies A standing army is still seen as this dangerous force because enslaved people are still only in Virginia about sort of less than half the population, even at the peak in middle-of-the-eighteenth century.

00:42:52: And so local militias are understood to be able to keep down enslaved people and keep down slave rebellions—and most to the extent in The Carolinas too!

00:43:01: But crucially —to come back to your question eventually— crucially that means they're terrified about efforts to encourage enslaved.

00:43:12: Therefore, they are constantly on guard about this and see the British government not as on their side in suppressing slave rebellion but potentially utilizing slave rebellion against them.

00:43:21: And this is a fear that has circulated through the early seventeen seventies and sort of percolate it in their minds.

00:43:28: Then comes to fruition as relationships between The General Assembly.

00:43:32: Seventy-five, it eventually comes to fruition in November of seventeen.

00:43:40: seventy five when Dunmore issues his famous proclamation that offers InSafe people freedom if they will flee to the British lines.

00:43:47: This is not something that Dunmore himself has dreamt up.

00:43:49: as I said this is in popular discourse and its lots have enslaved People themselves Recognizing this dynamic an opportunity and fleeing to Dunmore.

00:43:57: That encourages him to do this.

00:43:59: but Dunmore's Proclamation Is then seen As this real challenge.

00:44:03: And that part about Dunwall's proclamation and about enslaved people being encouraged to rise up and rebel by the British government, does it eventually of course still make into the final version of The Declaration Of Independence?

00:44:14: That anxiety.

00:44:16: So planters then all across the English world are anxious about potential for slave rebellions but actually leads them in totally different attitudes.

00:44:24: So what's totally different at use was the British state, one both encouraging and desiring more British presence.

00:44:30: And the other seeing the British presence as potentially a disruptive

00:44:33: threat.".

00:44:34: I've never had such a wonderfully clear explanation of these complexities.

00:44:40: so thank you for that!

00:44:42: Let's move on to uh...one of our final points here.

00:44:46: we started our talk today by discussing that famous deleted passage which talks about the horrors of slavery.

00:44:56: Of course, it took The American Civil War in the nineteenth century to finally do away with slavery.

00:45:02: We also see from that deletion That this was something people were thinking About.

00:45:07: the planters In Virginia and Carolinas Were thinking quite a bit.

00:45:13: How did the victory of United States of America in the war of independence fundamentally change the plantation economies in the United States, but also in the Caribbean.

00:45:32: So that's a great question.

00:45:33: That is all about us kind of judging The extent to which?

00:45:48: On one level, as we've talked about it breaks this relationship with Britain and its sort of system of trade.

00:46:03: And therefore gives particularly Virginians to some extent Carolinians the opportunity to kind of reframe that relationship.

00:46:11: so As We already mentioned there have been Some debate going on in Virginia Already About The Direction This Should Take A Jeffersonian Small Farmers Or More Industrial Development More Commercial Development as alternative directions or a doubling down on the existing plantation system with the ability to kind of more directly control their own market.

00:46:32: So there's a whole bunch of opportunities here, this also have course these questions about the nature of slavery and what role it is going.

00:46:47: Pretty much exactly eighteen hundred about these questions of whether slavery does have a big role to play in their economic future.

00:46:53: There is all the lot provisions for individuals too manumit and save people.

00:46:59: there are some big projects that are contemplated Lafayette courses talking with George Washington famously about this question about weather.

00:47:07: he should manumitted his insane people.

00:47:10: this is the context in which Jefferson is going to like write and think a lot about the nature of what it means to manumit and save people.

00:47:17: So there's a lot of debate going on, they're... In fact, the largest sort of manumissions are talking about individuals who decide to manument.

00:47:23: three hundred plus enslaved people over the course of these decades.

00:47:28: so There are questions about that And potential directions that they could go in.

00:47:33: Fundamentally though It is going new commodities in the West.

00:47:39: that is going to change this as much as anything else.

00:47:46: It's actually a lot more complicated than this, but slavery.

00:47:57: and think about plantation systems, their potential to be replicated westwards.

00:48:01: Because rice grows only in the swampy soil along the coast of Carolina so there wasn't really a plantation commodity West-of-there at that time before the emergence of a full scale cotton economy And the Chesapeake as well.

