Robin Blackburn

In 1770 a handful of European nations ruled the Americas, drawing from them a stream of products, both everyday and exotic. Some two and a half million black slaves, imprisoned in plantation colonies, toiled to produce the sugar, coffee, cotton, ginger and indigo craved by Europeans. By 1848 the major systems of colonial slavery had been swept away either by independence movements, slave revolts, abolitionists or some combination of all three. How did this happen?

Robin Blackburn’s history show more captures the complexity of a revolutionary age in a compelling narrative. In some cases colonial rule fell while slavery flourished, as happened in the South of the United States and in Brazil; elsewhere slavery ended but colonial rule remained, as in the British West Indies and French Windwards. But in French St. Domingue, the future Haiti, and in Spanish South and Central America both colonialism and slavery were defeated. This story of slave liberation and American independence highlights the pivotal role of the "first emancipation" in the French Antilles in the 1790s, the parallel actions of slave resistance and metropolitan abolitionism, and the contradictory implications of slaveholder patriotism.

The dramatic events of this epoch are examined from an unexpected vantage point, showing how the torch of anti-slavery passed from the medieval communes to dissident Quakers, from African maroons to radical pirates, from Granville Sharp and Ottabah Cuguano to Toussaint L’Ouverture, from the black Jacobins to the Liberators of South America, and from the African Baptists in Jamaica to the Revolutionaries of 1848 in Europe and the Caribbean. show less

Questions such as “Why did slavery flourish and thrive in the New World about the same time it virtually disappeared in the Old World,�€? and “Why did slavery acquire racial trappings,â€? constitute two of Robin Blackburn’s main themes in The Making of New World Slavery. Blackburn methodically answers these questions in his richly detailed study that examines slavery as it existed in the Old World and traces its emergence in the Western Hemisphere. Most show more importantly, he analyzes the transformation of slavery from a relatively mild, though far from ideal, variety of exploitation of one group of people by another into the grindingly oppressive form in which it appeared in the Americas, where it was characterized by little hope of survival or manumission, a future which offered either death or continued slavery, and, above all, vicious racial divisions.
Blackburn points out that Old World slavery usually depended upon the capture of slaves from other tribes or groups. Defeated enemies became or supplied slaves; similarly, one’s own group was just as exposed to the possibility of enslavement should the fortunes of battle prove adverse. One did not enslave one’s own people; conversely, slavery did not rest entirely on the issue of race. Any other culture, tribe, clan, etc., provided sufficient difference to permit one group to enslave the other. While modern readers may see it as Greeks enslaving Greeks, to the ancients, the discrepancy between an Athenian and a Spartan could hardly be exaggerated. Moreover, Blackburn demonstrates that slavery did not imply a lack of hope for future freedom. Slaves often bought or earned freedom through years of faithful service. In addition, their children did not necessarily automatically become slaves. Finally, Blackburn observes that with the appearance of Christianity, the Church discouraged Christians from enslaving other Christians, thus reducing the spread and continuation of the practice for most of Europe.
However, as Europeans extended their reach into the Middle East, Africa and across the Atlantic, a combination of conditions coalesced which set the stage for the resurgence of slavery. They found non-Christian cultures that significantly differed from Europeans. Furthermore, Islamic and African peoples frequently engaged in slavery themselves. The timing of these encounters happened to promote slavery and to encourage Europeans to see it as a reasonable choice. The Age of Discovery and Exploration largely coincided with the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Highly charged religious attitudes of the time created conditions whereby “othersâ€? were demonized. At a time when one group of Christians could torture and burn other Christians alive, seeing Blacks or Amerindians as “othersâ€? hardly seems a stretch. Blackburn suggests that the extreme “othernessâ€? of these people at a time when Europeans insisted on religious and social consistency set the stage for their enslavement.
Concomitantly, the development of plantations in the Western Hemisphere caused an upsurge in the need for manpower. While Europeans were perfectly willing to force indigenous Americans to work the mines and plantations, the Amerindians themselves proved both mentally intractable and physically unreliable, thereby useless as manpower. Europeans found Africans physically fit for the grueling work, while African tribal leaders conspired to supply Europeans with a seemingly limitless stream of warm bodies to work the plantations.
Blackburn shows how Europeans handily jettisoned their moral compunction in light of the profits that drove them to commodify their fellow humans. The regularization of labor processes, the distancing of the worker from the items he or she consumes and the commodification of humans all manifest in the plantation system and all became elements of the incipient Industrial Revolution. He illustrates that other methods of operating the plantations could have been employed with less human cost. Blackburn argues that the long-term profits without slavery would have been greater.
Blackburn explores the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and English experience in the development of slavery. He shows Europeans conflicted over the desire to control and limit slavery and their overriding need for manpower. He demonstrates that the plantation system formed helped fuel the Industrial Revolution both as a model for regularization and mechanization of work and as a creator and supplier of large markets of consumers and commodities.
Blackburn’s Marxist slant is evident throughout the book, yet it does not mar or detract. He tries to balance his arguments and present a broad view. While he eventually comes down heavily against European capitalism that engaged in more than three centuries of slavery, his indignation and disgust seems justifiable. show less

Robin Blackburn’s documentary history, “An Unfinished Revolution” is an interesting look at the convergence of Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx’s views on the United States’ Civil War and its aftermath. Lincoln, the first president elected from the new Republican Party, a party formed with input from Charles Fourier, a French Socialist who worked as Marx’s editor and with many immigrant German members who had been students of Marx, was dedicated to stopping the spread of slavery show more into any more Federal territories. Marx saw the end of chattel slavery as the first step in freeing all workingmen from capitalist wage slavery. As an economist Marx knew that confining slavery would kill it. Virginia had already made it illegal to import slaves from other states. Like any other commodity if supply exceeded demand the price would drop and the slavocracy’s human capital would be like gold transformed into tin. Marx’s predictions of the possible consequences of “Sessica”, as Marx called the Confederacy, winning and of strategy needed for the Union to win are impressive. Popular opinion was that the Union needed to surround and crush the Confederacy. Marx argued that capturing its center, George, would lead to victory.

Unlike most documentary histories I am familiar with where each document is preceded by a short explanation Blackburn has put all the documents together in the second half of the book and uses a 100 page introduction to present his thesis. Lincoln’s war was only the first half of a struggle that continued in the form of labor unrest in the north after the Confederacy’s defeat on the battlefield. Documents by Thomas Fortune who explains just how wage slavery is worse than when he was property of a slave master and Lucy Parson’s speech at the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World, (IWW), explains that the struggle will not be easy but it must go on, offer much support to Blackburn’s argument and the quote from historian Eric Forner that provides the book with its title, the Civil War and Reconstruction are America’s unfinished revolution.

Overall the book is very readable and thought provoking. It is a scholarly work but the lack of any statistical evidence, I admit statistics are needed but they frequently cause my eyes to glaze over and my mind to wonder, makes it is as accessible as many popular histories. I only have two issues with the book. First, the lack of an index is inexcusable in the computer age. Second, rather than separating the documents according to author and type it seems to me that a chronological arrangement would make it easier for the reader to follow the arguments. show less

Most countries face the future with an ageing population, yet most governments are cutting back on pensions and the care services needed by the elderly. Robin Blackburn exposes the perverse reasoning and special interests which have combined to produce this nonsensical state of affairs. This updated paperback edition of Age Shock includes a new preface explaining why the credit crunch and eurozone crisis have had such a devastating impact and outlining a way to guarantee decent pensions and show more care provision. show less