Critical Memories of Crafted

7/28/2019 Critical Memories of Crafted

1/23

http://jci.sagepub.com/Journal of Communication Inquiry

http://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0196859908316331

20082008 32: 249 originally published online 31 MarchJournal of Communication Inquiry

Marouf Hasian, JrMediated Reputations, and Modern Globalized Slavery

Critical Memories of Crafted Virtues : The Cadbury Chocolate Scandals,

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

CommunicationCultural and Critical Studies Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass

can be found at:Journal of Communication InquiryAdditional services and information for

http://jci.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://jci.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249.refs.htmlCitations:

What is This?

- Mar 31, 2008OnlineFirst Version of Record

- Jun 6, 2008Version of Record>>

at National School of Political on May 7, 2012jci.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://jci.sagepub.com/http://jci.sagepub.com/http://jci.sagepub.com/http://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249http://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249http://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249http://www.sagepublications.com/http://www.aejmc.org/http://www.aejmc.org/http://www.aejmc.org/http://jci.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://jci.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://jci.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249.refs.htmlhttp://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249.refs.htmlhttp://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249.refs.htmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://jci.sagepub.com/content/early/2008/03/31/0196859908316331.full.pdfhttp://jci.sagepub.com/content/early/2008/03/31/0196859908316331.full.pdfhttp://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249.full.pdfhttp://jci.sagepub.com/http://jci.sagepub.com/http://jci.sagepub.com/http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://jci.sagepub.com/content/early/2008/03/31/0196859908316331.full.pdfhttp://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249.full.pdfhttp://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249.refs.htmlhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://jci.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://jci.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://www.aejmc.org/http://www.sagepublications.com/http://jci.sagepub.com/content/32/3/249http://jci.sagepub.com/


2/23

249

Journal of

Communication Inquiry

Volume 32 Number 3

July 2008 249-270

2008 Sage Publications

10.1177/0196859908316331

http://jci.sagepub.comhosted at

http://online.sagepub.com

Critical Memories of Crafted

VirtuesThe Cadbury Chocolate Scandals,

Mediated Reputations, and Modern

Globalized Slavery

Marouf Hasian Jr.University of Utah, Salt Lake City

This article provides a critical legal analysis of the rhetoric surrounding the modern

slavery problems associated with the Cadbury Brothers firm during the early 20th cen-

tury. The Cadbury firm sued The Standardnewspaper for libel, alleging that the firms

directors reputations had been damaged. The author argues that critical analysis of this

libel trial shows how the crafting of Victorian or Edwardian virtues often involved the

defense of imperial reputations, and in this case British liberals and conservatives

debated each other as they critiqued Portuguese colonial practices. The author con-

cludes that the work of Henry Nevinson and other investigators continues to influencemodern interrogations of contemporary cocoa business practices.

Keywords: William Cadbury; civic virtue; legal rhetoric; libel; modern slavery; Henry

Nevinson

When I hear the word Freedom . . . I see . . . men and women . . . driven . . . toward the

misty islands . . . where they will toil until they die, in order that our chocolate creams

may be cheap. . . .

Henry W. Nevinson, as cited in Davidson, 1963, p. x

In Angola and S. Thom . . . [there is] a brutal system of capture and supply of slave

labor by a licensed agent . . . [and] fairly humane treatment on some of the best estates.

William Cadbury, 1910, p. xi

During the fall of 1908, William Cadbury, one of the British owners of the family-

run Cadbury Brothers, Limited, should have been ecstatic. His chocolate businesses

were flourishing, and he was credited with having introduced innovative labor prac-

tices in Bourneville, a model company town (Dellheim, 1987). For centuries his

ancestors had been involved in countless antislavery ventures, and he himself had

http://jci.sagepub.com/http://jci.sagepub.com/http://jci.sagepub.com/http://jci.sagepub.com/


3/23

250 Journal of Communication Inquiry

contributed to the funding of aborigines-protection societies. Yet Cadbury sensed

that he had a small problem with the press that might potentially turn into a much

bigger conundrummore than a few journalists were suggesting that his family wasprofiting from coercive labor systems in Portuguese colonial Africa. As early as

1884 Reverend William Bentley warned readers of the London Times that if they

supported some Anglo-Portuguese treaties then slavery would be revived every-

where under specious forms (p. 3), and now 24 years later one of the most respected

Quaker families in the British empire was thought to be indirectly employing one

third of the slaves on some Portuguese cocoa islands (Nevinson, 1907, p. 495). It

did not help matters that British parliamentarians were asking officials pointed ques-

tions about the control of the recruitment of labourers for the cocoa plantations

(Recruitment, 1908, p. 937).William Cadbury would later say under oath that he worried that condemning

the British cocoa makers meant condemning the British Government (Mr.

Cadbury Cross-Examined, 1909, p. 4), but his detractors were convinced that these

types of arguments could not hide the fact that the Cadburys were profiting from the

misfortunes of others.

Some journalists and other polemicists were circulating revelatory tales that

described in lurid detail how thousands of Africans died agonizing deaths under a

virtual system of slavery, and these observers claimed that the Cadburys knew or

should have known about these affairs. Photographs of manacled children onrecruitment ships were taken surreptitiously by essayists who wrote about absen-

tee Lisbon landlords, contractual trickery in Angola, and the use of inhumane

compounds. When incredulous British firms paid for their own inquiries, one of

these investigators explained how slavery was the only word in the England lan-

guage that could accurately describe how thousands were taken away to work on

unhealthy islands under a servical [sic] system (Brutt, 1904, as cited in Cadbury,

1910, pp. 130-131).

Anxious Europeans who worried about cocoa slavery used their inventive powers of

geographic imagination as they wrote or read about these trials and tribulations, andthey focused their attention on two tiny islands off of the West African coast, So Tom

and Prncipe. By 1900, some 56% of all of the raw cocoa used by the Cadbury choco-

late firm came from these Portuguese islands (Nwaka, 1980, p. 782). Every year

approximately 4,000 men, women, and children were transported from the West coast

of Africa to these islands, and none ever came back (Nevinson, 1907, p. 492).

When a growing number of Cadburys conservative and radical critics began

recirculating stories of his alleged hypocrisy, he and several members of his family

decided to sue one of the British newspapers (The Standard) that they felt needed to

be held accountable for this pernicious spread of libelous material. Cadburywhobelieved in the importance of social efficiency and paternal benevolencewanted

to defend his firms reputation, and he wanted to air out his grievances in an open

British courtroom.



4/23

For communication scholars, this historical debate about Cadburys role in what

was then called modern slavery provides a fascinating case study that illustrates

some of the complexities that attend so many reformist movements, especially whencritics who are demanding social change run up against alliances of patriotic nation-

alists and commercial interests. Cadburys case (Cadbury Bros., Ltd. v. The Standard

Newspaper, Ltd., 1909), was supposed to focus on the technical laws of libel and the

reparation of damaged reputations, but it became just a small part of much larger

symbolic debates about the efficacy and desirability of contrasting colonial ideolo-

gies. As a general rule, the conservatives who controlled the British government

before the 1906 election favored expansionist imperial policies, while the liberals

promoted more indirect forms of reluctant colonial rule. Most Englanders did not

debate the question of whether the world needed their empirethey were simplyquibbling about the nature, scope, and limits of their interventionist practices. These

imperial debates created a vast reservoir of what Carlson (1991) calls public moral

arguments, those issues of character that may be just as important as the formalistic

logics or pieces of evidence that are persuasive elements of legal cases.

