FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

AFRICAN-NEW WORLD STUDIES

NINTH ERIC WILLIAMS MEMORIAL LECTURE: PRESS RELEASE

October 23, 2007

Moral concerns emanating from the Enlightenment Age of the eighteenth century did not bring slavery and its agonizing trade to an end in the Americas and other parts of the modern world. Contrary to the dominant discourse, it was the increasingly less profitable use of slave labor that ended slavery. So declared Professor Joseph Inikori at this year’s Annual Eric E. Williams Memorial Lecture at Florida International University recently held on October 5, 2007. The ninth in the series, the lecture was part of the African-New World Studies Program’s Distinguished Africana Scholars Lecture Series, and was co-sponsored by the Eric Williams Memorial Collection in Trinidad and Tobago.  This year’s lecture featured two eminent historians, Dr. Joseph Inikori, a professor of history at University of Rochester, and Dr. Verene Shepherd, professor of social history at University of West Indies, Mona. Each speaker addressed the broad theme “Emancipation, the African Atlantic and the Long Road to Freedom,” from different perspectives. This year’s lecture is themed to reflect the Bicentenary commemoration of the British Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Professor Inikori, speaking on “Morality Versus the Political Economy of Slavery”, addressed the core reasons for bringing the slave trade to an end in Britain in 1807 and the United States in 1808. Challenging the complacent dominant historiography that privileges morality over economy, and that tends to locate the beginning of Europeans’ involvement in slavery in the Atlantic world, he argued that slavery was a major feature of the European society, and was a brutal dehumanizing institution in Europe since the ancient times. He dug into archival sources to reveal that just as slaves were mutilated and treated as subhuman in ancient and medieval Europe, so did the moral justification of slavery and moral lamentation of the plight of slaves proliferated on the continent. Yet, those moral concerns strengthened slavery throughout the European history. If the moral condemnation of slavery was not effective in ending slavery in pre-modern Europe, how come such moral claims could be used to explain the end of modern slavery? Noting that slavery was a necessary evil in pre-industrial European world and its American colonies, Professor Inikori argued that morality came into the forefront of ending slavery only because of the changing economic circumstances created by industrial capitalism, itself a product of slave labor. He located those changing material conditions in The Industrial Revolution which created new forms of accumulation and relied on the wage labor of the poor lower class Europeans rather than on the enslaved African peoples. Yet, the lower classes lived and worked in as much miserable and brutal conditions as the slaves. Dr. Inikori reminds the audience of Eric Williams injunction that “politics and morals in the abstract make no sense”, and therefore that the moral claim of ending slavery was located in the changing economic circumstances of industrial capitalism that sought to transform the enslaved into even more profitable wage laborers.

Dr. Verene Shepherd’s lecture was titled “Angry Black Women Take Action:  Contesting Enslavement in the African Atlantic” in which she addressed the role of women in emancipation in Colonial Jamaica. She provided a long list of women who fought for their freedom and the freedom of others from the oppression of slavery, debauchery of the colonial society, rape, torture, and abuse. Lamenting the tendency to underestimate the contribution of enslaved African women to emancipation process in the Caribbean, Dr. Shepherd focused attention on women’s activism and agency. Hers was a micro-study and detailed references of the names of particular women, their specific roles, places, and the actions they undertook to subvert and destabilize slavery and colonial systems across the British Caribbean. Her presentation challenged the sexist and male-centered historiography that has focused on armed revolt as the only form of effective resistance of the enslaved. In fact, armed revolts were comparatively few compared to the more hidden rebellions of the enslaved. Even then, she argued, women participated in these armed struggles in a myriad of ways. But it is their day-to-day strategies of defiance and resistance that weakened the colonial society, crippled the efficiency of the plantation system, and forced the colonial regime to eventually respond with the legislative emancipation in 1833. By showing that women were the backbone of the plantation economy, Dr. Shepherd’s lecture put women at the center of the anti-slavery struggle and abolitionist movement but also recognized the role of men in the struggle.

The evening was graced by several dignitaries, including the Chancellor of the State of University System of Florida, Dr. Mark Rosenberg who received the African-New World Studies highest award - the Distinguished Africana Service Award, accompanied by his wife, Roselyn. Also in attendance were the Consuls General of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica; Provost Ivelaw Griffith of York College, CUNY, and his wife; Dr. Mark Szuchman, Dean of College of Arts and Sciences at Florida International University, and several others, including members of the Caribbean community, faculty and students.

Media Contacts: Dr. Akin Ogundiran (ogundiran@fiu.edu, 305-919-5529), Rosa Henriquez (Africana@fiu.edu, 305-919-5521)