The arc of the moral universe

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 26, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 91-134

  Cohen, Joshua ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040866563     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.1997.tb00078.x     Document Type: Article

References (215)

1. The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Vintage, 1990), p. 188.
2. Cited in John W. Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), p. 437.
3. For philosophical endorsement of ethical explanations, see Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 509B;
4. G.W.F. Hegel, Lesser Logic, trans. William Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1892), paragraph 234.
5. Contemporary philosophical discussion of ethical explanations is set within the context of debates about moral realism and moral objectivity. See, among much else, Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), esp. Chap. 1;
6. Nicholas Sturgeon, "Moral Explanations," in David Copp and David Zimmerman, eds., Morality, Reason, and Truth: New Essays on the Foundations of Ethics (Totowa: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985), pp. 49-78;
7. Peter Railton, "Moral Realism," Philosophical Review 95, no. 2 (April 1986): 163-207;
8. Warren Quinn, "Truth and Explanation in Ethics," Ethics 96 (April 1986): 522-44;
9. Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 144ff.;
10. David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
11. Crispin Wright, Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), Chap. 5;
12. Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Moral Objectivity," in Gilbert Harman and Judith Jarvis Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Cambridge, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). I comment on the connections of my argument with this debate in the text at pp. 95-36.
13. Theodore Parker, The Relation of Slavery to a Republican Form of Government (Boston: William Kent and Company, 1858), p. 20. Strictly speaking, Williams and Parker make ethical predictions: they predict a change in a world, and base the predictions on norms of rightness. No doubt they would have embraced the claim that the North won because it was in the right.
14. The phrase "arc of the moral universe" or variants on it occur throughout King's writing and speeches. See Martin Luther King, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Washington (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), pp. 141, 207, 230, 277, 438.
15. According to Taylor Branch, the phrase comes from Theodore Parker. See Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 197n.
16. For suggestive discussion, see Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), Part 3;
17. and Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979).
18. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1965), Book 3.
19. G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1900).
20. Karl Marx, "Preface" to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,
21. and Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, German Ideology, in Robert Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), pp. 4-5, 146-200.
22. Quoted in David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861, completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 342. The passage comes from Lincoln's letter to Albert G. Hodges (April 4, 1864).
23. For criticism of explanations of the decline of ancient slavery in which religious morality plays a central role, see Keith Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Chap. 8;
24. Pierre Dockès, Medieval Slavery and Liberation, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 145-49;
25. G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London: Duckworth, 1981).
26. For recent debate on the complexities of assessing the contribution of moral convictions to modern abolitionism, see the debate between John Ashworth, David Brion Davis, and Thomas Haskell, in The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation, ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
27. On scientific moral realism, see Sturgeon, "Moral Explanations";
28. Brink, Moral Realism;
29. and especially Railton's excellent "Moral Realism."
30. Here I follow Crispin Wright's discussion of moral explanations and minimalism in Truth and Objectivity, Chap. 5.
31. For general discussions of the nature of slavery see Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, esp. p. 135, where he discusses the definition of slavery in the 1926 Slavery Convention organized by the League of Nations;
32. H. J. Nieboer, Slavery as an Industrial System, 2nd ed. (New York: Burt Franklin, 1910 [1971 Reprint]), Part I, Chap. 1;
33. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, Chaps. 1-3;
34. Dockès, Medieval Slavery, pp. 4-8;
35. Moses Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), Chap. 2;
36. Moses Finley, Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), Chaps. 6-9;
37. Igor Kopytoff and Suzanne Miers, "African Slavery as an Institution of Marginality," in Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), pp. 3-81;
38. "Slavery as an Institution: Open and Closed Systems," in James Watson, ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980);
39. Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Chap. 1;
40. James Oakes, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1990), Chap. 1.
41. The conception of slavery I present in the text draws as well on the discussion of "property relations" in G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 219-22.
42. Bradley says that "To live in slavery . . . was to be utterly disempowered." But he backs this assertion with observations about the absence of slave rights and master obligations, thus running together the relations of power with legal-cultural representations. See Bradley, Slavery and Society, p. 27.
43. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, p. 397.
