The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World by Katherine Johnston (review)

IF 1.1 2区 历史学 Q1 HISTORY
J. Chaplin
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Abstract

At the end of The Nature of Slavery, Katherine Johnston concludes that “in the history of the development of African slavery in the Americas, climate played a minor role” (188). The statement may surprise some, including scholars of slavery and of environment. But the book bears out the claim. Johnston means not that assertions about climate played no role in the history of enslavement but that climate itself barely did. This distinction between what enslavers said and what they believed about climate is the centerpiece of the book. “Slavery’s stakeholders developed and manipulated the climatic defense of racial slavery despite their experiences, not because of them,” Johnston argues, “in the same way that theories of biological race are groundless and yet have caused incalculable harm” (4). Environment had a visible presence within the justifications white people offered for enslaving Black people for profit—though, Johnston establishes, not at the very start of colonization, only once it was well underway in the eighteenth century. In the 1960s and 1970s, Philip D. Curtin, Winthrop D. Jordan, and David Brion Davis identified Europeans’ arguments that sub-Saharan Africans could perform hard work in hot climates without accepting their claims as true. Johnston’s book revisits this historiography, as well as more recent analyses of tropical environments and human health by Ikuko Asaka, Emily Senior, and Suman Seth. Johnston is more overt, however, in labeling assertions about climate “a myth about the rise of African slavery” (5). The myth had three interlocking claims: in early plantation regions, Africans and Europeans had observable health differences; Europeans suffered poorer health and could barely work; and Africans were healthier, stronger, and more productive. The book’s main finding is simple—these justifications were wrong, both factually and morally. The claims were factually misleading because they did not in any consistent way reflect the realities of health on plantations at the start of colonization. They were therefore morally compromised as ex post facto judgments. As Johnston argues, “planters’ climatic defense of racial slavery in the late eighteenth century became a retroactive explanation for its establishment in these colonies” (3).1
《奴隶制的本质:盎格鲁-大西洋世界的环境与种植园劳工》,凯瑟琳·约翰斯顿著(综述)
凯瑟琳·约翰斯顿在《奴隶制的本质》一书的结尾总结道,“在美洲非洲奴隶制的发展史上,气候起到了次要作用”(188)。这一声明可能会让一些人感到惊讶,包括研究奴隶制和环境的学者。但这本书证实了这一说法。约翰斯顿的意思并不是说关于气候的断言在奴役史上没有起到任何作用,而是气候本身几乎没有起到作用。奴隶们对气候的看法和看法之间的区别是这本书的核心。约翰斯顿认为:“奴隶制的利益相关者不顾他们的经历,而不是因为他们,发展和操纵了对种族奴隶制的气候防御,就像生物种族理论是毫无根据的,但却造成了不可估量的伤害一样”(4)。在白人为营利而奴役黑人的理由中,环境有着明显的存在——尽管约翰斯顿并非在殖民化之初就确立了这一点,而是在18世纪才开始的。在20世纪60年代和70年代,Philip D.Curtin、Winthrop D.Jordan和David Brion Davis认同了欧洲人的论点,即撒哈拉以南的非洲人可以在炎热的气候下辛勤工作,而不接受他们的说法。约翰斯顿的书重新审视了这一史学,以及浅冈一子、老艾米莉和苏曼·赛斯对热带环境和人类健康的最新分析。然而,约翰斯顿更公开地将有关气候的断言称为“关于非洲奴隶制兴起的神话”(5)。这个神话有三个相互关联的说法:在早期种植园地区,非洲人和欧洲人有明显的健康差异;欧洲人的健康状况较差,几乎无法工作;非洲人更健康、更强壮、更有生产力。这本书的主要发现很简单——这些理由在事实和道德上都是错误的。这些说法在事实上具有误导性,因为它们没有以任何一致的方式反映殖民开始时种植园的健康现实。因此,它们作为事后判决在道德上受到了损害。正如约翰斯顿所说,“18世纪末,种植园主对种族奴隶制的气候辩护成为了其在这些殖民地建立的追溯性解释”(3)。1
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.40
自引率
12.50%
发文量
52
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