2
INDEX
Chapter One: English Empire and Slavery
1.1 The Origin of the Slave Trade ………………………………………………...4
1.2 Colonial and economic relationship between Europeans and Africans.………9
1.3 The rise of the Abolitionist Movement in England…………………………..15
Chapter Two: Women Abolitionist Discourse
2.1 Historical and literary context in England…………………………………...21
2.2 The Abolitionist Poetry and Women’s poetic voice…………………………27
2.3 The case of Hannah More and Ann Yearsley..................................................34
Chapter Three: Two Bristol Women Poets
3.1 Ann Yearsley, A poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave Trade……………….43
3.2 Hannah More, Slavery: A Poem…………………………………………..…49
3
Introduction
The establishment of slavery and the resulting transatlantic slave trade between
Europe and the Americas required a variegated attack from those who viewed
freedom and human beings of greater value and importance than property and
commerce. Abolitionists aimed to reveal the moral mistake of slavery through
literature and political efforts. A shared network of antislavery language
supported and connected abolitionists and writers of diverse backgrounds and
sociohistorical contexts. Antislavery poets incorporated this language into
emotional verse in order to convince readers of the immorality of slavery through
a particular rhetoric and themes. The sufferings felt as a result of the slave trade
and the wickedness of the enslavement process featured particularly in antislavery
poetry. Also women poets reacted to the immorality of slavery and, through their
poetic voice, they were not only involved in the abolitionist cause but they were
asking for a renewed social role both as women and poets.
How did abolitionist poetry intersect with the law and connect to this shared
language? And what role did women have in the abolitionist movement and in
poetry in a problematic context like that of the late seventeenth to the late
eighteenth centuries?
In order to answer these questions I have chosen two women poets who illustrate
the aims of this shared language. Hannah More and Ann Yearsley contributed to
creating an antislavery poetry across their social differences, which also affected
some dynamics of gender, laws, education and race. Their poetry and experiences
represent part of the body of antislavery literature as well as the diverse
interactions between abolitionists and society and, as such, they are the object of
my study.
4
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 The Origin of the Slave Trade
For every scholar of English language and culture it is right and proper to know
and examine in depth the story of the eighteenth century and its relation to the
origin of the slave trade because it is not only belonging to each English citizen,
but to the entire community. It is the century in which the slave trade reached its
height, an event that slowly and inexorably was to modify the overall worldwide
and national structure, from an economic and cultural perspective. There are many
authors or, better, individuals who contributed to the birth of a literature about
slavery, ranging in different fields: theatre, poetry, essays and pamphlets or
analyzing the most diverse historical and economic aspects. Not to speak of the
individuals who spent almost their entire lives struggling against slavery with
perseverance and strength.
The first question which probably everybody would ask is when and why slavery
began. A book that would answer this question is Hugh Thomas’ The Story of the
Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440- 1870 in which he gives us a comprehensive account
of the Atlantic slave trade. Quoting Aristotle’s Politics in which he states that
humanity is divided into two: the masters and the slaves, Thomas begins to trace
the origin of slavery condition stating that it had already existed in ancient time.
“Most settled societies at one time or another have employed forced labor; and
most peoples, even the proud French, the effective Germans, the noble English,
the dauntless Spaniards and perhaps, above all, the poetical Russians, have
experienced years of servitude” and that “slavery was a major institution in
antiquity”
1
. In Greece and Rome for example, slaves were employed as domestic
servants in public works, in mines, in commerce and in many others tasks,
managing and serving brothels as well as in trading organizations and workshops.
Those individuals, from the first century BC to the early third century AD, even
though captives and considered someone’s property, contributed to the creation of
1
Hugh Thomas, The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks,
1997, p. 25.
5
prosperity of a nation. Obviously a slave who worked in a gang in the fields or as
a shepherds had a different life from one who acted as a doctor or lawyer or as a
majordomo to noblemen. An interesting reflection made by the English historian
is about the discussion and the explanation of the institution of slavery from
Aristotle’s point of view. When Aristotle declares that humanity is divided into
two he makes a distinction between the Greeks and the Barbarians. Thomas writes
that this “seemed to imply that, to an Athenian, everyone who was not Greek
could be captured and enslaved – even should be, thus he accepted slavery as an
institution”
2
. It was in accordance by the law of the time and the distinction
between a master and a slave existed only by law but, at the same time, Aristotle
considered a slave with a soul and the property of a master to a slave as something
unjust and unnatural. From a philosophical point of view, reflections and
considerations about who was a slave and what were his functions in a society
began to circulate, ambiguous propositions which would have importance in the
sixteenth century.
The beginning of the slave trade can be seen as a long process, which evolved
together with the changes occurred in the world over his story. It is therefore
necessary to consider that this process changed and radically transformed an
already existing practice, that is the exploitation of human beings for economic
purpose. The English historian Hugh Thomas, on the basis of a deep, and almost
archeological historical work of the sources and events, argues that the first
commercial exchanges of goods (so even of slaves) between West and North
Africa, probably began already from 1000 BC in the trans-Saharan desert, “when
the desert was crossed by oxen and carts drawn by horses, a commerce
encouraged by both the Carthaginians and the Romans”
3
.At the beginning, the
voyages were limited because of the weather which made it impossible to cross
the desert, due to sandstorms in the summer and changes of temperature from day
to night. Among the commodities carried, gold was fated to become more and
more relevant, after “first the Muslim countries of the Mediterranean, and then
several European ones adopted that metal as their currency”
4
.
2
Ivi, p. 28.
3
Ivi, p. 44.
4
Ivi, p. 45.
