Christopher Brown
speaker
1,098 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 20 Jan
Christopher Brown’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But I do think that the politics of slavery are going to lead to some kind of crisis in one way or the other in the two countries at some point in the middle decades of the 19th century or the late 19th century.
You know, when I talk about contingency, Rob, I really mean...
What I think was unlikely, most unlikely, was the development of a movement in the first place.
Once there is a movement, the chances of it concluding, especially the kinds of movements that develop, the chances of it concluding with some sort of legislative attack on the slave trade or slavery obviously becomes far more likely.
Because it has to be contested.
Every generation is contesting it.
But again, you have to think back to what had come before.
It had never been contested at all in this former fashion.
The whole question of the future or the shape of slavery in the Americas was not a matter of debate or discussion among the political elite.
anywhere in Western Europe or in the Americas.
So it's this moment of transition in the last quarter of the 18th century that I think is the real pivot point.
Far more likely in any case.
Yeah, so this is the myth of inevitable human progress.
And it takes a variety of forms.
One is the sort of the Enlightenment naturally led to enlightened moral outlooks, or that economic development, its very logic would lead to the overthrow of slavery.
And these are the kinds of subjects that historians earn their money debating with other historians.
And you get 12 of us in a room, and you'll get 12 slightly different takes on this subject.
The most famous statement of the economic grounds for both abolition in 1807 and British emancipation in 1833, of course, comes from Eric Williams's book, Capitalism and Slavery, which was published in 1944.
And he describes both abolition and emancipation as driven by the logic of economic change and that abolitionists had, in many instances, economic motivations.
And it is a set of arguments that, when written,
Showing 721–740 of 1,098 · page 37 of 55
← Previous
Next →