INTRODUCING THE ETHICAL DIMENSION

CHY4U Unit 1 Slavery and the Slave Trade

HTC

Step 1: Recognition

HTC Guidepost 1: Authors make implicit or explicit ethical judgments in writing historical narratives. Group Task: identify any implicit (implied or

suggested but not directly) or explicit (directly obvious, up front and clearly stated) ethical/moral judgments in the 3 statements that follow about slavery/slave trade. Ethical judgment = a decision about the ethics of

an historical action

Statement #1

“Whereas in the 1710-1718 period the average annual importation from Africa was 236 slaves, compared with 300 from the British West Indies, the number of slaves of African origin rose to 1, 228 per annum in the period from 25 March 1718 to 25 March 1727. By the third decade of the 18th century, African slavers were monopolozing the trade, and the basic patterns, which remained constant for the rest of the century, had been fully established.” Quoted in Peter Seixas and Tom Morton, The Big Six: Historical Thinking Concepts (Toronto: Nelson Education, 2013), p. 173.

Statement #1 con’t

“Though the individual African experience of surviving the forced migration and becoming a slave in America cannot be recaptured, the quantitative reconstruction of the mass migration of Africans to the shores of the New World helps to define the limits within which that experience took place.”

Ibid.

Statement #2

“Historians still debate exactly how many Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic during the next four centuries [until the nineteenth century]. A comprehensive database compiled in the late 1990s puts the figure at just over 11 million people. Of those, fewer than 9.6 million survived the so-called middle passage across the Atlantic, due to the inhuman conditions in which they were transported, and the violent suppression of any on-board resistance. Many people who were enslaved in the African interior also died on the long journey to the coast.”Ibid., p. 174.

Statement #3

“Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South [of the US], was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith… The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.”

Ibid., p. 174-175.

Original Sources

#1: Herbert S. Klein, The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade. 1978.

#2: Hakim Adi, “Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” BBC History. 2011.

#3: J. Steven Wilkins, Call of Duty: The Sterling Nobility of Robert E. Lee.1997.

Conclusion

What conclusion can your group draw based on the task?

Recognition con’t

Group Task: go through the section of the textbook assigned yesterday (102-105, 107, 108-top of 110) and identify any implicit or explicit ethical positions of the authors. Consider what they choose to write about or

omit, the language they use, the images they select, etc.

Are certain characters heroized or villified? Why is it important to be aware of the

ethical dimension in a textbook?

Step 2: How to Make Fair Ethical Judgments

The historical perspective HTC tells you not to use presentism to judge the past.

However, sometimes you don’t want to condone the horrible actions of the past.

HTC guidepost #2: Reasoned ethical judgments of past actions are made by taking into account the historical context of the actors in question.

What choices were available to people at the time? What were the limitations on those choices?

What Do We Do With Controversial Issues?

Ethical positions shift over time. Do we: Excuse? Condemn? ?