We are going to deal with the concept of sympathy in the context of anti-slavery movements and anti-slave-trade, first by providing readers with an introduction on anti-slave trade, (which was one of the main consequences of colonialism) and the anti-abolitionist movement. The two texts we are going to deal with are Hanna More’s ‘The Sorrows of Yamba’(1795) and Anne Yearsley ‘A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave Trade’ (1788), providing a brief biography of both authoresses and their relevance in the history of literature and more significantly, on their contribution to the anti-abolitionist movement. Both authoresses are related with the anti-abolitionist poetry in Bristol, the other two out of four being Thomas Chatterton and Robert Southey .
Slavery had existed since ancient times, but in the 18th and 19th centuries, it became one of the most important trades in Europe. The main ports for the slave trade in Europe were Bristol, Liverpool and London, where huge fortunes were made. The traders in Africa were members of tribes and they took people from villages.
The anti-slavery movement was developed in Europe by the British Parliament in 1780s and 1790s, but it was beset by the delaying tactics and power of the West-India lobby.
William Wilberforce introduced the Abolition Bill every year in parliament, but it was rejected continually until 1809. 18th century Britons had a concern too, and they objected to the enslavement of Africans in the West Indies. According to Fulford:
‘Many of those objecting were men and women who, appalled by the culture of consumption they saw spreading across Britain, participated in a religious revival of the Church of England. These Evangelicals attacked colonial slavery as a violation of ...
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...88) as it appears in the Course Handbook.
More, Hannah. ‘The Sorrows of Yamba’(1788) as it appears in the Course Handbook.
"English Abolitionist Literature of the Nineteenth Century - Alan Richardson (essay date spring 1996)." Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Russel Whitaker Marie C. Toft. Vol. 136. Gale Cengage, 2004. eNotes.com. 2006. 1 Dec, 2009 http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-century-criticism/
english-abolitionist-literature-nineteenth-century/alan-richardson-essay-date-spring-1996
"More, Hannah - Robert Hole (essay date 2000)." Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Russel Whitaker. Vol. 141. Gale Cengage, 2004. eNotes.com. 2006. 2 Dec, 2009 http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-century-criticism/
more-hannah/robert-hole-essay-date-2000
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr4.html (Webpage with information on the Middle cargo passage).
Frederick Douglass.” Journal of Narrative Technique 16.1 (Winter 1986): 55-71. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Russel Whitaker. Vol. 141. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.
In the 1700’s the Puritans left England for the fear of being persecuted. They moved to America for religious freedom. The Puritans lived from God’s laws. They did not depend as much on material things, and they had a simpler and conservative life. More than a hundred years later, the Puritan’s belief toward their church started to fade away. Some Puritans were not able to recognize their religion any longer, they felt that their congregations had grown too self-satisfied. They left their congregations, and their devotion to God gradually faded away. To rekindle the fervor that the early Puritans had, Jonathan Edwards and other Puritan ministers led a religious revival through New England. Edwards preached intense sermons that awakened his congregation to an awareness of their sins. With Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” he persuades the Puritans to convert back to Puritanism, by utilizing rhetorical strategies such as, imagery, loaded diction, and a threatening and fearful tone.
The two overarching patterns of thought regarding antislavery prior to 1830 were colonization and gradualism. In the 1820s, few objected to the institution of slavery itself; rather, blacks themselves
The Transatlantic Slave Trade started out as merchant trading of different materials for slaves. With obtaining a controllable form of labor being their main focus, the Europeans began to move to Africa and take over their land. The natives had to work on the newly stolen land to have a source of income to provide for their families.Soon others Europeans began to look for free labor by scouring the continent of Africa. Because Europeans were not familiar with the environment, Africans were employed to kidnap other Africans for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. After trade routes were established, different economies began to link together, and various items were exchanged across the world. As the Atlantic Slave Trade grew larger, problems began
In early nineteenth century there was the antislavery movement which was a failure. This people who were fighting for antislavery did not have a great support. They were nice gentle people who argued with an expression of moral disapproval but did not participate in an exert of activities. Organizations were formed to help support the freeing of slaves but these organizations did not have enough economical support to help with the thousands and thousands of slaves reproducing in America. They were able to free some slaves and tried returning some of them to their home lands in Africa but that was a failure because the amount of money need it to ship the Africans back to Africa was a high cost compared to the economical support that they had. There was even resistance from some Afr...
The Growing Opposition to Slavery 1776-1852 Many Americans’ eyes were opened in 1776, when members of the Continental Congress drafted, signed, and published the famous document “The Declaration of Independence” in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By declaring their independence, many of the colonists believed that slaves should have the same rights as the whites had. Abolition groups were formed, and the fight to end slavery began. In 1776, Delaware became the first state to prohibit the importation of African slaves. One year later, in 1777, Vermont became the first colony to abolish slavery (within Vermont’s boundaries) by state constitution.
Though the Atlantic Slave Trade began in 1441, it wasn’t until nearly a century later that Europeans actually became interested in slave trading on the West African coast. “With no interest in conquering the interior, they concentrated their efforts to obtain human cargo along the West African coast. During the 1590s, the Dutch challenged the Portuguese monopoly to become the main slave trading nation (“Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade”, NA). Besides the trading of slaves, it was also during this time that political changes were being made. The Europe...
Knowing and understanding social, political, and cultural history is extremely important when reading many novels, especially Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Linda Brent and any short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both of these authors had many extinuating circumstances surrounding their writings that should be noted before reading their works. Without knowing what was happening both in the outside world and in the respected author's life, one cannot truly grasp what the author is trying to say or what the author truly means by what he or she is saying. In this paper, I will show how important it is for the reader to understand the social, political, and cultural happenings in the writer's lives and in the world surrounding them during the times that their works were written.
Slave and slave trade has been an important part of history for a very long time. In the years of the British thirteen colonies in North America, slaves and slave trade was a very important part of its development. It even carried on to almost 200 years of the United States history. The slave trade of the thirteen colonies was an important part of the colonies as well as Europe and Africa. In order to supply the thirteen colonies efficiently through trade, Europe developed the method of triangular trade.
...Chrie, D., (ed.), Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1986. Vo. 13, pp. 53-111.
Despite each individual having different circumstances in which they experienced regarding the institution of slavery, both were inspired to take part in the abolitionist movement due to the injustices they witnessed. The result is two very compelling and diverse works that attack the institution of slavery and argue against the reasons the pro-slavery individuals use to justify the slavery
Forum 19.4 (Winter 1985): 160-162. Rpt. inTwentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 192. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
Symons, Arthur. "Nathaniel Hawthorne." Studies in Prose and Verse. E. P. Dutton & Co., 1904. 52-62. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Research, 1982. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 3 Feb. 2012.
...e of Olaudah Equiano. It was published in 1789 and was read by people around the world in several different languages. It opened everyone’s eyes to what the slave trade really was. Another reason for the end of slavery was the successful slave revolt in Haiti from 1801-1803. This showed the Americas that slavery could be defeated. And starting in the 18th century, an Industrial Revolution was sweeping over Europe and North America, and by the 19th century slaves started to become less of an economic profit. Then, in 1807, Britain became the first country in Europe to abolish slavery. Soon after France, Spain, Denmark, and Holland followed suit, and a year later America abolished the trade as well. Over the next eighty years countries began to abolish slavery altogether, and in 1865 (after the Union won the American Civil War), America became one of those countries.