Abstract
Slavery is a subject of heated discussion and argument and many works are published each year depicting the ethical inconsistencies and the way slaves and slavery paved the way for the history to arrive to this day. The following is an article that analyzes the book “Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World” by David B. Davis on the subject of slavery and the way it created the Americas and the American society.
Inhuman Bondage: Critical Essay
Introduction
Slavery has been the scourge of mankind throughout the ages. Slaves have been the untold structures of not just economies, but civilizations. The Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Afghans etc. have time and again pompously indulged in bonded slavery through misplaced understanding of religions, doctrines and human values. Some great men have even shown the possession of slaves as a birth right for the supposedly higher classes of men. So deep has been the impact of bonded slavery that the races that were thrown into this bottomless gauntlet, are mistreated and discriminated to this day in the modern and multicultural society of developed nations. This article is a critical analysis of the book Inhuman Bondage by David Brion Davis which discusses the facts related to slavery illustrated in the book and how the slave culture has been a part of the building of the Americas
Discussion
The book “Inhuman Bondage” by David Brion Davis is a documentary about the slave culture as it flourished and fell through the ages and how it shaped prominent nations that exist today. The discussion of this article surrounds the way Davis provides details of the slavery and how it shaped America and the American psyche that prevails even to the present day. In a way the book is a successful effort in connecting people to know and understand the slavery that built America to the people that is unaware of its roots. The author describes clearly that he drew inspiration from the autobiographical cum fictional novel “Of Human Bondage” by the author William Somerset Maugham, a renowned piece of work by the author. Both the works are a depiction of slavery as a part of the American society and the significance slavery holds in building the Americas of today.
It has been nearly three decades since slavery has occupied the focus of speculation in historical as well as sociological perspectives. One can find countless monographs written each year that delve in the discussion and analysis of various aspects of slavery. Such an increased interest in slavery is a direct result of the ever changing shifts in subjects in the field of public history. An evidence of this can be seen in museums throughout the world that present exhibits that highlight the subject of slavery's importance in building the modern world. An article by Foy (2010) that discusses this very book says, “Slavery has even become the center of interest in such popular movies as Amazing Grace, Amistad, and Glory.” David Brion Davis realized that despite the wide spread acceptance of crucial significance of slavery in the human history, neither the people nor students of secondary academic level are nearly correctly informed on the subject. He understood this fact in the mid-1990s during which he had begun seminars on slavery that involved high school teachers. Davis wrote this book as remedy to this circumstance and as an inspiration to the “Of Human Bondage”. The book is an attempt at providing a synthetic narrative of the history of slavery in the Americas in a way that it could connect well with the general public and serve as a major reference book. The book “Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World” without a doubt successfully manages to accomplish both the purposes.
The method writing of the book is very self-explanatory in itself as the author includes a chronological table in the beginning to make readers aware of the events that shaped the situation to where he leaves it for the reader to contemplate. Davis begins is his narrative in Babylon and connects slavery in the Americas to the more ancient and forgotten systems and regional beliefs about slavery. Davis alters the general definition of slavery. The general and accepted definition emphasizes upon the extreme 'personal domination' of enslaved people, Davis terms the cultural of enslavement as a result of what he calls as "animalization," where in enslaved people were treated like animals who were being domesticated. He explains it to be a process of focusing on the animal traits of all humans i.e. "share and fear" that would allow slave masters to deny the enslaved their own individuality, significance and rational thought. This form of denial of humanness delivered slave masters the power to control the thoughts and actions of the slaves. The impact that Davis's concept of slavery delivers is more than verified with the evidences like the hundreds of slave sale advertisements back in the early American days where "Negroes" were listed for sale among a long list of farm animals, and were very often referred to as a part of the lot without the slightest mention of them being any different from such farm animals.
In its early chapters the book describes the development of a form of slave culture and labor system in the Americas in which slaves and slavery would slowly be influenced by an anti-black racism and how the society would gradually become race-based. Davis tracks down the cause of this racism, which unfortunately still exists in the modern society, in both Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions, citing religious examples used by people to justify slavery through biblical explanations for example how stories of the "Curse of Ham" were used by people as a justification for the capture and use of Africans and how the black skinned race was “rightfully” entitled to become slaves. Foy describes, “These ideas of anti-black racism received powerful support during the Enlightenment in the writings of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Jefferson, among many others.” Davis asserted very rightly that such race and color biased ideologies would be carried forward to be "an intrinsic and indispensable part of New World settlement".
In subsequent chapters Davis clearly depicts how the westward expansion of Europe relied upon an increasing supply of African slave labor. These developments enumerated by Davis developments, namely the European expansion into the Atlantic and the Atlantic slave trade were the main medium through which Africans became essential players in building the world history. Davis adds his own comments in between to highlight the facts as they go, making the reader understand that the words come from a person who lives amongst them and understands the gravity of the impact of slavery.
Davis accurately describes details of how the consequence of a never ending ever increasing demand for slaves in Europe devastated African societies and caused African economies to become inseparably connected to Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Due to diseases carried by European settlers and the wanton warfare between Native Americans and their killing, European planters in the so called “New World” became increasingly dependent on slave labor acquired from African slave markets.
When the historical story comes to the shore lines of the American continent, Davis turns his focus on Britain's plantation colonies of southern region of the North American continent and the West Indies, where slavery would become the basis of operation of such colonies, both in politics and economics of day to day life. Davis is satirical at places when he describes plantation owners to believe themselves to be some kind of Roman fiefs with rights to own slaves for their daily chores. In the chapters that follow, Davis tactfully explains the transition of the slavery from generation to generation and how it stands today quoting instances from Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War and other events that became part of the modern history. The book in itself is a working guide to understand many social issues.
A chapter by chapter reading is very important because the information the book carries is linked in such a manner that the book must flow. The book is a working testimony to slavery and bondage labour and Davis does a commendable job in bringing forth the unknown aspects of slavery to the people who do not know the facts as well as to the ones who understand the significance of slavery as a building stone in the civilization today that people are so naively proud of.
Conclusion
The critical analysis of the book by Davis is an eye opener of the torture and devastation that bonded slavery has on the people it is meted upon. Families are uprooted, lives destroyed and human values maligned. Davis succeeds in making the reader understand that the racial beliefs that people hold today are a result of generations of misinterpretation of religious and ethical values in a way that impacts the life. More importantly, Davis succeeds in helping the reader appreciate the lives that were spent in slavery to bring the modern society to what it is today.
References
Davis, D.B. (2006). “Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World”. Oxford University Press. P.p. 1-123.
Foy, C.R. (2010). Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (review). Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. Volume 77 pp. 84-87.
Maugham, W.S. (1915). “Of Human Bondage”. George H. Doran Company.
