African-British Writings in the Eighteenth Century: The Politics of Race and ReasonThe eighteenth century was a time of great cultural change in Britain. It was a period marked by expeditions to the New World, Africa, and the Orient, and these voyages were reflected in the travel literature of the era. It was also a period in which seventeenth-century empiricism and the scientific method became dominant, and in which society became increasingly secular. Fundamental to the eighteenth-century worldview was the notion of the Great Chain of Being, in which all creatures and their Creator stood in a hierarchical relationship with one another. The years from 1660 to 1833 witnessed both Britain's participation in slavery and the appropriation of the Great Chain of Being by social anthropologists and political leaders. With the rise of the slave trade, blacks were brought to Britain against their will, where they were enslaved. At the same time, intellectuals of the period tried to place these slaves within the hierarchical frame provided by the Great Chain of Being. |
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... black inferior- ity as truth attend Europeans ' early encounters with blacks and with Africa . As M. Van Wyk Smith writes , the negative implication of blacks , especially in seventeenth- and eighteenth - century travelogues , was not ...
... blacks might be construed as property , since by custom and practice , they were usually bought and sold as merchandise by merchants . Legal defini- tions of blacks as heathens and infidels in British common law - Butts v . Penny and ...
... blacks , especially slaves , did little to inhibit the fact that theology was widely used , discursively , to justify unequal treatment for Britain's black slave population . Hence , the Hamitic hypothesis or theory of Canaan remains ...
Contents
Enlightenment Humanism | 1 |
Perspectives on a Theological Chain | 31 |
Conclusion | 149 |
Copyright | |
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African-British Writings in the Eighteenth Century: The Politics of Race and ... Helena Woodard No preview available - 1999 |