These moral arguments are often polysemic in nature and can be used by a host

of different commentators and legal actors, and in this particular libel case many of

the participants have left us discursive clues that evidence how they felt about vari-

ous imperial goals and policies. For communication scholars who are interested in

the ideological dimensions of legal controversies, newspaper coverage of theCadbury v. Standardtrial can be fruitfully analyzed through close textual analysis,

which gets at both the rhetoricity of language and the meaning of justice that cir-

culate in contested situations (Gale, 1994, p. 3). By paying close attention to both

the manifest and latent meanings that swirl around controversial libel trials, critics

get a sense of the recursive nature of legal characterizations and public ideologies,

as various imperial audiences sought to openly resolve some of the contradictions

that appeared to be an inherent part of the cocoa collection process.

For communication scholars who are interested in the study of critical legal

rhetorics (Hasian, 1994; Lewis, 2002; Lucaites, 1990; McDorman, 1997; Zackodnik,2001), comparative discursive approaches that look at both the formalistic rules of

law and their informal public shadows help us understand the intimate relationship

that exists between law and rhetoric, or jurisprudence and public ideologies.

Through the use of close textual analyses, these critical scholars can keep track of

both the synchronic nature of these debates as various social actors present their

views on character and imperialism, and they can assess the diachronic influence of

these same arguments as they echo through the ages.

In this particular case, the cocoa debates have left us with some rich colonial and

imperial archives that are filled with information about how fin-de-sicle audiencesdealt with the social, economic, and political contradictions of empire. A discursive

analysis of these cocoa debates provides researchers with a wealth of heuristic mate-

rials that help us understand how the strategic use of humanitarian politics can be

Hasian / Critical Memories 251



5/23

tied to commercial interests and the principles of those who professed to be per-

forming antislavery protests (Grant, 2005, p. 113).

Cadburys legal challenges created a situation where certain moral characteriza-tions migrated back and forth between the porous boundaries of the courtroom and

the broader rhetorical culture. Along the way, journalists, lawyers, judges, and

laypersons invited a host of Anglo-American and European audiences to think about

the nexus that existed between the limits of libel laws, the origins of imperial prof-

its, and the sinfulness of some of their sweetest pleasures. Through the uses of crit-

ical legal approaches to the law, scholars can interpret, unpack, and explain how

these various legal and public commentaries interanimate each other (Hasian, 1994)

and potentially impact social and political decision making.

A close analysis of key texts that were used in this salient controversy shows usthat in many ways, the Cadburys real nemesis in these cocoa affairs was one Henry

Nevinson, a journalist whose arguments were recirculated by some members of the

British press. For almost a century Nevinson would be a forgotten figure, but during

the first decade of the 20th century he was considered to be an iconoclastic gadfly

who wrote feverishly about the horrors of modern slavery (Nevinson, 1906/1963).

Some of his contemporaries have left us portraits of a swashbuckling radical, an

intrepid journalist who braved the dangers of the tropics so that he could bring back

empirical proof of Portuguese atrocities. During 1904 and 1905 he traveled to

Angola and some of the cocoa islands, and he was one of the travelers who puttogether a lot of the journalistic ammunition that would be picked up by some of the

writers who worked for Londons Standard.

Given the fact that both William Cadbury and Henry Nevinson shared a hatred of

slavery that passed as legalized coercive labor, it would make sense that they would

try to at least publicly acknowledge the relative contributions of the two powerful

groups that they represented in British society, the philanthropists who paid for

costly overseas investigations and the journalists who wrote about these revelations.

Moreover, both of these critics of empire had also visited the islands of So Tom

and Prncipe, and they saw some of the same shackles, the treatment of the workers,and the reports of deaths of the natives. Yet Cadbury and Nevinson worked from

very different rhetorical vantage points, and they disagreed about the specifics of

imperial policy formation. While Cadbury trusted the Portuguese overseers and

accepted incremental imperial progress, Nevinson was more confrontational and

wanted revolutionary colonial change.

For several years the purveyors of these competing colonial ideologies could

share the intellectual conceit that various publics or British parties were on their side,

but the filing of the Cadbury Ltd. v. Standard Ltd. libel case (1909) threatened this

uneasy truce. Various conservative, liberal, and radical rhetors now publicly dis-agreed about the complicit nature of Portuguese ownership, the magnitude of the

modern slavery problem, and the timeliness of certain boycotts. In many ways the

jurisprudential debates about Cadburys supposed hypocrisy can be thought of as




6/23

metonymic fragments that refracted and reflected some of the ideological concerns

that were drifting in Anglo-American and European imperial mainstreams during

this first decade of the 20th century.While nihilists or cynics might push the envelope and claim that neither Cadbury

nor Nevinson really believed in their own rhetorics of empire, I would argue that a

close textual analysis of their words and deedswhat some have called a compara-

tive study of their discourse and their quotidian practices (West, 2006)tells us other

tales. Many of their audiences read some of their work and shared many of their

anxieties, and eventually these cocoa debates did help bring about some substantive

social change. For example, the Cadbury and antislavery archives contain letters from

readers who wanted to tell these writers about their own personal participation in the

boycotting of chocolate goodsespecially after 1909and they wanted to thank var-ious investigators for their efforts. Moreover, we have a plethora of letters to the

editor that supply us with ample proof of the rhetoricity of their arguments.

A critical review of the competing legal and public ideologies that swirled around

the Cadbury v. Standardcase shows us that the arguments and issues that surfaced dur-

ing the early 20th century are still percolating today, as we hear echoes of the past in

our own centurys debates about child labor, global exploitation, and international

chocolate industrialization (Razdan, 2006; Robbins, 2002). The decoding of the

Cadbury and Standardtexts and contexts is thus more than a matter of academic debate

because some of these commentaries on Portuguese or British imperialism helped con-struct some of the generic templates that frame the ways that we think about the nature

and scope of postcolonial humanitarian intervention. As I argue below, courtroom dis-

putation about British libel law and individual reputation was inextricably tied to polit-

ical conversations about imperial virtues, and these in turn have impacted the ways that

we comment on globalization and modern cocoa industries.

Trevor Parry-Giles (2006) has argued that the study of legal characterology provides

us with rhetorical evidence of how various communities think about leadership, power,

and politics (p. 7), and in this essay I will extend Condits (1987) arguments about

the public crafting of civic virtue. I argue that the Birmingham court became thescene of a struggle over both individual and colonial reputations, as the lawyers for

the Cadburys and the Standardnewspapers blurred the line between the personal and

the public. Many of the legal arguments that circled in these courtrooms were based

on pragmatic arguments about preferred colonial policies and reasonable decision

making, which meant that commentaries about libel law could be used as vehicles

for imperial critiques.

With this in mind I have organized this essay into four major sections. The first

portion of the essay explains why the Standards owners and editors decided to

engage in some risky behavior and publish some potentially libelous material. Thesecond part of the article illustrates how the Cadburys and their supporters talked

about individual and imperial reputations as they prepared for their courtroom bat-

tles. The third segment takes us into the courtroom itself, where we gain a sense of




7/23

how various rhetors and audiences felt about cocoa and modern slavery. Finally, in

the concluding sections, I comment on the heuristic value of these types of charac-

terological analyses of legal controversies.

