Re: emancipation and the american revolution

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Louis poses an important historical question about the relationship between
> emancipation and the American revolution. let me restate the question: would
> emancipation have come sooner or later if the colonists had lost the
> revolution against King George?

Am about to go over to the west side to have dinner with Les and Charles
Brown who is in the city on a visit, but let me throw this out for
consideration. Oakes makes a convincing case that the typical slave-owner
in the south would be what he called "middle class", which really amounts
to small and medium farmers, businessmen, tradesmen and other economic
actors who had nothing to do with plantations. This social formation was
anything but "seignorial", to use Genovese's term. What they in fact remind
me of is the fucking Afrikaners who went on a great Trek to defend their
plucky yeoman way of life from the dirty imperialist British in the
Victorian era. An important element of that life was slavery.


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org