44. Cited in Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p. 290.
45. For discussion, see Keith R. Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World 140 B.C.-70 B.C. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989);
46. Dockès, Medieval Slavery, pp. 210-11;
47. Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967), Chap. 9;
48. Raymond A. Bauer and Alice H. Bauer, "Day to Day Resistance to Slavery," Journal of Negro History 27 (October, 1942): 388-419;
49. Eugene D. Genovese Roll, Jordan, Roll (New York: Pantheon 1974), Book 4;
50. Eugene D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the New World (New York: Vintage, 1979);
51. Mary Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro 1808-1850 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), Chap. 10;
52. Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society 1650-1838 (Kingston: Heineman Publishers, 1990), Chap. 5;
53. Isaac Mendelsohn, Slavery in the Ancient Near East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), pp. 66, 121;
54. Ruth Mazo Karra, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 123-27;
55. Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 200-210;
56. Richard Roberts and Martin A. Klein, "The Banamba Slave Exodus of 1905 and the Decline of Slavery in the Western Sudan," Journal of African History 21 (1980): 375-94;
57. Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Chap. 11;
58. Paul Lovejoy, ed., Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986);
59. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, eds., The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), Chaps. 3, 6, 9, 13.
60. For some skeptical remarks, see Finley, Ancient Slavery, pp. 111-16.
61. On stealing and resistance, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, pp. 599-612.
62. See Roberts and Klein, "Banamba Slave Exodus," Lovejoy, Transformations, pp. 266ff.
63. For doubts about the extent of desertions in the period of African abolition, see Richard Roberts and Suzanne Miers, "The End of Slavery in Africa," in Miers and Roberts, eds., End of Slavery in Africa, pp. 27-33.
64. On maroon activity, see Patterson, Sociology of Slavery, pp. 266-73;
65. Cooper, Plantation Slavery, pp. 200-210;
66. Allan G. B. Fisher and Humphrey J. Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa: The Institution in Saharan and Sudanic Africa and the Trans-Saharan Trade (London: C. Hurt and Co., 1971), p. 94;
67. and Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution, Chap. 2.
68. For discussions of these and other slave rebellions see C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Overture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Random House, 1963);
69. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, pp. 587-98,
70. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution;
71. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 125-31;
72. David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 5-8;
73. Moses Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 89, 92;
74. P. A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (New York: Norton, 1971), pp. 114-15;
75. Dockès, Medieval Slavery, Chap. 4;
76. Patterson, Sociology of Slavery, pp. 266-73;
77. Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion.
78. For references on and discussion of African cases, see Cooper, Plantation Slavery, pp. 202-3;
79. Frederick Cooper, "Review Article: The Problem of Slavery in African Studies," Journal of African History 20, no. 1 (1979): 103-25;
80. Roberts and Klein, "Banamba Slave Exodus"; Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery.
81. See Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, p. 166:
82. "In 97 percent of the societies falling in the sample of world cultures, masters recognized the unions of slaves. In not a single case, however, did such recognition imply custodial powers over children." On the U.S. case, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, pp. 433-535;
83. Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (New York: Vintage, 1977).
84. See Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, Chaps. 4, 5 for discussion of the frequency of different forms of enslavement.
85. Thus Patterson claims that "there is no known slaveholding society where the whip was not considered an indispensable instrument." Slavery and Social Death, p. 4.
86. For some vivid details, see Bradley, Slavery and Society, pp. 165-73.
87. and Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, pp. 113-25.
88. Finley, Ancient Slavery, pp. 93-94;
89. Thomas Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 74, 166-69.
90. Edward Peters, Torture (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), pp. 18ff.
91. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, p. 193.
92. Cited in Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 133.
93. For discussion of this "Nieboer-Domar hypothesis," see Evsey D. Domar, "The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis," Journal of Economic History 30, no. 1 (March 1970): 18-32.
94. Dr. Collins, Practical Rules for the Managment and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Sugar Colonies (London: J. Barfield, 1811), pp. 33, 36.
95. Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 365.
96. The discussion that follows draws on Stefano Fenoaltea, "Slavery and Supervision in Comparative Perspective: A Model," Journal of Economic History 44, no. 3 (September 1984): 635-68.
97. Writing about Bahian sugar plantations, for example, Schwartz claims that none of the "commentators on the engenho operations speaks of drivers or the whip being used inside the fabrica." See Sugar Plantations, p. 154, and the subsequent discussion of the need for incentives, pp. 155-59.
98. Collins, Practical Rules, p. 170.
99. For a valuable summary of the evolving literature on this issue in the case of American slavery, see Robert W. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York: Norton, 1989), Chap. 6.
100. Dockès, Medieval Slavery, p. 208.
101. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, p. 539.
102. On private cultivation as an incentive in other settings, see Rebecca Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1898 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 15;
103. John Edwin Mason, "Fortunate Slaves and Artful Masters: Labor Relations in the Rural Cape Colony During the Era of Emancipation, ca. 1825-1838," in Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labor on the Dutch Frontier, ed. Elizabeth A. Eldredge and Fred Morton (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 67-91.
