3

Blackburn, Robin.  The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776-
1848. New York: Verso, 1988.


     Robin Blackburn wrote Overthrow of Colonial Slavery to

demonstrate the complex, non-linear, and frequently

paradoxical inter-relationships between economic, political

and social spheres during the dismantling of New World

colonial slavery.  Blackburn rejects previous scholarship

that assigns simple causal relationships to the rise of both

slavery and capitalism, or to the rise of bourgeois

abolitionism and the decline of slavery.  Instead he offers

an intersubjective history based on Marxist concepts.

     Blackburn relies almost entirely on secondary sources

for his work, excepting the odd reference to the attitudes

of individuals found in their writings (e.g. Hume,

Loustalot, et al).1  Many of the secondary works appear to

be in French (a few are in Spanish or Portuguese), so

Blackburn may have a background in the Romance languages.

     Overthrow of Colonial Slavery begins with a chapter

that reviews the seminal influences on New World anti-

slavery.  Even though earlier European thought was accepting

of slavery for its civilizing (!) influence, some early

opposition was found in Bodin and Montesquieu (more vehement

attack came later from Wallace and Millar).2  Blackburn

traces popular suspicion of slaveholders to the middle ages,

and cites both fear of being enslaved and the lopsided

influence of powerful local slaveowners.3  Cities, with

their "stadtluft macht frei" reputation, were particular

centers of anti-slavery sentiment.  Having located previous

anti-slave sentiment in its political and geographical

context, Blackburn keeps it there for the rest of his work.

     The next section, comprised of the second and third

chapters, surveys contemporary anti slavery in the

Transatlantic world.  Britain, following Marx and Weber,

Britain is associated with Early Capitalism or modern

statehood, respectively, and anti-slavery came to the fore

in the midst of imperial crisis that shook that social and

political system.  The new world colonies had provided a

"safety valve" for internal pressures, but also set up

internal power-center tensions.4

     In America, the universalist and Enlightened nature of

the new government was already in tension with slave-

holding.  Although denying a modern sense of racism,

Blackburn notes that America was, in some opinion, reserved

for Europeans.5  Although the political process involved in

the break from the Empire offered some hope of canonical

refutation of slavery, none was realized.  Blackburn holds

that discourse such as that of the Constitutional Convention

marginalized abolitionism, and provided slaveholding powers

in the South with a stronger voice.  This American example

of tolerance to slavery would influence the rest of the

hemisphere.6 The last part of the section deals with

abolitionism in Britain (leading up to the emancipation law

of 1793, having little influence in North America) and

France, whose own rapid slave trade growth contributed to

     the instability of its state.7

     The third section details the destruction and

rebuilding of power centers in the post-revolutionary

"colonies", including the (to Blackburn) all-critical

Caribbean uprisings that once again set British forces

against French, and witnessed the rise of hybrid Afro-

European leaders like Toussaint.  Haiti, which Blackburn

believes key, leaned heavily on the Toussaint example.

     The fourth section highlights the complex, non-linear

relationships between slavery, capitalism, and abolitionism

in Spanish, French, and American slavery.  This massive

section of narratives never coalesces into analysis or meta-

narrative.  In Blackburn's own words, the "paradoxical

correlation poses a major challenge to historical

explanation (read: we do not know what to make of this, but

here it is anyway)."8

     The droning, densely-packed, and exhaustive nature of

this work is not unusual for works in the Marxist vein.

Thankfully, there was relatively little cliometric analysis

of economic or demographic data, which Marxist authors seem

to appreciate more than others.  Reader reaction to

Overthrow of Colonial Slavery may be similar to zombified

expressions of readers of Portuguese Empire.  Both were

crammed with every possibly-relevant detail, and seemed much

longer than their actual length.  Not surprisingly, neither

work shows up on a quick WWW search of recommended reading

lists, except for university-level classes.  Both seem to be

completely ignored by the lay market, unlike the popular

delight in Cod.  If Blackburn wanted his work to be useful

to the student, however, the book would benefit from a real

index (there are no listings for such important subjects as

"Jacobin") and bibliography in the end matter.





jason carr

_______________________________
1 Pages 154, 208.
2 Pages 35-36.
3 Pages 36-37.
4 Page 77,79.
5 Page 111.
6 Page 128.
7 Page 164.  Compare to the earlier statement that slavery
made British colonialization profitable but destabilized the
state.  Hegel, Hegel, Hegel.
8 Page 30.

http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/transatlantic/