A Lead

Every time you go to a clothing store what is the first thing on your mind? Style, price, quality, maybe color? It is rarely who and where the product was made. Do they have sufficient working conditions? Are the companies using child labor? Was someone's life put in danger to get you this designer shirt? Not asking questions and not caring, there will never be any changes. Slavery ceases to exist. 

Chapters 6 & 7

Throughout chapter 6 and 7 of Bury the Chains, the abolitionist movement is beginning to become popular. In chapter 6 the movement was brought up as "the 1700s... the century of Enlightenment, the upwelling of ideas about human rights that eventually led to... expanded suffrage". Different abolitionist begin to make a mark on the map in both Britain and the Americas such as, Thomas Clarkson, a Peckard's Latin contest winner. He was deeply disturbed by slavery and used his talents to work along with other Brtitish abolitionist, press printers, and publishers to write the document that would stir the abolitionist movement. The Quakers helped in getting the movement started and there was a lot of support from the Christian community. Chapter 7 starts off by going back in time twelve years to the American Revolution. As there is this revolution the British set free the slaves and offer "Liberty to Slaves" who join the British army and navy. When the war was over the American slave owners had a hard time getting back the freed and escaped slaves. They demanded that the British pay them back for taking away their property but the negotiations did not go in their favor until about twenty years later. 

While I was reading these two chapters I noticed that the story was a little confusing. There were many more characters in these two chapters and it seemed to revolve around more than one of them. It was very scattered but followed the theme of trying to explain how the movement began. It was nice to revisit the same scene as the first page of the book, the printing shop. I think it is important that the author revisits the stories that were not fully explained in the beginning and it helps to be able to piece together the various parts of the British Abolitionist movement. 

Chapters 2 & 4

In Chapter 2 of Bury the Chains, the life of Equiano, a former slave was told. The author used his journal entries to show the different aspects of life. It started in his homeland of Essaka, a "country were nature is prodigal of her favours", moved on to the horrible march to the shore when he was captured by the European slave traders, then following the "wretched situation" every slave endured over the Atlantic Ocean. After he got there he was saved from the sugar can plantations and went on to personally work for a wealthy Navy officer. This is where he got his education and experience. Over his lifetime he travelled to many different countries, as a slave and also as a free man. He was able to gain his freedom by earning money trading goods from island to island. Even towards the end of his life he had still not escaped fully from the whites idea of "black people being slaves", they still tried to enslave him years after he had been a free man. In Chapter 4 Hochschild moves on to talk about how the sugar cane industry became so popular. It made specific note of James Stephen a young Englishman who was put through law school with his family fortune. Coincidentally this was made trading slaves. He was outraged and surprised when he saw what they did to slaves in the West Indies and "what he had seen in that Barbados courtroom was to determine the course of James Stephen's life", as an abolitionist. This chapter also described Codrington, the slave estate in the Barbados. They kept very detailed records of how many slaves lived there, worked, died, got sick, were executed, crops sold, and profit made. 

One thing that struck me in Chapter 2 was that Equiano was a slave trader himself during a period of his life. Every character that is mentioned in the book is a hypocrite. He justified it as being the norm for the time and this is what I find to be incredible. It is the opposite parallel as John Newton, he was a slave now a slave trader. I think that he is one of many who were smart enough to realize they had to play along and agree with slavery and make friends with the whites in order to survive, but this is heinous and perpetuates slavery. I think about this and tie it to our conversation in class the other day, there is still slavery going on in this day and age but people will not stop wearing clothes made in sweatshops. It is a way of life; survival. 

In Chapter 4 when I read that it took James Stephan more than two decades, (20 years!), to stand up against British slavery I was angered. Not only did he realize once he got to Barbados how terrible slavery was he even said that it was horrifying to learn that his life was shaped with slave trade money. If he was so horrified what did this take him so long to fight against? Because of self interest? I feel that most people today work out of self interest even at the expense and time of others. 

Chapter 1

In Chapter 1 of Bury the Chains, the life of John Newton and the over all slave trade was explored. His life-story was told, the hardships and the triumphs. The author took us through the slave trade, starting from the first traders that went to Africa, going through the trips across the ocean heading to the West Indies, and then ending back in Britain, bringing back enough wealth to keep the whole triangle going again. He follows Newton's life and portrays him as a very typical slave trader, his life was used to show the audience of how exactly one might become and survive as a trader. Along with showing the trader side of slavery, there were some instances of showing how the slave was treated. There were harsh stories of how the slaves were picked up, chained, kept on the ships and sold to their owners. Towards the ending of the chapter the author talked more about how Newton felt about his life experiences, he seemed to think that they were all spiritually tied and that it was by God's grace that he became a flourishing slave trader. Ironic seeing as he had himself been in chains. 

Introduction

In the introduction of Adam Hochschild's book Bury the Chain, he starts to discuss how slavery was affected by the abolitionist movement in Britain. He looks back into the 17th thru 19th centuries the harsh conditions of the slaves at that time, moving from their native countries to the new colonies of Northern America. In addition to slavery in North America he points out that it was very prominent all over the Americas. "Looking back today, what is even more astonishing than the pervasiveness of slavery in the late 1700's is how swiftly it died". That is Hochschild's next main focus, on the abolitionist movement and how these men and women worked together to bring an end to slavery in the new colonies, and how literature was so important to his movement. The slavery in the new colonies, and how literature was so important to this movement. The author seems to fully support the British abolitionist and seems to point out that their story and involvement in the end of slavery is more important than we seem to think.