6
The African continent appeared even then as a flourishing land, also rich in
natural resources. Since gold was limited to a very small areas of Africa as far as
Europeans were then aware, the principal export was human beings. West
Africans would become the main gold suppliers. Arab merchants were included
within the commerce with no less influence and importance. They contributed to
the expansion of the slave trade as well the transformation of the economy from
subsistence to one based on production and commercial exchange. An interesting
detail is that Muslim-Arab merchants began to buy slaves and according to the
historian Hugh Thomas this meant little more than that they let others to do
stealing for them: they began to participate actively in the marketing of slaves.
Even Patricia M. Muhammad, in her article about the transatlantic slave trade
argues that “the Arabs’ conquest of North Africa in order to spread the religion of
Islam, as well as the development of caravan routes, also supported the Trans-
Saharan slave trade, which extended from the northeastern portion of Africa and
continued westward to trade points in Nigeria”
5
. The fact that the voyages went
onto coastal regions opened the way to those who would be the future explorers of
the continent, that is Spanish, Portuguese, Italians and English. Among the most
popular explorers we cannot forget the name of Christopher Columbus who,
“discovering” the New Word probably was unaware of the great changes that, as
the concentric waves created by a stone fallen in the water, would affect not only
the whole Europe but also the continents of Africa as well as the Americas. But
many other men before him set out on overseas expedition; for example in 1291
already two Italian explorers Ugolino and Vadino Vivaldi, set out with their ships
in order to reach India through West Africa
6
.
While Columbus was going to set out with his fleet, around him the International
rivalry over colonial possessions, especially between Spain and Portugal, was
high, so that the Pope intervention was necessary, with a papal bull which
5
Muhammad, Esq., Patricia M., The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Forgotten Crime Against
Humanity as Defined by International Law, American University International Law Review 19, no.
4 (2003), p. 891.
6
See Thomas, The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 50 (describing that their declared aim was
to outmaneuver the Venetians, who had secured control over trade through Egypt from the east.
They thus established the agenda, so to say, of nautical ambition for the next 200 years).
7
assigned the East colonial possessions to Portugal and the West to Spain. Eric
Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery explains this particular circumstance:
the partition failed to satisfy Portuguese aspirations and in the subsequent year the
contending parties reached a more satisfactory compromise in the Treaty of
Tordesillas, which rectified the papal judgment to permit Portuguese ownership of
Brazil. Neither the papal arbitration nor the formal treaty was intended to binding
on other powers, and both were in fact repudiated. Cabot’s voyage to North
America in 1497 was England’s immediate reply to the partition.
7
European maritime trade with western African had been already initiated by the
Portuguese from the 1440’s, opening up the entire coast of Africa, rounded the
Cape of Good Hope and began the penetration of the Indian Ocean.
Europeans begun to set out in search of gold of which, mentioned before, Africa
was highly supplied, so that at least until the late seventeenth century they were
interested more in goods as pepper, ivory, gum, tobacco, sugar, rice rather than
slaves. Also England joined the search.
A very exhaustive anthology of sources and cultural study about the English
slave trade is Kenneth Morgan’s multivolume The British Transatlantic Slave
Trade. Together with the other volumes editors and through the analysis of some
original texts related to specific slaving voyages, Morgan shows us how the
expeditions were organized. One of these texts reports the expedition of Sir John
Hawkins, who represents “the first known example of English slave trading in
Africa in the middle of the sixteenth century who led a raid on west African
territories”
8
. The perfection which the commercial network of slave trade was
constructing is testified by the establishment of the Royal African Company
(successive to the first establishment of the Royal Adventurers in Africa) in 1672.
All these enterprises were run as joint-stock organizations, so that capital could be
raised effectively for risky, long-distance trade from numerous investors.
9
The
7
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, the William Byrd Press, 1994, pp. 3-4.
8
K. Morgan, “General Introduction”, The British Transatlantic Slave Trade: Volume 1, London,
eds. R.Law, K.Morgan, J. Oldfield, D. Ryden, Pickering & Chatto 2003, p. xvi.
9
K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company, London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1957, pp. 38-44,
57-63.
8
commercial network was so strong that “it could count among its shareholders a
number of well-connected men in public life, including the philosopher John
Locke; Sir George Carteret, the Lord Proprietor of Carolina; Sir Edmund Andros,
the Bristol philanthropist, and others.”
10
As the competition to the searching of
gold between European countries was extremely intense, the Company
contributed to the fortification of castles, factories or lodges along the Gold Coast
(which correspond with the actual Ghana) in order to protect their goods from
enemy attack. It is not by chance that Ghana was called the Gold Coast due to its
great amount of gold. Later, these castles were used as the ultimate stop of slaves
and commodities before crossing the ocean towards North and South America.
The company had its own statutory with its rules, but private merchants, whom
we can define as “interlopers”, sometimes acted with voyages often illegal and so
not authorized. They officially entered in the slave trade only when the Company
lost its monopoly due to Williams III’s parliamentary decision which did not
consider the trading monopolies a good way for the commercial needs of the
empire, so “it was now widely accepted that free trade should prevail to Africa”
11
.
Indeed, as the commerce was growing, cities such as London, Liverpool and
Bristol were going to become the main trading ports for slaves and goods.
Particularly the city of Liverpool became the major slaving port in Europe, due to
its well designed docks which could contain larger ships, while Bristol was a
huge social and cultural melting pot where among the prominent figure who were
acting in those years, there were also the figures of Hannah More and Ann
Yearsley.
10
See K. MORGAN supra note 8, at p. xiii.
11
See K. MORGAN supra note 8, at p. xv.