Unseen Hands, Henry W. Nevinson, The Standard, andBritish Critiques of Portuguese Slave Policies

The missionaries, consuls, journalists, and other critics of Portuguese labor prac-

tices who traveled to Africa came from many walks of life, but they often shared an

antipathy toward slavery. These abolitionists did not always promote egalitarian

ideas about the inherent equality of different races or classes, but they still coulddemand that the less fortunate denizens on this earth deserved to be treated as human

beings. An editorialist for the London Times, for example, understood some of the

challenges that confronted the Cadburys, but this writer pointedly noted that it

seemed a pity that a few of the comforts of Bourneville were not from time to time

imparted to the workers in San Thom and Princpe (Mssrs. Cadburys, 1909,

p. 9). Bourneville at that time was known as a company town that looked after its

workers, a place that provided a haven for abused or impoverished Birmingham

women (Cadbury, Matheson, Shann, & Catt, 1908), so why were the Cadburys not

willing to keep open eyes on the African journey of slave gangs or caravans thattreated miserable women as if they were cattle (p. 9)?

During the first decade of the 20th century, there were a whole range of possible

actions that could be taken by these abolitioniststhey could sign Parliamentary

petitions, send letters off to the Foreign Office, correspond with Portuguese friends,

and even boycott the sale of slave goods. This last activity was viewed as a dras-

tic step, given the fact that the opening up of free trade between different parts of the

empire was considered to be conducive to consciousness raising and the spread of

commerce.

Yet there are always exceptional circumstances, and there were times when thosewho believed in muscular Christianity (Kuenz, 2001) contemplated more drastic

courses of action in the wars that were waged against the scourge of slavery. By the

end of the 19th century, a host of nations had signed treaties that banned the slave

trade, and this meant that European naval vessels could board vessels that they

believed were transporting slaves. On the African mainland, there were other

Europeans who worked on the extirpation of Muslim slave trades. While moderates

patiently worked at encouraging peaceful dialogue, others wanted military interven-

tion, more settlements, or annexation.

Fin-de-sicle legal debates about corporate reputations were thus inextricablyintertwined with political wrangling about the best forms of imperialism or the social

evils of cocoa slavery. Photographs of children on the way to the cocoa islands

adorned some of the books, journal articles, and essays that were written about end-

ing the last vestiges of African slavery. Who, after all, did not need to know about




8/23

the travails of the contract laborer who arrived at the coastal towns of Batumbella

or Novo Redondo? These melancholy creatureswho were destined to live short

and desolate livesswore before a Curador that they voluntarily assented to 5years of servitude on the cocoa islands (Nevinson, 1907, p. 492).

Given the horrific death rates of the Portuguese contract laborers (most accounts

indicated between 10% and 22% of them died within a matter of a few years), how

could rational human beings explain these colonial conditions? Sadly, many of the

same Europeans who worried about the troubles of the natives also believed that the

use of coercive labor was both necessary and efficacious. Regimented work suppos-

edly provided a part of the antidote that would cure the poison of slavery. Given the

stereotyping of the times, many imperialists were convinced that efficient imperial-

ism required the use of vagrancy laws, local taxes, or other colonial accoutrementsthat would help control the uncivilized who were working their way up social

Darwinian ladders (Brantlinger, 1985; Nwaka, 1980). Imperialists often argued that

in order to be effective, reformist schemes needed to work with natureonly fools

suffering from tropical heat or utopian dreamers believed in the totally equality of

all humanity. Pragmatic imperialists thus worked within horizons of meanings that

were filled with all sorts of creative ways of differentiating between the use and

abuse of native labor.

This meant that Anglo-Americans or Europeans who wanted to shield the

Portuguese officials from blame could simply argue that the radical humanitarianswere either exaggerating the magnitude of the cocoa problems or focusing on the

wrong causative factors. If imperial ethnologists, royal geographers, or knowledge-

able diplomats wanted to study the natural causes of slavery, they could highlight the

role that population density, heat, climate, physiology, or racial aptitude might play

in these situations. If a Victorian or Edwardian wanted more culturally oriented

explanations for the widespread existence of involuntary servitude, books about

everything from cannibalism to the influence of Muslim culture could supply needed

information about the difficulties that attended abolitionism. A close analysis of one

of the texts (Wyllie, 1909) produced by an influential participant in these cocoadebates illustrates how some were convinced that the British press was zealously

taking up the cause of the black man [sic] and forgetting to do justice to the

white. Nevinson and other ignorant observers were said to be lumping together the

Angolan interior and island colonies and unfairly maligning the planters of St.

Thom, who were as kindly a body of men as can well be found. Why, given these

facts, were these sentimentalists not going after the savages, black, brown, or

white, who were responsible for the atrocities committed by savages? Within this

particular colonial narrative, blaming the planters made about as much sense as mak-

ing an Oxford-street tradesman [sic] answerable for the personal misdeeds ofsome customer of anarchist leanings, say in Barcelona or Madrid (Wyllie, 1909,

p. 16). These types of rhetorics were therefore filled with plenty of denials, equivo-

cations, or trivializations, where the African deaths could be configured as the nat-

ural result of sleeping sickness, tropical disease, or the inability to acclimate.




9/23

Within some of the more moderate imperial scenarios, the modern slave trade

continued to exist because of the corrupt acts of Europeans or Africans who dis-

obeyed Portuguese laws or the tenets of the new imperialism. The Cadburys couldbe credited with overseas labor reformation if they convinced enlightened planta-

tions owners or members of the Foreign Office that abusive practices needed to end.

Those radical publicists who did not understand the practical wisdom of these incre-

mental reformist plans could be configured as interlopers who hurt the truly effec-

tive abolitionist causes. Conservative and liberal defenders of British imperial rule

were convinced that the cocoa problems did not stem from imperialism per se, but

from the unregulated management of colonial schemes. If observant stewards pro-

tected the natives in the same way that the Cadburys managed the White Bourneville

workers, then everyone could enjoy their sweets without having a guilty conscience.In some of the more ingenious imperial tales that were told about the benefits of

European colonial practices, those who signed voluntary labor contracts were said

to be flocking to the cocoa islands so that they could flee the poverty and degenera-

tion of their primitive precolonial pasts. These workers could be characterized as

African elites who were trying to mimetically follow their European betters. Those

who defended the Portuguese planters circulated books and articles that were filled

with pictures of White missionary buildings, clean schools, and happy servants

(Montero, 1910/1969).

When George Cadbury purchased theDaily News in 1901, the chocolate makerswere walking into this prefigured world, and these crusaders joined the lists when

they complained about Congolese or South African labor practices (Our Modern

Knights-Errant, 1909, p. 491). By 1903, readers could see how these Quakers were

supporting the British Liberal Party as they chastised those who needed to do some-

thing about the Great Diamond Robbery in Africa or the Tottering Tyranny of

King Leopolds Inferno (Nwaka, 1980, p. 782). This relativizing effort tried to

underscore the loss of African lives while mining in South Africa, and the synchronic

allusion to King Leopold of Belgium referred to the deaths that occurred during rub-

ber collection in what was then called the Congo Free State. The Cadburys wouldlater complain about the slanderous accusations that were hurled their way, but they

themselves participated in debates about the desirability of expansionism, free trade,

or the British use of Chinese coolie labor (Satre, 2005, p. 127).