00:48:13: you could grow tobacco further west but it was not going.

00:48:16: the situation with tobacco prices, and there were no more economies of scale in the tobacco industry.

00:48:21: So that was a dead end too.

00:48:22: it's cotton that really unlocks that and crucially and tragically Of course its cotton That is going to take away this concern about slavery In the Chesapeake in a separate way because It unlocks The emergence of the internal slave trade And the ability of chesapeak planters who have More enslaved people than they need.

00:48:40: They can transition to wheat and still Have a large enslaved labor force and then gradually they are able to sell those enslaved people in the emerging and developing internal slave trade into The Deep South, which in some respects solves in a horrible way their political economic dilemma that is roiling them in the seventeen sixties and seventies.

00:48:59: So not only does cotton kind of trigger a new wave of plantations across the south and solve the Carolinas sort of geographic problem about rice growing on the coast it also solves.

00:49:14: added to all of that, is the other development in the Caribbean.

00:49:17: Of course being The French Revolution and eventually then the problems that the partners of Saint-Domingue have with their enslaved population that eventually lead to slave rebellions and termination revolution by the turn of the nineteenth century In which the enslaved population of Saint Domingue was able to overthrow the french colonial power And declare themselves independent.

00:49:38: that Haitian revolution because Santa mean had been the very epicenter of Jamaica have been producing sugar and I've been needing those preferential tariffs in help to buffer their.

00:49:49: Sugar economy.

00:49:50: it was because the place is growing sugar cheaper more efficiently with even greater human cost.

00:49:56: wars Santa mean.

00:49:58: hence why the violence this ultimately plays out in a way that does in the Haitian Revolution, Sandaming is decimated by the Haitian Revolution, creates new opportunities for other places in the Caribbean.

00:50:14: For Cuba and the Spanish world And Jamaica gives a new or at least partial lease of life to the sugar industry that extends its ability to compete In The British World.

00:50:24: but also kind of fires up again this huge amount Of fear and anxiety about slavery and about race.

00:50:33: Even in places like Virginia where there had been this sort of tentative moves towards abolition.

00:50:37: it encourages a renewal of the restrictions of slavery, new slave codes and laws because anxiety about what's happened in Standard Ming.

00:50:46: The fact that this could happen is seen as being tied to the Haitian Revolution which brings this fear home for Virginians into the very city of Richmond at the capital of Virginia.

00:51:02: so then the Haitan revolution in some respects, the things that solve the problems.

00:51:09: The revolution can be understood as tied-in with these questions about the future of global economy and plantation within it.

00:51:17: And actually...the revolution shifts a little bit for North and for the Caribbean But It is really the Haitian Revolution and the emergence of cotton That are two events going to in some respect solve some problem.

00:51:33: Not the revolution itself

00:51:35: Although we shouldn't forget that many of the leaders or some of the leader's of The Haitian Revolution were part of the Chaucerre Voluntaire who fought for American independence As sort of agents of the French Empire and I think the Battle of Savannah.

00:51:51: Is there correct?

00:51:53: Yes, yes There had of course been these french connections to the revolution famously but the realities revolution means when it comes home to you in Sander Ming are very different than fighting for the American cause, in North America.

00:52:08: And so these questions then about The ideals of the Revolution Are going To have tons Of repercussions.

00:52:17: This is a rhetoric of the revolution as we famously know.

00:52:20: It's hard to contain and it spreads to the enslaved populations in mainland North America.

00:52:26: Many of them, of course fleeing too-to the British lines.

00:52:29: some of them are able to make it all the way to Nova Scotia after the war.

00:52:33: many of them of course die in the course of the war or are sacrificed by the British forces...many of them have driven out of The British Lines at Yorktown for example who had fled to the British in Virginia.

00:52:44: so In all these ways then These ideas about the revolution are filtering through to the black population, to the interstate population.

00:52:53: To all sorts of different people and the ripples revolution being felt.

00:52:57: but these other economic forces having knock-on effects And The Asian Revolution born in this ideals is going have a knock on economic effect that will reshape British Caribbean and North American colonies.

