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Conference
Purpose of the Conference
The 200th anniversary of the abolition
of British slave trade provides an
opportune occasion for a small group of distinguished scholars to
explore a series of questions related to moral progress in history.
Without presuming any outcomes in advance, the conference participants
will traverse a huge expanse of intellectual terrain, in the process of
which they will offer suggestions on the content of a potential
research initiative on Ethical Progress in History.
Conference
Narrative
After receiving hundreds of antislavery
petitions and debating the issue for years, the British Parliament
passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in March 1807. Starting May
1, 1807, no slaver could legally sail from a British port. Following
the Napoleonic Wars, British abolitionist sentiment increased, and
substantial public pressure was brought to bear on Parliament to
gradually emancipate all British slaves. In August 1833, Parliament
passed the Great Emancipation Act, which made provision for the gradual
emancipation of slaves throughout the British Empire. Abolitionists on
both sides of the Atlantic hailed it as one of the great humanitarian
achievements in history. Indeed, the prominent Irish historian W.E.H.
Lecky famously concluded in 1869 that “[t]he unwearied, unostentatious,
and inglorious crusade of England against slavery very may probably be
regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous acts recorded in
the history of nations.”[1]
As the distinguished historian David Brion Davis observes, however, in
his brilliant synthesis of slavery in the New World, British
abolitionism is “controversial, complex, and even baffling.”[2]
It has occasioned a significant historiographical debate lasting over
sixty years. The key issue has been how to account for abolitionists’
motives and the groundswell of public support for the antislavery
cause. Davis suggests that historians find it difficult to accept that
something as economically significant as the slave trade could be
abolished on essentially religious and humanitarian grounds. After all,
by 1805 “the colonial plantation economy,” he informs us, “accounted
for about one-fifth of Britain’s total trade.”[3]
Prominent abolitionists like William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and
Thomas Fowell Buxton used Christian arguments to combat “inhuman
bondage,” but surely other, material factors were in play. A great deal
of ink has been spilled assessing the relationship of antislavery to
capitalism and free market ideology. And the upshot of this research is
that the antislavery impulse went against British economic interests,
both real and perceived. So how do we explain the successes of a
humanitarian movement advocating reforms that could have precipitated
economic disaster? Davis concludes that while it is important to
appreciate the complex interplay of economic, political, and
ideological factors, we must recognize the significance of a moral
vision that “could transcend narrow self-interest and achieve genuine
reform.”[4]
The 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade is an
appropriate occasion to evaluate the significance of this humanitarian
movement and to consider the particular dynamics in Britain that
brought about this reform. Of special concern is the  question
of how to assess the relative importance of religious and humanitarian
impulses in a complex economic and political context. Abolitionism
flirted with what one historian has called “economic suicide,” and yet
the movement generated considerable public pressure on politicians. Why
is this so difficult for contemporary historians to embrace in the
specific context of British abolitionism?
Consideration of the particulars of British abolitionism raises a
number of historiographical questions. In terms of the roles played by
religious and humanitarian impulses, how typical was the experience of
British abolitionism in history? What connection is there between
religious belief and social transformation? How frequently do reform
movements originate from essentially religious and/or spiritual
impulses? Do profound spiritual transformations always have significant
societal and historical impact? What models might we employ to
understand the complexity of morality-induced cultural
transformation? How do we understand altruism? What material and
cultural structures are needed to translate altruism into a successful
political movement?
Given these questions, it is also important to ask how well historians
account for religious dynamics in history, particularly religion as an
agent of positive cultural transformation. Do historians, on the whole,
appreciate the power of religious dynamics to effect positive change in
societies? Do they instinctively tend to resort to a hierarchy of
causal factors, which routinely relegates religious and moral impulses
to the lower tiers where they are cast primarily as rhetorical window
dressing for more important and measurable material factors? Is
religion more often seen as a constraining force harnessed to tradition
than as something fostering ethical progress? Assessing multiple,
interrelated factors requires empirical historical analysis as well as
exploration across disciplinary lines.
Investigating the dynamics of positive cultural transformations in the
past inevitably raises a number of methodological issues. How do we
assess religious experience? Although it seems to have a much higher
profile in the academy these days, George Marsden, whose biography of
Jonathan Edwards received multiple book awards, laments that religious
history still has not made it into the mainstream narrative of American
history. One reason, he suspects, is that the historical profession is
uncomfortable with exclusivist religious claims.[5]
Is he correct? How should historians study religion in such a way that
“gets it right”? How detached should the historian be? How do we assess
the “reality” of religious experience? Are the
religious worlds that people construct amenable to scholarly
investigation without being tamed or mutilated in the process? Robert
Orsi, prominent practitioner of “the new religious history,” brackets
the ontological questions of belief in God, saints, or other
supernatural forces when he studies the history of American Catholics.
They must remain “rich and imaginative creations,” but they “acquire a
vivid life of their own and in an important historically relevant sense
break free of their creators.”[6]
Is the past a “universal and public manuscript” meant to be read only
in the way prescribed by critical history? Or is it amenable to a
variety of tradition-specific readings that give it meaning and
texture? For example, is a reading of British abolitionism as an
example of “amazing grace” legitimate? And if so, what explanatory
benefit is there to it?