The Cadburys, however, were worrying about their personal reputations. By

1908, it appears that these Quaker chocolate manufacturers had agreed among them-

selves that they could no longer sit idly by as they read the contemptuous claims

of those who would impugn their motives. Other newspapersincluding the

Manchester Guardian and The Evening Standardhad previously backed down and

provided retractions and apologies when threatened with possible lawsuits (Satre,2005, p. 125), but the staff of The Standard may have believed that they had

advanced some truthful or justifiable claims. The Standards owner, C. Arthur




10/23

Pearson, and editor, Howell A. Gwynne, decided that they were going to hold the

line, and they stood by the claims that they presented in their controversial editorial.

Pearson was a well-known conservative proprietor of several newspapers, whileGwynne was a former correspondent for Reuters who had covered the Boer War for

Reuters. It is no coincidence that Gwynne was also a friend of die-hard imperialists

such as Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner. Both Pearson and Gwynne had their own

imperial creeds, and they realized that the CadburysDaily News was filled with sim-

ilar lurid tales of South African mining abuses, so this must have violated their sense

of fair play. Conservative defenders of the British Empire fumed at the idea that self-

righteous crusaders were now using libel lawswhich were technically supposed to

take into account both private and public interests (Vick & MacPherson, 1996)in

political ways that appeared to be closing off public debate about liberal politics andeconomic practices.

Scholars today have no shortage of evidence that documents how the Cadburys and

other chocolate manufacturers did indeed spend small fortunes on hundreds of local,

national, and international antislavery campaignsfrom Fox Bournes Aborigines

Associations to E. D. Morels Congo Reform Associationbut this did not automati-

cally mean that they could control the spin that was placed on those activities. Ironically,

the more that William Cadbury could show he cared about the natives, the more that this

documented the existence of facts that helped build the defendants legal case. After all,

could the chocolate makers critics not claim that all of this spending on other cam-paigns simply masked the fact that these British philanthropists profited from other ven-

tures, in the same way that the Northern Lords of the Loom helped fund the efforts of

the America Southerners who were the Lords of the Lash (Holden-Smith, 1993)?

A close textual analysis of the Standardeditorial of September 26, 1908, helps us

understand just why the Cadburys might have felt troubled when they read this par-

ticular critique. Their lawyers claimed that damages should be awarded because this

chocolate firms officials have been and will be injured in their credit and reputa-

tion (Writ, 1908), but in many ways this editorial seemed to be a text that brought

to the surface some of the latent contradictions that were glossed over in theirdefenses of their cocoa activities. This Standardshard was saturated with innuendo,

and there is no shortage of invective as the unnamed author makes fun of those vir-

tuous people of England (We Learn, 1908, para. 3) who were profiting from the

misery of others.

This short essay begins with a disarming congratulatory remark that thanks

William Cadbury for his proposed 1908 trip to Africa that he would include a tour

of Angola and So Tom. The tone changes abruptly as readers get to see some sar-

donic commentary on the way that Mr. Cadburys reputation stands as high as his

renown for the sale of cocoa (We Learn, 1908). Veiled allusions to class and eth-nic differences are used as framing devices as the editorial focuses on the studied




11/23

English model factories of Bourneville and the high quality of their manufactured

goods. The essay gets more caustic as audiences then learn that

There are lecture-rooms and gymnasia, and no public-houses; the young ladies in the

firms employ visit the swimming bath weekly, and they have prayers every morning

before beginning their honourable task of supplying the British public with wholesome

food. But in this latter useful process they are not the only agents. The white hands of

the Bourneville chocolate makers are helped by other unseen hands some thousands of

miles away, black and brown hands, toiling in plantations, or hauling loads through

swamp and forest. In the plentitude of his solicitude for his fellow-creatures Mr.

Cadbury might have been expected to take some interest in the owners of those same

grimed African hands. (We Learn, 1908, para. 1)

Now this author of this Standardeditorial goes on to admit that William Cadbury has

been concerned about the well-being of some members of other races, but this alert

conscience seemed to be concerned only about the Chinese laborers, who are config-

ured by this Standardcontributor as voluntary laborers protected by the precautions

of the British and the Chinese governments. The Cadburys are thus characterized as

liberal imperialists who have picked the wrong quarrel. Within this imaginary com-

munity, William Cadbury could be treated as some nave and bumbling busybody, a

wealthy factory owner who stood behind the misguided Liberal Party.

Entire paragraphs are used to document the extensive abuse of cocoa island con-tract labour, and Mr. Cadbury is addressed as the party who needs to think about the

purchase of boys and girls, the manacled and shackled slaves who were taken to the

West African coast, and the compounds that were used to sort out these groups as

they prepared to embark on their island voyage (We Learn, 1908). The addressee is

then told that none of these workers were repatriated and that many died within a

matter of years. Geographic distance is then discursively traversed as readers are told

in no uncertain terms about who directly profits from this modern slavery:

And the worst of this slavery and slave-driving and slave-dealing is brought about by thenecessity of providing a sufficient number of hands to grow and pick cocoa on the islands

of Princpe and So Tom, the islands which feed the mills and presses of Bournville!

Such is the terrible indictment, made, as we have said, by a writer of high character and

reputation on the evidence of his own eyesight. (We Learn, 1908, para. 2)

This editorialist for The Standardwas thus implying that liberals like Cadbury were

really bystanders who read these revelatory accounts and received them with some

strange tranquility. In many ways, this type of reasoning created discursive ges-

tures that framed William Cadburys own belated investigations as superfluous andself-interested.

IfThe Standardhad simply provided an editorial that commented on the cocoa

trade in general, or the universal horrors of the Portuguese slave trade, they could




12/23

have potentially avoided a lawsuit, but this particular editorial named names and

identified specific practices that were allegedly hypocritical. William Cadbury was

ridiculed for his masquerading as some philanthropist and friend of humanity.The editors ofThe Standarddid indeed put together a witty and interesting cri-

tique of William Cadburys activities. Yet in the process they consciously or uncon-

sciously stitched together an attack that was also filled with all of the elements that

were needed to construct a prima facie libel case under British law at the time

publication, a readily identifiable plaintiff, and allegations that could damage the

reputation of both a named individual and the company that he worked for

(Townshend, 1877). English law complicated matters for defendants because during

this period of time ones reputation and character were so important that the burden

of proof was placed on defendants to show that they had not damaged the plaintiffsgood name (Vick & MacPherson, 1996).

The Cadburys legal staff could puncture the defenses justifications by showing

that their clients were acting reasonably when they followed the advice of those who

told them it would be best not to make a scandal of the past, but to wait for

promised reforms (Messrs. Cadburys Libel Action, 1909, p. 4). Rufus Isaacs

could therefore argue that the defendants were forgetting that under British law rea-

sonable Englanders could disagree about the politics and the methods that were used

to rectify the cocoa labor situation. As far as these plaintiffs lawyers were con-

cerned, even if the defendants could prove that the chocolate firms had not joined theearly boycott movements, this did not mean that the Cadburys were necessarily act-

ing in bad faith or in hypocritical ways.