104. Cited in Robert Conrad, Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 78.
105. Collins, Practical Rules, p. 152.
106. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, in Henry Louis Gates, ed., The Classic Slave Narratives (New York: Signet, 1987), p. 300.
107. See Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, Chaps. 8-10;
108. Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 117-18, 126, 128, 131, 147;
109. Cooper, Plantation Slavery, pp. 242-52;
110. Frederick Cooper, "Islam and Cultural Hegemony," in Paul Lovejoy, ed., The Ideology of Slavery in Africa (Beverley Hills: Sage, 1981), pp. 287-88.
111. Oeconomica, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Works of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross, Vol. 10 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921), 1344b12-22.
112. Politics, 1330a33ff.
113. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract, ed. Roger D. Masters, trans. Judith R. Masters (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), p. 48.
114. The literature on the subject is vast. For an especially illuminating discussion, see James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), esp. Chaps. 3, 4.
115. Mechal Sobel, Trabelin' On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 105.
116. Katia M. de Queiros Mattoso, To Be a Slave in Brazil: 1550-1888, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986).
117. An alternative view of Cariocan slave religion - as essentially continuing flexible Central African traditions, rather than as syncretic or dualistic - is Karasch, Slave Life, Chap. 9.
118. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, pp. 232-55;
119. for qualifications, see Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, pp. 73-76.
120. On the importance of deliverance in slave spirituals, see Blassingame, Slave Community, pp. 141-45.
121. Cooper, Plantation Slavery, pp. 236-42,
122. and "Islam and Cultural Hegemony," pp. 291-93.
123. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll.
124. See Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 5-6;
125. Martin A. Klein, "Slave Resistance and Slave Emancipation in Coastal Guinea," in Miers and Roberts, eds., The End of Slavery in Africa, pp. 203-19.
126. For detailed discussion of this important range of issues and cases, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll;
127. Cooper, "Islam and Cultural Hegemony";
128. Richard Roberts, "Ideology, Slavery, and Social Formation: The Evolution of Maraka Slavery in the Middle Niger Valley," in Lovejoy, Ideology of Slavery;
129. Dockès, Medieval Slavery, pp. 212-15;
130. Lovejoy, "Problems of Slave Control in the Sokoto Caliphate," in Paul Lovejoy, ed., Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), pp. 262-64.
131. Douglass, Narrative, p. 317.
132. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, p. 374.
133. For a detailed discussion of theft and its implications for the moral rejection of slavery and the development of a "counter-morality," see Alex Lichtenstein, "'That Disposition to Theft, With Which They Have Been Branded': Moral Economy, Slave Management, and the Law," Journal of Social History 21 (1988): 413-40.
134. Quoted in Alex Lichtenstein, "'That Disposition to Theft," p. 413.
135. Mattoso, To Be a Slave, p. 137.
136. See the suggestive remarks on unanimity, in Scott, Domination, pp. 55-58;
137. on the importance of reciprocity in shaping public justifications of power, see Barrington Moore, Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt (White Plains: M. E. Sharpe, 1987).
138. The account of interests draws on the discussion of deliberative rationality in John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), Sec. 64;
139. Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977);
140. Railton, "Moral Realism";
141. Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), Chap. 2;
142. and William Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), Chap. 2.
143. Finley, Ancient Slavery, p. 98;
144. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, p. 222,
145. citing a passage from Appian's Roman Civil Wars;
146. Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion.
147. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, p. 267.
148. He adds that "some scholars have argued that African servility depended on attitudes quite unrelated to the concept of 'freedom.' African thought, they claim, did not consider freedom a desirable or possible status. There can be no mistake about this matter. The massive desertions by slaves throughout the nineteenth century and especially at the end of the century when European conquest was well underway, demonstrates that the views of these scholars are incorrect." For an alternative view, see Igor Kopytoff, "The Cultural Context of African Abolition," in Miers and Roberts, eds., The End of Slavery in Africa, pp. 485-503, especially the illuminating remarks about demarginalization, social dependence, and social belonging, at pp. 494-502.
149. Keith R. Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 25.
150. Mary Prince, History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, in Gates, Classic Slave Narratives, p. 214.
151. For discussion of the fables, see Bradley, Slaves and Masters, pp. 150-53.
152. Linda Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, ed. L. Marian Child, in Gates, ed., Classic Slave Narratives, p. 513.
153. Or see Lucy A. Delaney, From the Darkness Cometh the Light or Struggles for Freedom, in Six Women's Slave Narratives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 58.
154. On self-enslavement, see Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, pp. 130-31.
155. "There is," according to Patterson, "absolutely no evidence from the long and dismal annals of slavery to suggest that any group of slaves ever internalized the conception of degradation held by their masters." Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, p. 97.
156. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, p. 439.
157. See Rawls's discussion of the social bases of self-respect in Theory of Justice, pp. 179, 440-42.
158. Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1974).
159. Robert W. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York: Norton, 1989), pp. 78-79.
160. Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, Vol. 1, p. 237.
161. For a discussion and exploration of implications, see Amartya Sen, "Well-Being, Agency, and Freedom," Journal of Philosophy 82, no. 4 (April 1985): 195-200;
162. Partha Dasgupta, An Inquiry Into Well-Being and Destitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), Chaps. 14, 15.
163. Paul David and Peter Temin, "Slavery: The Progressive Institution," in Paul David, et al., eds., Reckoning With Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 178-86;
164. Yoram Barzel, "An Economic Analysis of Slavery," The Journal of Law and Economics 21, no. 1 (April 1977): 95.
165. I have focused on implications for consumption and nourishment. On health, see Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade 1730-1830 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), Chaps. 9, 10;
166. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, Chap. 5;
167. Richard Steckel, "A Dreadful Childhood: The Excess Mortality of American Slaves," Social Science History 10, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 427-65;
168. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, Chap. 5.
169. Robert Brenner has emphasized this point in several discussions.
170. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, p. 78;
171. see also Stefano Fenoaltea, "The Slavery Debate: A Note From the Sidelines," Explorations in Economic History 18 (1981): 304-8.
172. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, p. 79.
173. See, for example, Bush, Slave Women, pp. 110-18;
174. Karasch, Slave Life, pp. 205-10.
175. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death.
176. Dred Scott v. Sanford 60 U.S. 393.
177. Cited in Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, p. 361.
178. I draw, as will be evident, on Rawls, Theory of Justice;
179. T. M. Scanion, "Contractualism and Utilitarianism," in Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
180. I focus here on the injury of slavery to slaves, not on claims about the general benefits of abolition. For an especially eloquent statement of those benefits, see Joaquim Nabuco, Abolitionism: The Brazilian Antislavery Struggle, trans. Robert Conrad (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), esp. p. 83.
181. James, Black Jacobins, p. 10.
182. On the complex background and implications of moral opposition, see David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975);
183. Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
184. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, p. 410.
185. Davis, Problem of Slavery, pp. 137-51, 276;
186. Genovese, Rebellion to Revolution.
187. On the interaction between metropolitan abolitionism and slave resistance, see Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective (London: MacMillan, 1986), pp. 100-103.
188. Genovese, Rebellion to Revolution.
189. See, for example, Smith, Wealth of Nations, pp. 363-67;
190. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), pp. 303-304n.18.
191. On the problem of biological reproduction, see Max Weber's essay on "Social Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilization,"
192. reprinted in Max Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, trans. R. I. Frank (London: New Left Books, 1976);
193. Gavin Wright, "The Efficiency of Slavery: Another Interpretation," American Economic Review 69, no. 1 (March 1979): 219-26;
194. Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, pp. 229-37.
195. For criticism of the economic arguments, see Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, Chaps. 3, 4.
196. For criticisms of Ste. Croix's argument about conflicts between biological reproduction and full economic exploitation, see Keith R. Bradley, "Wet-Nursing At Rome: A Study In Social Relations," in Beryl Rawson, ed., The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 211-12.
197. Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 365.
198. Cited in James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 832-35.
199. Aristotle, Politics, 1268b38.
200. Lovejoy, "Problems of Slave Control," p. 247, discusses an early nineteenth century example from the Oyo kingdom in the Sudan.
201. On the two-front war in the Confederate case, see Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, "The Destruction of Slavery," in Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 3-76.
202. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, pp. 287-93;
203. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, pp. 64-8;
204. Lovejoy, "Problems of Slave Control," pp. 246-49.
205. Analogously, military conflict has played an important role in democratization. See Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 70-71, 279.
206. MacPherson, Battle Cry, p. 504, and more generally, pp. 354, 490-510.
207. Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1770-1848 (London: Verso, 1988), Chap. 9.
208. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, pp. 67-68.
209. The incentives represent what is sometimes described as the "inherent contradiction" of slavery: its treatment of human beings as though they were mere things. See G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 111-19;
210. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 463;
211. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), pp. 25-27, 58-62.
212. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, p. 101.
213. Cited in Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, p. 97.
214. It might be objected that the decline of slavery with the end of the Roman empire, and its reemergence with New World plantation slavery represent precisely such abolition and reimposition. But see William D. Phillips, Slavery From Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985);
215. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 1997), Chap. 1.