Antislavery in the Age of Rights

Or, the Rights of Slaves Confront the Right to Slaves

Bibliographic Data

ID23596114
AuthorsChristopher Leslie Brown (corresponding author)
Year2024
Pages140-159
Publication date2024-11-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueCambridge History of Rights (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/9781009019521.008
OpenAlexW4406641102
ISBN9781009019521
LanguageEN
References cited26

This chapter draws attention to the curious ways in which rights and liberty did – and did not – overlap in the context of eighteenth-century abolitionist movements. Many eighteenth-century anti-slavery activists initially focused on improving enslaved people’s condition through legal rights rather than granting them liberty. In Spanish and French empires, there were fairly elaborate legal codes restricting slaveholders from exercising especially cruel and arbitrary punishments or practices. The British Empire was in fact an outlier in its lack of any such restrictions. At the same time, slavery was increasingly regarded as unnatural and a violation of natural rights, a view that triumphed in Somerset v. Steuart (1772). Emancipation in the northern United States also granted some rights before liberty. Conversely, the Haitian Declaration of 1804 spoke of liberty, but not rights, and even liberty was a collective, rather than individual good.

Political science · Labor Movements and Unions · Sex work and related issues

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