Yet there are times when winning a libel case may provide pyrrhic victories, and

participants in these types of judicial affairs may not always get what they ask for.

The Cadburys, British Libel Law, and the Liberal Responsesto the Cocoa Slavery Question

During the first parts of this 1909 libel trial, Isaacs went on the offensive and

argued that this should be a libel trial that reviewed the question of whether the

Cadburys were fit objects for odium and contempt (Writ, 1908). Under British

laws that covered libel and slander (see Townshend, 1877), if individuals were

injured they could ask courts for damages, and this meant that if a reasonable person

would think worse of the Cadburys they had a potential cause of action. Wragge &

Company, the solicitors who worked with Isaacs, made sure that Foreign Secretary

Edward Grey would be able to present the court with a deposition that explained the

Liberal governments position on these affairs. Travers Buxton of the Anti-SlaverySociety was asked to document the Cadburys involvement in abolitionist affairs.

After the filing of the plaintiffs statement, both the Cadbury Brothers firm and

The Standard spend an immense amount of money collecting information about




13/23

prior knowledge of cocoa slavery, and each side tried to gain some insight into the

motives of their adversaries. The Cadburys tried to amass evidence that definitively

proved that they had consistently fought modern slavery on the African continent,while The Standards lawyers tried to chronicle a competing narrative filled with

tales of half-hearted reformist efforts. Sadly, as Satre (2005) astutely observes, all of

this energy was now being directed away from the prudential task of materially

improving the conditions of the serviais and toward the legal debates about com-

mercial virtue (p. 129).

Close textual analysis of dozens of newspaper articles discloses that during

December of 1909 the presses were filled with commentaries on slave cocoa. By

then Isaacs and his legal staff had advanced three major contentionsthey claimed

that the defendants knew or should have known about the Cadburys unswervingdedication to ending slave practices, that the defendants failed to take into account

the fact that chocolate firms were following the suggestions of the British Foreign

Office, and that The Standardhad unfairly characterized William Cadburys overseas

investigations. For example, it was argued that during the 1880s some members of

the Cadbury families had willingly supported Englands Anti-Slavery Society

(Messrs. Cadburys Libel Action, 1909). The Wragge firm apparently decided that

they did not need to call that many witnesses to prove that their clients were dedi-

cated philanthropists.

The second cluster of arguments, which focused attention on the correspondencethat came from the British Foreign Office, posed a number of challenges for the

plaintiffs because Sir Edward Greys deposition was filled with equivocations. His

courtroom testimony seemed to underscore the point that the British government

was not going to get involved in a case that might threaten Anglo-Portuguese rela-

tions. When Edward Carson, the lead defense attorney, asked him questions about

governmental negotiations with the Portuguese, Grey backtracked and told the

Birmingham courtroom that this was not really a Foreign Office matter because the

Portuguese government had suspended recruiting in their colonies altogether (Libel

Action by Messrs. Cadbury, 1909, p. 4). The plaintiffs barristers must have beenstunned when they heard Grey testify under oath that he could not recall having

advised the Cadburys to continue purchasing cocoa from So Tom and Prncpe.

Some members of the Foreign Office did comply with the courts request for some

needed documents, but they redacted many parts of these statements in the name of

national security (Satre, 2005, pp. 152-153). William Cadbury tried to present the

court with some of his own written memos that summarized his conversations that

he allegedly had with Grey in October of 1906, but Rufus Isaacs could not find any

written document that showed that the Foreign Office had given any direct guidance

on the purchase of cocoa beans or the maintenance of cordial relations withPortuguese planters.

These Foreign Office positions complicated matters for the prosecutors who were

focusing on the Cadburys virtuous reputations, but Isaacs and his staff still had one




14/23

major argument that could be advancedthe Cadburys were acting like typical lib-

eral reformers when they paid out of their pockets for new investigations of the

cocoa islands.MacIntyre (1981) has explained how Victorian notions of virtue needed to be

publicly performed as evidence of good character, and at the same time that these

barristers highlighted William Cadburys philanthropy, they also linked these posi-

tions to the views of the reasonable imperialists who believed in the tenets of mod-

ern reformation. Searle (1983) notes how both the Cadburys and Rufus Isaacs were

considered to be leaders of the New Liberalism of this period, and this symbolic

alignment helped underscore the importance of incremental colonial change.

Isaacs and his staff crafted courtroom narratives that were filled with liberal impe-

rial pictures of a caring philanthropist who understood the real meaning of colonialduties and civilizing missions. By 1909 Cadbury had visited the cocoa islands, and

he was portrayed as a thorough and objective researcher who avoided journalistic

excesses. In many ways he was configured as a typical moderate who was concerned

about the Portuguese recruits, and this blurring of personal and political characteri-

zations created the impression that Greys forgetfulness was of no consequence. A

major issue, of course, involved the question of whether audiences would accept

these glowing accounts of the Cadburys and the governments liberal policies.

The British owners of these chocolate factories may have sincerely believed that

they were not hypocrites and that they had much to gain from the airing of theirgrievances in one of Englands courtrooms, but these plaintiffs could not control the

rhetorical trajectory of some of these imperial claims. The politicized nature of the

crafting of virtue (Condit, 1987) creates situations where motivated audiences may

or may not accept some of the negotiated compromises that come out of these legal

debates about slavery, the speed of reform, or honorable action. Too many competi-

tive imperialists wanted the prestige and power that was linked with the most virtu-

ous of colonial characterizations (MacIntyre, 1981).

British Chocolate Trials and Tribulations: Ideological Drift andthe Rhetoric Surrounding Cadbury Bros., Ltd. v. The Standard

Newspaper, Ltd.

Rufus Isaacs was an excellent barrister and a dedicated promoter of many liberal

causes, but The Standard newspaper had hired an equally powerful defender

Edward Carson. Carson listened attentively to William Cadburys chronology of his

firms involvement in various humanitarian ventures, and then he started what some

have regarded as one of the most devastating cross-examinations in the annals ofBritish libel law. During one of these December judicial proceedings, Carson asked

Cadbury if he was still waiting for a postcard from Sir Edward Grey that would




15/23

indicate that the Foreign Office wanted the chocolate firm to do anything (The

Libel Action, 1909, p. 4).

Majoriebanks (1932) would later recall how Carson used material fromCadburys own reports to incrementally gain an admission of mere slavery and

passing from cruelty to atrocity, and from atrocity to licensed murder on a large

scale, until the plaintiff seemed to stand there as defendant in all but name, and

shared responsibility for the sorrows of the world (p. 395). For example, Carson

read to the court a portion of a letter that Cadbury sent the Planters Committee in

London that indicated that the British public might refuse at any time to take cocoa

made from the pods that came from slave labor. This implied that William Cadbury

knew beforehand that boycotts were effective business tools, and that this Quaker

was taking contradictory positions on the question of economic leverage. How, afterall, could William Cadbury continue to defend his firms belated interventionist

practices when he himself had recognized the potential power that came from strong

boycotts?

