Teaching & Learning Guide for: Slavery and Romanticism
Authors: Carey Brycchan 
Published: September 2007

Author's Introduction

Although it was long neglected on history courses, and almost entirely forgotten on literature courses, slavery and its abolition is now recognised as being a central theme of seventeenth‐, eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century history, literature and culture. Many hundreds of books, articles and Web sites examining the legacy of slavery and abolition are published each year. The following recommended titles are thus just a tiny selection of recent writing on the topic. I have chosen these particular titles because they deal predominantly with the literature and culture of slavery and abolition, and because they have been published relatively recently. Many fine works of history, and many fine works of literary criticism that are more than ten years old have been omitted. These titles and Internet resources should help you to get started.

Author Recommends

James G. Basker, ed, Amazing Grace: an Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660–1810 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2002).

A great deal of poetry about slavery and the slave trade was produced in the long eighteenth century, much of it commissioned, or inspired by, the Abolition Society. Basker's anthology surveys this literature, providing hundred of poems and extracts from longer works alongside useful introductory essays and notes that put the poems in context. This a great place to begin looking at the poetry of slavery and abolition.

Brycchan Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760–1807 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)

Sentiment and sensibility were the literary fashions of the mid to late eighteenth century. In this study, Carey shows how sentimental writers became key players in the abolition movement, producing novels, poems, pamphlets, sermons, songs and even parliamentary speeches designed to move their audiences to tears of sympathy for enslaved Africans.

Brycchan Carey and Peter Kitson, eds. Slavery and the Cultures of Abolition: Essays Marking the Bicentennial of the British Abolition Act of 1807 (Basingstoke: Boydell and Brewer, 2007)

On March 25, 1807, the bill for the abolition of the Slave Trade within the British colonies was passed by an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons, becoming law from May 1. This new collection of essays marks this crucial but conflicted historical moment and its troublesome legacies. Focusing on the literary and cultural manifestations of slavery, abolition and emancipation from the eighteenth century to the present day, the contributors include Deirdre Coleman, Gerald Maclean, Felicity Nussbaum, Diana Paton and Marcus Wood.

Vincent Caretta, ed., Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English‐Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1996)

This is still one of the best collections of early black writing available. Carretta's collection includes writing by Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho, Phillis Wheatley and many others. Most of the selections are extracts from longer works, but there are excellent introductory essays that place the writing in context and suggest further reading.

Deirdre Coleman, Romantic Colonization and British Anti‐Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Coleman's excellent study explores British ideas about colonisation in the Romantic period, and shows how those ideas were played out in British colonies around the world, particularly in Africa and Australia. Although this book is not solely about slavery, slavery is a major theme throughout, particularly in the chapters on Sierra Leone, the West African colony set up by the British as a utopian experiment and a home for freed slaves.

Tim Fulford and Peter J. Kitson, eds. Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

This fine collection of essays examines the relationship between literature and colonisation in the Romantic period, considering writing produced in and about Britain's colonies around the world. Many of the essays are concerned with slavery and abolition, particularly in poetry. Ten years on, this book remains one of the most important critical studies of slavery in the Romantic imagination.

Felicity Nussbaum, The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

The second half of this book in particular centres on the relationship between race and gender in eighteenth‐century literature. As well as some important sections on Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho, this book also contains the most thoroughly researched and theorised discussion of the drama of slavery and abolition yet to have appeared.

Marcus Wood, Slavery, Empathy, and Pornography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

This controversial book argues that many literary and artistic representations of slaves and of Africans made by Europeans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are forms of sadomasochistic pornography. Drawing on a wealth of examples from art and literature, Wood's argument is both challenging and provocative, and an important intervention in the current critical debate.

Online Materials

Africa and Slavery, African Slave Trade – African History on the Internet

http://www‐sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/history/hislavery.html

This page, hosted by Stanford University Library, is a regularly updated and comprehensive list of clearly annotated links to Internet resources for the study of slavery and abolition. This is an excellent place to start your Internet search.

