Blood-Stained Sugar: Gender, Commerce and the British Slave-Trade Debates
2014; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 35; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0144039x.2014.927988
ISSN1743-9523
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Economic and Social Studies
ResumoAbstractConsumed most visibly at the tea table, slave-grown sugar symbolized the corrupting influence the 'world of goods' might have on consumers, especially women. This article examines the influence of contemporary debates about gender and commerce on the boycott of slave-grown sugar. In response to William Fox's popular tract, the movement adopted the gendered language of the tea ritual. By shifting the focus of the slave-trade debate to the tea table, supporters of abstention generated widespread support from Britons, including many who otherwise might not have participated in the boycott of slave-grown sugar. Notes[1] As quoted in Clare Midgley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1790–1870 (London: Routledge, 1992), 37.[2] Ian Haywood, Bloody Romanticism: Spectacular Violence and the Politics of Representation, 1776–1832 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 11; William Fox, An Address to the People of Great Britain on the Utility of Refraining from the Use of West India Sugar and Rum, 5th ed., corrected (London: M. Gurney and W. Darton, 1791), 4; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Lecture on Revealed Religion', in Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion, ed. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann (London: Routledge and Princeton University Press, 1971), 226.[3] Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1808), II: 347–50.[4] Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 42.[5] The Non-Slaveholder, May 1847.[6] T.H. Breen, 'Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the Eve of the American Revolution', The William and Mary Quarterly 50, no. 3 (July 1993): 488; Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 95; Karen Harvey, 'Men Making Home: Masculinity and Domesticity in Eighteenth-Century Britain', Gender and History 21, no. 3 (November 2009): 520–40. See also Thomas L. Haskell, 'Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 1', in The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation, ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 107–35 and 'Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 2', in The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation, ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 136–60; John Ashworth, 'The Relationship Between Capitalism and Humanitarianism', in The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation, ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 180–99; Clare Midgley, 'Slave Sugar Boycotts, Female Activism and the Domestic Base of British Anti-Slavery Culture', Slavery and Abolition 17, no. 3 (December 1996): 150–2. Midgley, building on the arguments of Haskell and Ashworth, suggests that the rise of consumer society with its concomitant emphasis on individual choice was necessary for the development of the abstention campaign. The historiography of the consumer revolution is quite extensive. For the most useful works, see Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982); John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (New York: Routledge, 1993); Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Ann Smart Martin, Buying into the World of Goods: Consumers in Backcountry Virginia (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Ann Smart Martin, 'Makers, Buyers, and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework', Winterthur Portfolio 28, no. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 1993): 141–57; Cary Carson, 'The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand?', in Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 483–697.[7] Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, 5.[8] Ferdinand M. Bayard, Travels of a Frenchman in Maryland and Virginia with a Description of Philadelphia and Baltimore in 1791 or Travels in the Interior of the United States, to Bath, Winchester, in the Valley of the Shenandoah, etc., etc. During the Summer of 1791, trans. Ben C. McCary (Williamsburg, VA: Edwards Brothers, 1950), 1. For more about Bayard's American tour, see also Warren R. Hofstra, The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 336–7.[9] Bayard, Travels of a Frenchman, 47.[10] Beth Carver Wees, English, Irish, and Scottish Silver at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1997), 267–8; Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, 19–69; Rodris Roth, Tea Drinking in Eighteenth Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage, Bulletin 225, Paper 14, Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1961), 66; Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 67, 112–3; Clare Midgley, Feminism and Empire: Women Activists in Imperial Britain (New York: Routledge, 2007), 46; Jennifer L. Anderson, Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); Carole Shammas, 'The Domestic Environment', Journal of Social History 14, no. 1 (Fall 1980): 3–24.