Carson was in no hurry, and his cross-examination of William Cadbury took sev-

eral days. This barrister carefully rephrased questions that repetitively highlighted

the misery of those who toiled on the cocoa islands. This seasoned veteran knew how

to ask similar questions in different ways, and he managed to weather the usual

storm of objections that came from the lips of Rufus Isaacs. During a key part of

these legal proceedings, William Cadbury and Carson had this following exchangeof cross-examination questions and answers:

Carson: Knowing that it [slavery] was atrocious, you took the main portion of your supply

of cocoa for the profit of your business from the islands conducted under this system?

W. Cadbury: Yes, for a period of some years.

Carson: You did not look upon that as anything immoral?

W. Cadbury: Not under the circumstances. (Libel Action by Messrs. Cadbury, 1909, p. 4)

The next day Carson continued his barrage and got this fateful answer to one of his

queries:

Carson: Have you formed any estimate of the number of slaves who lost their lives in

preparing your cocoa during those eight years?

W. Cadbury: No, no. (The Libel Action, 1909, p. 4)

Carsons legal presentation was as graphic as the discursive and photographic

material that appeared in Nevinsons books and essays, and the Birmingham school-

children and law students who attended this particular trial heard Cadbury acknowl-

edge that the children born on Tom and Prncpe were considered to be slaves, thatworkers were whipped for trying to escape from the planters, and that the Cadbury

firm had paid more than a million pounds for the cocoa that came from these islands.




16/23

Forty years later, Simon would aver that Carsons cross-examination of William

Cadbury was one of the most devastating things that he had ever heard (Hyde,

1953/1974, p. 250).The defense barristers perhaps shocked some of their colleagues when they

decided that they were not going to call any of their own witnesses to the stand, but

after listening to all of these weeklong arguments the jury needed only 55 minutes

to reach their verdict. These fact finders eventually decided that the Cadburys should

technically win this libel case, but they could barely hide their contempt when they

also announced the amount of damages that needed to be paid by The Standard

one farthing, or about one quarter of a penny. Although neither party was totally sat-

isfied with the decision, the size of the damage award clearly indicated that many

members of the jury seemed to have accepted at least some of the claims of thedefendants.

Given the polysemic and polyvalent nature of the legal texts that are used in judi-

cial trials, we should not be surprised to find that there were lurkers outside of the

confines of this Birmingham courtroom who did not completely identify with the

liberal arguments of Rufus Isaacs or the more conservative positions of Sir Edward

Carson. As these legal arguments ideologically drifted (Balkin, 1993) into the public

mainstream, various audiences could present their own reconfigurations of these

tales of imperial virtue.

Throughout 1909, a bevy of other writers put together their own fragments thatexplained how the Portuguese planters on So Tom and Prncipe were improving

the lives of the contractual laborers! After all, it seemed as though the Cadburys and

their detractors were assuming that the Portuguese were slavers, when more sympa-

thetic audiences could treat their workers as voluntary laborers. Another European

nations honor was a stake, and the British needed to remember that they were not

the only benevolent imperialists. A. de Almada Negreiros, a Portuguese civil servant

working on So Tom, wrote an essay for the Anti-Slavery Society in March of 1909

that suggested that British humanitarians did not understand that the plantation own-

ers were providing the Africans with exemplary treatment. He thought that ifPortugals critics really wanted to help the plight of their less fortunate wards, then

they needed to lavish attention on the mistreatment of Indian workers in South Africa

or the Africans who left Mozambique so that they could work on British projects.

Ironically, Negreiros claimed that William Cadburys efforts had dishonored the

Portuguese (Satre, 2005, p. 138).

These Portuguese writers or their supporters must have sensed that they were play-

ing the part of the villains in these other British tales of Victorian or Edwardian virtue,

and they supplied their own counternarratives that heaped praise on the sacrifices of the

early colonizers of these islands. The British lawyers and public boycotters kept writingabout the misfortunes of the poor natives, but what about the trials and tribulations of

those Whites who traveled to perilous tropic regions? These victimage tales had their

own villainsthe Blacks who sold their brothers and sisters into slavery or the native




17/23

traders who lived pagan lives untouched by the healing balms of Portuguese

Catholicism. Francisco Montero (1910/1969), a plantation owner and secretary of the

PlantersAssociation, produced three volumes that were filled with pictures and com-mentaries that explained to readers the steps that were being taken by planters and

Portuguese officials as they worked on tropical medicine, housing, religious instruction,

and other forms of colonial beneficence.

Interestingly enough, perhaps the most eloquent defender of Portuguese colonialism

was a Scotsman who once attended the Royal Military College at Sandhurst

Lieutenant Colonel John Alfred Wyllie. This former British soldier had helped several

of the So Tom planters with their translations of manuscripts, and he sent several let-

ters to the London Times that detailed just why Nevinson and the other liberals were

spreading falsehoods about Portuguese labor policies. Wyllie personally believed thatthe Union victory over the South in the American Civil War was one of the greatest

tragedies in the history of Western civilization, and unlike many of the participants in

the Cadbury v. Standardtrial he simply did not understand why other Whites were in

such a hurry to join the boycotting movements. He argued that all of this talk of island

labor problems hurt Anglo-Portuguese relations, and he was convinced that these accu-

sations also deflected attention away from British colonial problems. Why, after all,

were these liberal or conservative crusaders not interested in boycotting the rice that

came from Burma? If Cadbury or Nevinson were really that concerned about the wel-

fare of the serviias, then why they were they ignoring the racial superiority of theplanters, the beneficence of the Portuguese rulers, and the civilizing power of European

control of Angola? Did these idealists not understand that the Africans who lived in their

native lands were suffering from alcoholism and other diseases? The islands, argued

Wyllie (1909), were a veritable paradise for the blacks (p. 16).

These brazen textual defenses of Portuguese labor practices seemed to provide the

type of public commentaries that corroborated the legal evidence that was prominently

displayed by Carson in his cross-examination of William Cadbury. Were these

Portuguese apologists providing the British with any firm evidence that they understood

the importance of fair wages, repatriation, or the regulation of labor recruitment?If we think about these debates in ideological terms, a critic could argue that this

libel case raised the stature of the arguments that were presented by Nevinson and

other journalists, and it created a situation where many Anglo-American publics

could reject the extremist rhetorics of writers like Wyllie. Moreover, the Cadburys

admonitions about the need to maintain cordial relations with the planters seemed to

fall on deaf ears as they lost their persuasiveness. At the turn of the century, British

audiences may have given the Portuguese the benefit of the doubt, but lack of sub-

stantive action spoke volumes about efficacious reform. For example, in January

1909 the Chronicle of the London Missionary Society averred that the moral sua-sion of the Cadbury, Fry, and Rowntree firms had led to no improvement in the

lot of the natives, and these writers called for a boycott of island cocoa (Satre, 2005,

p. 125). Nevinson (who was frustrated by the fact that he was not allowed to testify




18/23

in this libel case on a topic where he was widely regarded as an acknowledged

expert) later told readers that this was not a question of good or bad treatment, but

rather the sale of human beings. Critics could conceivably argue that we still havenot learned Nevinsons lessons.