Black Presence: Asian and Black History in Britain 1500–1850

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/index.htm

‘Black Presence: Asian and Black History in Britain 1500–1850’ traces the history of Black and Asian people in Britain from Roman and medieval times to the Victorian era, illustrated by documents, images and maps from The British National Archives and other sources. This is a clear and informative set of pages with lots of interesting images and links to follow.

Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation

http://www.brycchancarey.com/slavery/

This Web site offers a range of resources for the study of slavery, abolition and emancipation in Britain and its colonies. There are introductory essays on several themes, biographies of dozens of British abolitionists, a large selection of poems about slavery, detailed pages on Black British writers such as Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho, and pages of links and further reading.

The Antislavery Literature Project

http://antislavery.eserver.org/

Although this site should really be called ‘The American Antislavery Literature Project’, since it only deals with American literature, and almost exclusively with literature of the nineteenth century, there is nevertheless a wealth of important material here, including hundreds of poems and prose writings, much of which dates from the Romantic period.

The Slave Trade at the Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/slavery.htm

There are dozens of pages here, each offering a very brief introduction to an aspect of slavery and abolition, and allowing lots of movement between pages. This is a good browsing site for those looking for a basic introduction to the topic.

Sample Syllabus

Slavery: A British Perspective

Aims

To provide the opportunity for students to develop an understanding and appreciation of Britain's role in managing, promoting and finally abolishing, the Atlantic slave trade during the ‘long’ eighteenth century.

To provide an opportunity for interdisciplinary study in which students read about British slavery in both historical and literary texts as well viewing its representation in film and television.

To consider selected texts within the specific historical, political and cultural contexts of eighteenth‐century Britain and the ‘Black Atlantic’.

To briefly explore the accounts of slavery and abolition by writers such as Thomas Day, Olaudah Equiano, Hannah More and Thomas Clarkson.

To introduce students to key cultural and historical sites relating to the British Slave Trade, and to encourage students to view such places in an informed and critical way.

Learning outcomes

On completion of the course students should be able to demonstrate:

An understanding of the main historical events and social conditions relating to British slavery and abolition between 1660 and 1838.

An awareness of some of the literary engagements with slavery that emerged during the ‘long’ eighteenth century.

An improved ability to relate literary activity to the context of its production.

An ability to write critically and persuasively about the issues raised in the module, and an ability to undertake independent research.

Class Schedule

Week 1. Introduction: Britain in the Black Atlantic

In this class, for which there is no set reading, we will familiarise ourselves with the syllabus and arrangements for the coming weeks, and raise the problems that the module will address. Why did Britain get involved in the slave trade? What effects did it have on British society and culture? What was the experience of those brought to Britain and its colonies as slaves?

Week 2. Introduction: Literature and Slavery

In this class, for which there is no set reading, we will discuss the ways in which literary texts might have approached slavery and abolition, and we will consider ways in which, as modern readers, we could approach these texts. There will be class discussion of short texts handed out in class.

Week 3. History Workshop: The Development of the British Slave Trade

In this class, we examine a recent historical account of the origins and rise of the British slave trade. As well as reaching an understanding of the commonly agreed historical facts, we will question the author's own stance and choice of material. Is the slave trade a historic event, long past, or the site of a continuing historical – and ideological – discussion?

Focus Text: James Walvin, Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery (London: HarperCollins, 1992), parts 1–3.

Week 4. Literary Workshop: Slavery and the Eighteenth‐Century Novel

In this class, we will consider some of the literary texts to represent slavery, the slave trade and Africans more generally. How do eighteenth‐century novels engage with and advance contemporary debates about the morality of the slave trade, the management of slave plantations, and the status of Africans in English society?

Focus Texts: from the reading pack, extracts from Daniel Defoe, Captain Singleton, Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, and Sarah Scott, The History of Sir George Ellison.

