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3 - The Benefits of Free Labor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2023

Dexter J. Gabriel
Dexter J. Gabriel
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut, Storrs
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Summary

This chapter examines how free labor was adapted as a compelling argument in the antislavery Anglo-Atlantic. For English antislavery these strategies developed out of a need to show emancipation’s imperial commercial advantages, as parliamentary debates questioned whether former slaves would work upon emancipation. In the United States, free labor antislavery emerged from a burgeoning ideology that imbued labor with moral characteristics. Through the industriousness of black West Indians, abolitionists on either side of the Atlantic hoped to prove the moral rightness of emancipation, the capability of former slaves within democratic capitalism, and the benefits of free labor.

Keywords

AbolitionistsantislaveryBritish CaribbeanBritish Emancipationfree laborlabormanual laborismmighty experimentslave laborslaveryWest Indies
Type
Chapter
Information
Jubilee's Experiment
The British West Indies and American Abolitionism
 , pp. 85 - 124
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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