How Do The Economic Texts On Slavery Differ From The Narratives On Slavery

In the introduction to his book Did Slavery Pay? (1971: xii), a collection of readings on the economic effects of slavery, Hugh G. J. Aitken discusses what we can learn from these texts. He says they ‘have much to tell us about slavery, and about the plantation economy, and the South, but they have little to tell us about the black man’ (1971: xii). To get a fuller understanding of the subject the narratives on slavery are extremely useful. They paint a vivid picture of what life was like for black men, women and children at the time. However it is important to keep in mind the differences between and the limitations of both these kinds of sources. Both types raise questions of bias and reliability. Everyone who gives an account of history does so with a purpose. We must carefully analyse each source and make clear what we can and cannot learn from it.

The economic accounts of slavery are presented as objective. ‘Facts’ and figures are used to analyse the profitability of slavery. Ernest Williams, for example in From Columbus to Castro: the history of the Caribbean, 1492-1969 (1970) provides a lot of

Many of the slave narratives share several characteristics. They describe the physical and emotional hardships they endured during their time as a slave. Like in many narratives Mary Prince told of her separation from her family, ‘we had not the sad satisfaction of being partners in bondage’ (in The Classic Slave Narratives 1987: 191), and of the cruelty of her masters, ‘to strip me naked - to hang me up by the wrists and lay my flesh open with the cow-skin, was an ordinary punishment for even a slight offence’ (1987: 194). They tell of their quest for freedom and their escape from slavery. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in the introduction to The Classic Slave Narratives states ‘the slave narratives came to resemble each other, both in their content and in their formal shape’ (1987: x). The narratives were extremely popular in America and Britain at the time it could be argued that some of the narratives were simply repeating what had worked for other authors. Although it is equally possible that the experiences of slaves in various places were similar. They are primary sources, eyewitness accounts of what took place and in this way have a value that the economic texts do not. They were written by those experience slavery, rather than some studying it possibly many years later.

The economic texts tend to talk of slaves in numbers as a commodity. This is perhaps an echo of how they were seen at the time: a non-human mode of production. Slavery was discussed as efficient or inefficient, profitable or unprofitable. The Slave narratives gave this ‘mode of production’ a voice, allowing the reader a glimpse of the human side of slavery.

numerical data detailing the rise and fall of slavery. How accurate these figures are is an important question. The reader needs to consider how they were constructed and for what purpose. Aitken suggests that historians often picked up unexamined assertions and used them as facts. They ba

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