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.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
that it was a norm rather than an exception.
It took different shapes in different times.
And so what happens in the 19th, and this is sort of big picture, but what happens in the 19th century, I really think is quite unusual.
And I don't think it's the natural consequences of either economic forces or cultural forces.
Do you think that's a good parallel?
It's not a bad comparison just in terms of the economic logic of it.
I think what also has to be said is
You know, in the way that so much of our, I mean, obviously this is changing now, but so much of the infrastructure of our lives take fossil fuels for granted.
It's sort of premised on the existence and the exploitation of fossil fuels.
The same was true with slavery in the early modern era.
I mean, it was kind of baked into the world that emerged in the Americas in the 1500s.
And to get out of that world required a degree of imagination and commitment.
that was really kind of special.
And I think the thing that, I mean, we'll get to this, but one thing I really want to try to make clear is that a certain kind of ideals or values are not enough to make that transition, that it needed to feel useful
um and beneficial to really important people um for that change to take place it wasn't enough to say um in the same way it's not enough to say oh fossil fuels you know uh the exploitation of them is you know bad for the is bad for the climate um it's bad for geopolitics bad for a lot of things that there needed to be other um reasons for that change but yeah it's not a bad comparison actually yeah
Oh, my goodness.
Well, I mean, anybody who studied the classics knows that slaveholding was essential in classical Greece, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.
You know, there was significant trafficking in men, women, and children across the Sahara from really earliest recorded history down to the 19th, early 20th century.
Vikings made their names as Vikings by slave raids all around the North Sea and the Mediterranean.
I mean, you know, slavery has a deep ancient history.
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