Exploration of such historiographical and methodological matters also
prompts consideration of a range of very large-scale—or
“big”—questions. The first of these involves change: How do we account
for it? Does it have directionality? Is there such a thing as
progress—be it material or moral—in history? Each of these suggests a
host of related questions. Since not all change is reforming, nor
are all transformations positive, what constitutes a “positive” change
in history, and what are the dynamics (catalysts/engines) that yield
positive change? What are the dynamics of retrograde or atavistic
change? How do we account for major shifts in moral perceptions? What
is the relative importance of morality and religion in cultural
transformation? What is the nature of the interplay between human
agency and larger forces in historical change?
Assigning value and direction to change introduces the controversial
notion of progress. Historians have been extremely reluctant to embrace
progress in history. It  smacks of
teleology. They readily admit to increasing societal and economic
complexity, but get very uneasy if anything like progress, especially
moral progress, is asserted. Are historians missing the obvious? What
is the nature of their objections? Is moral progress an illusion given
the dismal history of genocide and ethnic cleansing of the last
century? Or does focus on the manifest evils of the modern world
overshadow steady, less dramatic developments in health care, human
rights, and material prosperity? Does progress fall outside the
boundaries of historical warrant? Do historians have the tools to make
moral discriminations? What is the linkage between reform and progress?
If we cannot admit to progress in history, are we similarly proscribed
from embracing decline? Why do economists seem to have an easier time
accepting progress than historians? How do we define and measure
progress?
These questions point to even more expansive—some would say
speculative—meta-historical questions: Does the past have overarching
meaning, shape, or coherence? Is the only meaning, shape, or coherence
we derive from the past limited to whatever historians read into it?[7]
Is the project of doing so legitimate? Essential? Are big questions
like these automatically ruled off limits because of methodological
constraints? If so, is methodology dictating ontology? More
importantly, to what extent do humans have a profound need to make
sense out of the past? And should historians play a more active role in
exploring “the grander scheme of things”? Do they have any
responsibility to show how the past might help us to make sense of it
all? These matters clearly take us beyond the narrow warrant of
historical method and practice, but certainly not beyond the boundaries
of human curiosity and interest. None of this is meant to diminish the
importance of what historians ordinarily do, nor to endorse the
specifics of these provocative examples. But this line of thinking does
raise the question of whether historians might contribute more broadly
to exploring big questions than they presently do.
This last point suggests yet another layer of investigation: the
instrumental. Historians are familiar with the notion of a usable past,
but they are frequently uncomfortable with it. One of the big questions
that ought to be addressed more often is: So what? Just as we may ask:
What lessons can we learn from the history of British abolitionism?
Shouldn’t we also ask: What is the ultimate benefit to humanity of the
entire project of historical inquiry? Historians have a number of stock
responses that offer varying degrees of satisfaction to themselves and
presumably to others—ranging from satisfying intellectual curiosity to
providing social memory and essential context. As we commemorate the
success of British abolitionism, it might be helpful to consider German
theologian Adolf von Harnack’s bold claim (made in 1923): “We study
history in order to intervene in the course of history and we have a
right and duty to do so.” Obviously, Harnack’s assertion needs
considerable qualification, but it does prompt a very important
question: Can and should the study of the past lead to human
betterment, variously understood and measured? Can investigating the
end of the slave trade in Britain in the 19th century assist us in
dealing with the persistence of slavery and other forms of human
degradation in our time? Similarly, can historical investigation of
“big” topics like human accomplishment, innovation, moral progress, and
world values yield not only more insight about the past, but also
inspire and assist us in improving the lot of humanity and our world
today and in the future?
Historical inquiry unfolds simultaneously and fruitfully at multiple
levels—from microhistories that illuminate the particular to grand
meta-narratives like “big history.” We have such an astonishing range
of historical analyses because we interrogate the past in so many
different ways—from asking what happened at this place and at this time
to pondering whether the whole thing has any overarching meaning or
shape. The occasion of the bicentennial commemoration of a very
inspiring moment in British history offers an opportunity to consider a
number related and layered historical, methodological, and
metahistorical issues and questions, some of them cutting to the core
of current historical practice and convention, some of them touching on
matters beyond the ordinary warrant of the guild despite deep human
interest in them.
NOTES
1. Lecky quoted in David Brion
Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and
Fall of Slavery in the World (New York, Oxford University Press,
2006), 234. This paragraph relies heavily on Davis’s chapter,
“Explanations of British Abolitionism,” 231-249 as well as Hugh Thomas,
The Slave
Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 537-557.
2. Davis, Inhuman Bondage, 231.
3. Ibid., 245.
4. Ibid., 249.
5. George Marsden, “Can Jonathan
Edwards (and His Heirs) Be Integrated into the American History
Narrative?” Historically Speaking:
The Bulletin of the Historical Society V:6 (July/August 2004),
13-15.
6. Randall J. Stephens, “Beyond
the Niebuhrs: An Interview with Robert Orsi on Recent Trends in
American Religious History,” Historically
Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society VII:6
(July/August 2006), 9.
7. See Allan Megill, “Coherence
and Incoherence in Historical Studies: From the Annales School to the
New Cultural History,” New Literary
History XXXV (2004), 207-231.
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