Conclusion: Public Boycotts, Diplomatic Negotiations, AfricanRepatriation, and the Celebrated End of Modern Slavery

Did any of these legal and public debates about libel, the virtue of the Cadburys,

the shortened lives of the serviais, or the efforts of the Portuguese government help

alter imperial practices? Satre (2005) contends that after years of Western rhetoric,there was no appreciable change in the lot of slaves in Angola or on the islands

before the boycotts of 1909 (p. 132). Yet I would argue that this ignores the fact that

audiences around the world would never have learned about the need for this boy-

cott, nor would they have supported the boycotts, if they had not heard the respec-

tive conservative, liberal, or radical arguments that circulated between 1900 and

1909. Satre, like Nevinson before him, may have underestimated the impact of all of

this public and legal argumentation. They may have also undervalued the symbolic

capital of the consciousness raising that came out of the Cadbury v. Standardlibel

trial. When the jury awarded the Cadburys a mere farthing, they were not only mak-ing a statement about the actual damaging of the reputation of four owners of a

chocolate firmthey were also potentially representing the views of many conserv-

ative, liberal, or radical imperial audiences who now demanded drastic and substan-

tive cocoa reforms. The older arguments about the necessity of coercive labor simply

did not resonate in the same way that they had before these decadelong debates and

revelations. Satre may be following the traditional scholarly decoupling of rhetoric

and reality, but this misses the constitutive nature of abolitionist argumentation.

Changes in discursive practices were reflected in the material alienation of slavers.

All of these European defenses of the need for native labour would be arounduntil the decolonization of the 1960s, but the open shackling of human beings, or the

movement of human beings into containment pens, was something that raised the

hackles of many imperialists. Granted, Satre is right when he claims that these

rhetorics did not end many colonial problematics, but they did help ameliorate at

least some of the suffering of the colonized. The British kept track of the Portuguese

repatriation practices (see Harris, 1913), and they did try to quantify just how many

Africans who worked on the islands lived to tell about their experiences.

In this particular case a legal forum provided various transatlantic publics with an

arena where audiences could hear contentious debates about individual and nationalreputations, and they could think about the moral or ethical costs of their own con-

sumptive practices. I would argue that many of the Anglo-Americans or Europeans

who heard about the fin-de-sicle perils of modern slavery (Nevinson, 1907) at least




19/23

recognized some of the difficulties that attended the use of certain colonial nomen-

clatures. Defenders of colonial practices could not always hide behind the

euphemisms that they deployed. Critics of abusive cocoa policies were helping edu-cate publics about the symbolic and material impact of seemingly nominal changes

in semantic designations. They heard about the social, political, and economic con-

ditions of both the planters and their workers, and Nevinson and Cadbury were just

some of those who put together revelatory reports that showed how legal phrases

could be used to justify governmental noninvolvement in the internal affairs of the

Portuguese. After hearing all of this rhetoric, the virtue of the Cadburys was inextri-

cably tied to the contradictions and the alleged beneficence of new imperial projects

of many nations. Some of the questions that were raised in the Cadbury v. Standard

trial still echo through the ages: How, after all, could virtuous and beneficent leadersof Victorian or Edwardian empires morally profit from a capitalist system that was

supposed to reward both industriousness and moral rectitude?

In the aftermath of the Cadbury v. Standardlibel trial, some of the participants in

this proceeding continued their consciousness-raising efforts and they tried to force

the hand of the British Foreign Office. The officials who worked for that powerful

office were equally adept at using the powers of deflection and strategic silence, and

they avoided grappling with all of the dimensions of the Portuguese labor problems.

William Cadbury, embarrassed and contrite following the Standardjudgment, could

have rested on his laurels and stopped his attacks on Angolan slave practices. Hecould have stopped harping on the lax nature of official enforcement of Portuguese

laws. Yet this would not be the case, and it seems as though he used some of the

material that came out of the libel trial in new diatribes that provided some harsher

critiques of island practices. In 1912, for example, Cadbury coauthored an essay

with E. D. Morel on the West African Slave Traffic, and these writers complained

about the pace of reforms on both So Tom and the African mainland. They averred

that notions of repatriation were still a hollow mockery, and they pushed for

more radical reform (Cadbury & Morel, 1912, p. 851). After reviewing statistical

information that came from British consuls, they concluded that over a 22-yearperiod of time at least 67,000 Angolans had been shipped to the islands, and this did

not include the minors under 12 or the infants who accompanied their parents.

Cadbury and Morel were now making arguments that looked a lot like the claims

that once circulated in the essays of Nevinson or The Standardas they wrote about

how a very large portion of Angolan slaves were condemned to rapid death in

order that private enterprise may profit from their labour (1912, p. 843). While

these authors were still unwilling to believe that the Portuguese administrators

grave maladministration could be linked to any purposive cruelty for crueltys

sake, they did believe that their patriarchal practices and their lack of money cre-ated situations where other nations needed to think about active intervention in

Portuguese affairs. This at least acknowledged the systematic nature of these labor

problems.




20/23

Given the volatile nature of these controversies, we should not be surprised to find

that over the years politicians, scholars, business leaders, and laypersons have pro-

vided different answers when they have been asked about the confluence of global-ized profits and national morality. While many historical audiences have been

bothered by allegations of hypocrisy and the conditions of the serviais, there was

no shortage of observers who defended the Cadburys and their imperial decision

making. For example, in 1924 Wilson admitted that it may have been ironic that one

of the Cadburys [William] had exposed the evil of slavery grown cocoa and yet

found that the firm had to defend itself by an action for libel. This author was con-

vinced that apart from this incident, the Cadbury family seemed to provide exem-

plary illustrations of how Christians can succeed in commerce (Wilson, 1924,

p. BR-10). Wilson elaborated by explaining that some members of the Cadburyfamily had spent years of their lives campaigning for liberal causes as they labored

to end human exploitation and world wars (1924, p. BR-20). Several historians of

Angolas political past wax eloquently about a William Cadbury who relentlessly

attacked the systematic nature of human exploitation in Portuguese West Africa

(Egerton, 1957, pp. 95-96; Henderson, 1979, pp. 115-116).

Other critics have been less charitable, and they have provided us with less hagio-

graphic portrayals of some of the owners of Englands major chocolate factories.

These detractors have argued that the ambiguous policies of the Cadburys and their

supporters created myriad problems for the reformers who wanted immediate ame-lioration of the cocoa slavery problem. For example, Clarence-Smith (1979) argues

that the moderate liberal policies that were formed after listening to the arguments

of both the British antislavery slavers and the Portuguese plantation owners gener-

ated its own momentum, where these negotiated compromises encouraged the per-

petuation of the slave trade on the African continent and hurt the cause of those who

demanded African compensation or repatriation (pp. 169-170). A year later, Nwaka

(1980) surmised that the conflicting roles of these chocolate producers forced

them into embarrassingly inconsistent arguments that ended up indirectly subsidiz-

ing a system of slavery (pp. 781-782). Grant (2005) later claimed that by 1906 theCadburys had established themselves as public critics of imperialist exploitation and

specifically of new slaveries of imperial regimes in Africa (p. 110), but that they

were selective in their criticism. Their own cocoa revelations also showed that

William Cadbury deftly exploited other humanitarian campaigns to distract atten-

tion from his companys own slavery scandal in West Africa (Grant, 2005, p. 111).