[11] Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, 22; Peter Motteux, A Poem in Praise of Tea (London: Printed for J. Tonson, 1712), in Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale, available from http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.baylor.edu/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=txshracd2488&tabID=T001&docId=CW112994649&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE, 7 (accessed December 27, 2012); William Cowper, 'The Task, Book IV', in Cowper: Verse and Letters, ed. Brian Spiller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 464, 466.[12] Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator (London: A. Millar, W. Law, and R. Cater, 1775), II; 80; Joseph Addison, 'The Lover', no. 10, Thursday, March 18, 1714, in The Miscellaneous Works, in Verse and Prose, of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison (London: J. and R. Tonson, 1765), 2:348; Charles Jenner, Town Eclogues, 2nd ed. (London: T. Caddell, 1773), 11; The Tea Drinking Wife, and Drunken Husband (NewCastle upon Tyne: n.p., 1749), in Literary Representations of Tea and the Tea-Table, ed. Markman Ellis, vol. 1 of Tea and the Tea-Table in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Markman Ellis (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010), 165; and Karen Harvey, 'Barbarity in a Teacup? Punch, Domesticity and Gender in the Eighteenth Century', Journal of Design History 22 (2008): 211.[13] Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 206–8 and John Galt, The Annals of the Parish and the Ayrshire Legatees, with a Memoir of the Author (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1841), 11. See also Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, 34–6. Kowaleski-Wallace argues that the tea table conversation of working-class women is a form of resistance of patriarchal hierarchy as well as male economic and sexual control. Even though her rebellion operates only within her circle, it nonetheless suggests the subversive power of women's speech across class lines: women's voice retains the power to subvert discipline, to speak audibly of needs and desires.[14] Jonas Hanway, A Journal of Eight Days Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston upon Thames; Through Southampton, Wiltshire, &c. with Miscellaneous Thoughts, Moral and Religious; in a Series of Sixty-Four Letters: Addressed to Two Ladies of the Partie. to Which Is Added, An Essay on Tea, Considered as Pernicious to Health, Obstructing Industry, and Impoverishing the Nation: With an Account of Its Growth, and Great Consumption in These Kingdoms (London: H. Woodfall, 1756), 244–5, 263; Sussman, Consuming Anxieties, 25–31; Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, 19–37.[15] Eliza Haywood, The Tea-Table; Or, a Conversation Between Some Polite Persons of Both Sexes, at a Lady's Visiting Day. Wherein are Represented the Various Foibles, and Affectations, which Form the Character of an Accomplish'd Beau, or Modern Fine Lady (London: J. Roberts, 1725), 1; The Tea Drinking Wife, and Drunken Husband, 165; Edward Young, Eliza Haywood as quoted in Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, 30; Coleridge, 'Lecture on Revealed Religion', 226.[16] House of Commons, Select Committee Appointed to Take the Examination of Witnesses Respecting the African Slave Trade, An Abstract of the Evidence Delivered Before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, in the Years 1790 and 1791; On the Part of the Petitioners for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (Edinburgh: Glasgow and Edinburgh Societies Instituted for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1791), 70–2; Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in The Vindications: The Rights of Men, The Rights of Woman, ed. D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Literary Texts, 1997), 79.[17] Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in The Vindications: The Rights of Men, The Rights of Woman, 282, 286, 287, 335.[18] Anna Letitia Barbauld, Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (London: T. Johnson, 1791).[19] Sussman, Consuming Anxieties, 29–31.[20] Timothy Whelan, 'William Fox, Martha Gurney, and Radical Discourse of the 1790s', Eighteenth-Century Studies 42, no. 3 (2009): 402; Fox, Address to the People of Great Britain, 12, 2–3. As Whelan argues, 'When all these printings are added together, W.B. Gurney's claim that Fox's Address reached a circulation of 250,000 copies is credible.' See also Charlotte Sussman, 'Women and the Politics of Sugar, 1792', Representations, no. 48 (Autumn 1994): 51. Compare these figures to Clarkson's estimate that in the first 13 months of the London Committee, the group prepared 51,432 copies of books and pamphlets and 26,526 copies of brief reports. See Clarkson, History, I: 571. Anti-sugar literature often used statistics such as these to support their claims. For example, see New York Journal and Patriotic Register, April 25, 1792. The newspaper reporter noted claims that if 37,000 British families would abstain from sugar, slavery would be abolished![21] See Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 78–9; Midgley, Women Against Slavery, 35. As Drescher argues, abstention 'brought women and children directly into the orbit of the campaign'. While abstention did bring women into the eighteenth-century abstention movement, abstainers such as William Fox did not specifically seek women's support, at least in the early weeks of the campaign.