00:53:13: Great, and you've done such a wonderful job showing all of us how important plantation economies have been to the development of the Caribbean and The United States.

00:53:24: So thank you very much.

00:53:26: I ask all my guests at the end To reflect on the Declaration of Independence after two hundred fifty years.

00:53:32: so what are your main takeaways looking back in this?

00:53:35: Two hundred fifty Years In The Future?

00:53:39: Yes Thank You And Thank You For The Option Sheets.

00:53:41: talk about this today and to share these ideas, it's a great conversation.

00:53:45: I would say that we tend to read the Declaration as being about individual rights and liberties because of how it begins – we think from individuals' perspective.

00:53:57: Individuals' rights to self-government, individuals' concerns on ways in which the King has affected them….

00:54:04: What you can see if we dig below the surface is there are a whole bunch People are thinking about group interests and the status of their group, the status that they're business.

00:54:17: And there ability to shape an influence broader economic structures of empire.

00:54:25: so we tend to think about this as a victory for liberalism and for the individual.

00:54:31: but seventeen seventy six is much about revealing in some respects pulling mask off.

00:54:40: And it should remind us, I think that if we look at the revolution and look at these various powers in interest groups below the rhetoric of the individual.

00:54:49: We can see the way in which both The Revolution and Republicanism and Liberty are being birthed At the same moment as Capitalisms forces Are coming to shape the modern world?

00:55:05: That doesn't necessarily mean that capitalism is Individualistic.

00:55:09: like the rights of small producers, it doesn't have to end up in that sort of Jeffersonian idea.

00:55:14: there everybody is an individual and marketplace.

00:55:18: There's a lot of corporate small C not official corporations or though some are those too but small c kind of corporate interests.

00:55:25: planters interest different sets of planters' interests difference set economic actors And in some ways our understanding of The Revolution over the past fifty years of scholarship both with Republican turn-in scholarship we saw from this nineteen seventies and other newer ways of understanding race, class and gender in the revolution has taken away.

00:55:46: The way in which there are big structural economic forces here that our birthing capitalism at the same moment as the Revolution and those two things are interconnected but not In ways that mean that Capitalism is always inherently tied to liberalism or is inherently tied individual rights.

00:56:09: they are actually.

00:56:10: Intensity interconnected in intertwined and there a interest groups here that acting in seventeen seventy six behind the declaration for our own moment right now, which we're dealing with politics of various interests groups and various sets of naked power politics as much as he forces all intellectual liberalism democracy the powers of the individuals right to vote we recognize that there are all these other forces.

00:56:41: These corporate interests this big businesses that are almost as big is a state write people who have disproportionate influence because they run big corporations that can tell governments what do you and these kinds things then were wrestling with this.

00:56:53: if it's new i'm really in this conversation get into the east india company who of course also playing a big role here.

00:56:59: big corporation speak economic interest.

00:57:01: big Forces are at play in seventeen seventy six and the plantation is one of those.

00:57:06: And it's in this moment of crisis and division and debate.

00:57:10: But all of those forces Are shaping behind?

00:57:13: The declaration of independence, and if we understand that and get back to that can get back too some Of those real structural political economic debates of seventeen seventy-six.

00:57:24: then I think we might be in a better position Wrestle with the realities that we're dealing with now when some of those ideals behind those individualistic ideas behind the revolution democracy and republicanism seem like they are.

00:57:38: Struggling an weird trying to pack them together, you have to recognize what they were doing at this point too.

00:57:44: it wasn't a moment where they through all of that went for a sort of vision, individual rights and liberties above everything.

00:57:51: They were also wrestling with these forces And they've always been there from the beginning.

00:57:55: So as we look back today at The Revolution We have to understand That the world that we live in At the moment With the powers of big business The influence of forces like K Street On American politics Is actually no different From the World Of Seventeen Seventy Six And that if we recognize that about the world of seventeen seventy six, We maybe have a more usable past for dealing with The complex realities of our modern world than If C-seventeen seventy six is purely a caricature Of dr.

00:58:27: and air liberalism.

00:58:29: Professor Paul Messelway

00:58:31: Thank you very much.

00:58:32: thank

00:58:32: you.

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