Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Academic Parable: Robert W. Fogel's Raft, Heitor Moura Filho

Heitor Moura Filho

The book Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, by Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman achieved great fame as a revolutionary interpretation of North American slavery, even though at the time it was criticized in detail by specialists in quantitative economic history. We believe that to quote it as a pioneering quantitative study of slavery has become an academic “meme”, which does not adequately reflect the severe criticism suffered by the book during the years following its publication. This text looks back to the book’s release and the subsequent debates in the ideological and methodological …

Slavery And Information, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

This article shows how asymmetric information shaped slavery by determining the likelihood of manumission. A theoretical model explains the need to offer positive incentive to slaves working in occupations characterized by a high degree of asymmetric information. As a result, masters freed (and, more generally, rewarded) slaves who performed well. The model’s implications are then tested against the available evidence: both in Rome and in the Atlantic world, slaves with high-asymmetric-information tasks had greater chances of manumission. The analysis also sheds light on the master’s choices of carrots versus sticks and of labor versus slavery.

Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn

Wilson R. Huhn

People have a fundamental need to think of themselves as “good people.” To achieve this we tell each other stories – we create myths – about ourselves and our society. These myths may be true or they may be false. The more discordant a myth is with reality, the more difficult it is to convince people to embrace it. In such cases to sustain the illusion of truth it may be necessary to develop an entire mythology – an integrated web of mutually supporting stories. This paper explores the system of myths that sustained the institution of slavery in the …

South Sea Slavery: Voices From The Dark, Gemma Tamock, Soraya Hosni, Thomas Dick

Thomas Dick

The status of South Sea Island sugar cane labourers in 19th century Queensland has been hotly debated since the very beginning of the labour trade in 1863.

The official historical perspective is that Island labourers were indentured workers, recruited and contracted in their native lands, brought to Australia to work for three years and then returned to their islands. Though acknowledging that kidnappings were common in the early years of the labour trade, historians maintain that the labourers signed contracts and were paid, therefore negating the claims of Islander descendants that they were slaves. There are many stories passed down …

Precarity As Capture: A Conceptual Reconstruction And Critique Of The Worker-Slave Analogy, Franco Barchiesi

Franco Barchiesi

No abstract provided.

The African Lexis In Jamaican: Its Linguistic And Sociohistorical Significance, Joseph T. Farquharson

Joseph T. Farquharson

This thesis presents a fresh and comprehensive treatment of the putative lexical Africanisms in Jamaican with a view to assessing the volume and nature of this aspect of the grammar of Jamaican.

The work draws on a set of best practices in the field of etymology and outlines a set of transparent guidelines for assigning etyma. These guidelines are put to work by conducting careful etymological analyses of the over 500 putative Africanisms that have been identified for Jamaican. The analyses produce a list of 289 words whose African etymologies have been fairly well established. An entire chapter is devoted …

European Colonial Terrorism And The Incorporation Of Africa Into The Capitalist World System, Asafa Jalata

Asafa Jalata

This article critically explores the essence and characters of European colonial terrorism and its main consequences on various African peoples during racial slavery, colonization, and incorporation into the European-dominated capitalist world system between the late 15th and 20th centuries. It employs multidimensional, comparative methods, and critical approaches to explain the dynamic interplay among social structures, human agency, and terrorism to critically understand the connections among terrorism, the emergence of globalization, and African underdevelopment. The piece focuses on four central issues: First, it conceptualizes and theorizes terrorism to clarify its roles in creating and maintaining the global system. Second, it focuses …

Guardianship As Genocide And Slavery And How Freedom Of Information Can Let Others Know If Persons Are Losing Rights In Certain States, James T. Struck

James T Struck

Guardianship May Be Like Slavery or Genocide as Guardians are Given Rights to Decide For Persons in Certain States or Nations and the Persons are Denied Rights to decide. Freedom of Information Act Programs Allow Other Nations or States to Know If Their Citizens or Persons of Their Ancestry are Being Held Without Rights Under Guardianship. Some Nations or States Have FOIA Programs While Others Probably Do Not Have Such Right to request records.

Labour Trafficking: Key Concepts And Issues, Fiona M. David Ms

Fiona David

At the international level, there is no single, clear definition of ‘labour trafficking’. Arguably, the expression can be used to describe those forms of trafficking in persons of which the exploitative purpose relates to a person’s labour. There are, however, debates over the scope and meaning of these terms. This brief provides an introduction to key terms and notes some of the issues that remain less settled.

Remembering, Forgetting And Historical Injustice, Robert Cribb, Kenneth Christie

Robert Cribb

No abstract provided.

A Plan For The Abolition Of Slavery, Consistently With The Interests Of All Parties Concerned (London, 1828), C. S. Monaco

C. S. Monaco

Published anonymously during the resurgence of the antislavery campaign in Britain, Moses E. Levy's pamphlet, "A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery," stands without parallel. The appearance of this publication in 1828 London, established Levy as the first and only Jewish abolitionist author amid a plethora of mostly Evangelical stalwarts. The scope and magnitude of Levy's ideas exceeded the more modest attempts by a small cohort of Jewish antislavery advocates who appeared much later in the United States. The entire pamphlet is reproduced here and, for the first time, extensive annotations by C. S. Monaco places this work into historical …