[22] [William Allen], The Duty of Abstaining from the Use of West India Produce, a Speech Delivered at Coach-Maker's Hall, Jan. 2, 1792 (London: T.W. Hawkins, 1792), 23; An Address to Her Royal Highness the Dutchess [sic] of York, Against the Use of Sugar (London: n.p., 1792), 10. In the fall of 1791, Princess Frederica of Prussia wed Prince Frederick, Duke of York. See H.M. Stephens, 'Frederick, Prince, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827)', rev. John Van der Kiste, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, October 2007, http://libproxy.uta.edu:2422/view/article/10139 (accessed February 28, 2008); Lady's Magazine, or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriate Solely to Their Use and Amusement, October 1791; Mary Birkett, A Poem Addressed to the African Slave Trade, Addressed to Her Own Sex, Part 1 (Dublin: Privately published, 1792), in Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, http://lit.alexanderstreet.com.ezproxy.baylor.edu/v4/services/get.pdf.aspx?id=1000084805 (accessed December 27, 2012), 13–15.[23] Brycchan Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760–1807 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 7–8; G.J. Barker-Benfeld, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 37; Kate Davies, 'A Moral Purchase: Femininity, Commerce and Abolition', in Women and the Public Sphere: Writing and Representation, 1700–1830, ed. Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Cliona O'Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 133–59; The Manchester Mercury, December 7, 1787; Hester Thrale, Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi), 1776–1809, ed. Katherine C. Balderston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), II: 714; Polinus, Gentleman's Magazine, July 1788, 598–9.[24] Hannah More, Slavery, a Poem (London: T. Cadell, 1788), http://libproxy.uta.edu:2132/servlet/ECCO (accessed May 30, 2009); Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility, 38–9, 84–8; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Lecture on the Slave Trade', in Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion, ed. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann (London: Princeton University Press, 1971), 249; Benjamin Flower, The French Constitution (London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1792), 453; Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 282. See also Sussman, Consuming Anxieties, 125–6; Moira Ferguson, Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670–1834 (New York: Routledge, 1992), 186–9.[25] Gentleman's Magazine, April 1789, 334; Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility, 90; Strictures on an Address to the People of Great Britain on the Propriety of Abstaining from West-India Sugar and Rum (London: T. Boosey, 1792), 4; European Magazine and London Review, March 1792; The Monthly Review, October 1791.[26] See Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility, 88: 'In the arsenal of anti-abolitionism, a strong critique of the sentimental nature of abolitionist discourse became one of the main weapons of the proslavery camp.'[27] An Answer to a Pamphlet Intituled [sic] An Address to the People of England Against the Use of West Indian Produce (Whitechapel: W. Moon, 1791), 4–7.[28] Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility, 124, 127, 130.[29] Richard Hillier, A Vindication of an Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Use of West India Produce. With Some Observations and Facts Relative to the Situation of the Slaves. In Reply to a Female Apologist for Slavery (London: M. Gurney, 1791), 3, 18; Midgley, Women Against Slavery, 26.[30] Answer to a Pamphlet Intituled [sic] An Address to the People of England Against the Use of West Indian Produce, 3.[31] Susan Staves, '"The Abuse of Title Pages": Men Writing as Women', in A Concise Companion to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Cynthia Wall (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 162–82; John Mullan, Anonymity: A Secret History of the English Language (London: Faber and Faber, 2007), 128–9.[32] Srividhya Swaminathan, Debating the Slave Trade: Rhetoric of British National Identity, 1759–1815 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009).[33] Birkett, Poem Addressed to the African Slave Trade, 15; Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, 41.[34] Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 193; Midgley, Women Against Slavery, 38–40; Drescher, Capitalism and Slavery, 79, 216–7, n. 47; Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 116–7.
Referência(s)