Week 5. History Workshop: The Black Presence in Britain

By 1780, around 10,000 Africans lived in England, an aspect of British history forgotten by most until Fryer produced his acclaimed history, Staying Power, in 1984. As well as recounting this forgotten history, Fryer's book was also an important intervention in the debates on race and immigration that had followed the notorious Brixton riots of 1981.

Focus Text: Peter Fryer, Staying Power: A History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984), ch. 1–4.

Week 6. Literary Workshop: Sancho and Equiano

Not all Africans in eighteenth‐century London lived silent lives as slaves or domestic servants. Some represented themselves in letters, slave narratives and political tracts. Of these the most well‐known were Sancho and Equiano, whose books were bestsellers in 1782 and 1789 respectively.

Focus Text: Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), ed. Vincent Carretta (London: Penguin, 2000). Plus a small selection of letters by Ignatius Sancho in the reading pack or online at http://www.brycchancarey.com/sancho/.

Week 7. Slavery on Screen #1

In this session we view two of the four short films to feature Olaudah Equiano, and contrast the different ways in which they represent his story.

Focus Films: A Son of Africa: The Slave Narrative of Olaudah Equiano (BBC, 1995) and The Extraordinary Equiano (BBC, 2006).

Week 8. History Workshop: Abolition and Emancipation #1

In this class, we focus on the rise to influence of the British abolitionist movement in the 1780s, and ask what were the social and historical conditions that favoured its emergence at this precise historical moment. We shall also consider the extent to which Hochschild's account reflects the prevailing notions of early twenty‐first‐century historians of slavery.

Focus Text: Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: The First International Human Rights Movement (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2005), parts 1–2.

Week 9. Literary Workshop: Poetry and Abolition

Poets were the pop stars of the eighteenth century, and they rose to the challenge of promoting the abolitionist cause with considerable vigour. But, as they campaigned against the slave trade, did they also put in place poetic stereotypes of Africans as noble savages or suicidal victims? In this class we consider two of the most popular antislavery poems of the late eighteenth century.

Focus Texts: Thomas Day and John Bicknell, The Dying Negro (1775) and Hannah More, Slavery: a Poem (1788). Both are available online at http://www.brycchancarey.com/slavery/poetry.htm.

Week 10. History Workshop: Abolition and Emancipation #2

We continue our examination of the history of the abolition movement to look at what Hochschild calls ‘the bleak decade’, between 1794 and 1804 when the abolition campaign collapsed. Why did it? And why did it revive so quickly and effectively in 1805–07?

Focus Text: Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: The First International Human Rights Movement (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2005), parts 3–5.

Week 11. Slavery on Screen #2

Can cinematic representations of slavery ever fully convey the horror of slavery or the guilt of the slave traders? In this session, we watch a recent film engaging with British slavery and abolition to ask these questions.

Focus Film: either Mansfield Park, dir. Patricia Rozema (1999), or Amazing Grace, dir. Michael Apted (2006) [depending on availability].

Week 12. Writing Workshop: Rhetorics of Antislavery

In our final session we will look at extracts from some of the many tracts and pamphlets that argued against the slave trade.

Focus Texts: extracts from James Ramsay, An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies (London: J. Phillips, 1784); Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African, Translated from a Latin Dissertation, which was Honoured with the First Prize in the University of Cambridge, for the Year 1785 (London: T. Cadell and J. Phillips, 1786); William Wilberforce, Speech made in the House of Commons, 12 May 1789. All of these are in the reading pack.

Assessment

Paper 1 (40%) max 1,000 words

Students will be asked to write a short critical analysis of an extract from a text studied in the course.

Paper 2 (60%) max 2,000 words

Students will be asked to write an essay in response to one of the questions on the topics covered during the module.

Focus Questions

Why did the United Kingdom abolish its slave trade in 1807?

Assess the part played by poets and authors in bringing about the abolition of the British slave trade.

What was the contribution of Africans and people of African descent to the British abolition movement?

Are British abolitionist poems primarily about Africa, the Caribbean or Great Britain?

How is British colonial slavery remembered in the twenty‐first century?