Satre (2005) wrote eloquently about the philanthropic efforts of the Cadburys, but he

questioned why it took some 8 years before William Cadbury and several other

Anglo-American chocolate firms were willing to join in the boycotting of plantation

goods.I argue in this essay that all of this focus on the individual social agency of Cadbury

or some of the other British chocolate makers tells us only a part of some complex sto-

ries. If a critical legal analysis (Hasian, 1994; Lucaites, 1990; McDorman, 1997) of some




21/23

of the micro and macro dimensions of the Cadbury Bros. v. The Standardtrial tells us

anything, it is that these personal debates about individual reputations can be tethered to

much larger ideological imperial structures. Robbins (2002) has recently argued thatWest Africas Ivory Coast now supplies almost half of the worlds supply of cocoa beans,

and there are some 600,000 farms that have become an important part of that nations

economy. Unfortunately, the BBC and other news outlets are now reporting that hun-

dreds of thousands of children may be a part of a huge slave market that moves young-

sters from Mali, Burkina Faso, Toga, and other places so that they can be shipped out to

work on the Ivory Coast cocoa farms. Some human rights organizations are now suing

Nestl, Cargill, and other companies for having violated some U.S. state codes that are

supposed to protect the public from false claims that are allegedly made about the reso-

lution of the problem of slave labor on cocoa farms (Orr, 2006). The past becomes pro-logue as some of these giant food conglomerates complain that they need more time or

that that they are dealing with escalating civil wars. These purchasers of large supplies of

cocoa also want to tell us about their support of dairy farmers in Latin America or their

passing out of HIV medication in Africa. At least I can report that some of these

giant conglomerates are trying to put together systems that certify that the cocoa

beans that are used in some of these products are free of slave labor (Razdan,

2006). Perhaps Nevinson would be proud of the fact that his work is now being

revived as it rhetorically drifts on the World Wide Web, informing new generations

of the hazards of modern cocoa slavery.

References

Balkin, J. M. (1993). Ideological drift and the struggle over meaning. Connecticut Law Review, 25, 869-891.

Bentley, W. H. (1884, April 14). The Congo Treaty. The [London] Times, p. 3.

Brantlinger, P. (1985). Victorians and Africans: The genealogy of the myth of the Dark Continent. Critical

Inquiry, 12, 166-203.

Cadbury, E., Matheson, M. C., Shann, G., & Catt, C. C. (1908). Womens work and wages: A phase of life

in an industrial city. London: T. F. Unwin.Cadbury, W. A. (1910).Labour in Portuguese West India. London: George Routledge.

Cadbury, W. A., & Morel, E. D. (1912). The West African slave traffic. The Nineteenth Century, 836-851.

Carlson, A. C. (1991). The role of character in public moral argument: Henry Ward Beecher and the

Brooklyn scandal. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 77, 38-52.

Clarence-Smith, G. (1979). The myth of uneconomic imperialism: The Portuguese in Angola, 1836-1926.

Journal of Southern African Studies, 5, 165-180.

Condit, C. M. (1987). Crafting virtue: The rhetorical construction of public morality. Quarterly Journal

of Speech, 73, 79-97.

Davidson, B. (1963). Introduction. InA modern slavery (pp. ix-xvii). New York: Background Books.

Dellheim, C. (1987). The creation of a company culture: Cadburys, 1861-1931. American Historical

Review, 92, 13-44.Egerton, F. C. (1957).Angola in perspective. London: Routledge.

Gale, F. G. (1994). Political literacy: Rhetoric, ideology, and the possibility of justice. Albany: State

University of New York Press.




22/23

Grant, K. (2005).A civilized savagery: Britain and the new slaveries in Africa, 1884-1926. New York:

Routledge.

Harris, J. (1913). Portuguese slavery: Britains dilemma. London: Methuen.

Hasian, M., Jr. (1994). Critical legal rhetorics: The theory and practice of law in a postmodern world.Southern Communication Journal, 60, 44-56.

Henderson, L. (1979).Angola: Five centuries of conflict. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Holden-Smith, B. (1993). Lords of lash, loom, and law. Justice Story, slavery, and Prigg v. Pennsylvania.

Cornell Law Review, 78, 1086-1151.

Hyde, H. M. (1974). Carson. New York: Octagon Books. (Original work published 1953)

Kuenz, J. (2001). The cowboy businessman and the course of empire: Owen Wisters The Virginian.

Cultural Critique, 48, 98-128.

Lewis, W. (2002). In a field of pain and death: Law/rhetoric/history/culture. Rhetoric and Public

Affairs, 5, 159-177.

Libel action by Messrs. Cadbury. (1909, December 2). The [London] Times, p. 4.

The libel action by Messrs. Cadbury. (1909, December 3). The [London] Times, p. 4.

Lucaites, J. L. (1990). Between rhetoric and The Law: Power, legitimacy, and social change. Quarterly

Journal of Speech, 76, 435-449.

MacIntyre, A. (1981).After virtue: A study in moral theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Majoriebanks, E. (1932). Carson the advocate. New York: Macmillan.

McDorman, T. F. (1997). Challenging constitutional authority: African American responses to Scott v.

Sandford. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 83, 192-209.

Montero, F. (1969). Manual labor in S. Thom and Prncipe. New York: Negro Universities Press.

(Original work published 1910)

Mr. Cadbury cross-examined. (1909, December 3). The [London] Times, p. 4.

Messrs. Cadburys actions [Editorial]. (1909, December 7). The [London] Times, pp. 9-10.Messrs. Cadburys libel action: A farthing. (1909, December 7). The [London] Times, p. 4.

Midland and Oxford Circuits. Libel action by Messrs. Cadbury. (1909, December 1). The [London]

Times, p. 4.

Nevinson, H. W. (1963). A modern slavery. New York: Background Books. (Original work published

1906)

Nevinson, H. W. (1907). The Angola slave trade. Fortnightly Review, 82, 488-497.

Nwaka, G. I. (1980). Cadburys and the dilemma of colonial trade in Africa, 1910-1910. Bulletin de

lInstitut Fondamental dAfrique Noire, 42, 780-793.

Orr, D. (2006). Slave chocolate? Forbes, 177(9), 96-101.

Our modern knights-errant. (1909, March 27). The Spectator, pp. 491-492.

Parry-Giles, T. (2006). The character of justice: Rhetoric, law, and politics in the Supreme Court confir-mation process. Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Razdan, A. (2006). Hot cocoa. Utne, 133, 56-50.

Recruitment of labour for cocoa plantations at San Thome and Principe. (1908, December 11). The

Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series. London: Wyman.

Robbins, J. (2002). The good, the bad and the savory.Earth Island Journal, 17(2), 30-31.

Satre, L. J. (2005). Chocolate on trial: Slavery, politics, and the ethics of business. Athens: Ohio

University Press.

Searle, G. R. (1983). The Edwardian liberal party and business.English Historical Review, 98, 28-60.

Townshend, J. (1877).A treatise on the wrongs called slander and libel. New York: Baker, Voorhis &

Company.

Vick, D. W., & MacPherson, L. (1996). Anglicizing defamation law in the European Union. VirginiaJournal of International Law, 36, 933-998.

We learn with profound interest [Editorial]. (1908, September 26). The Standard.




23/23

West, I. (2006, Summer).Debbie Maynes legal trans/scripts: Critical legal rhetorics and the possibilities for

agency. Paper presented at the National Communication Association Doctoral Honors Conference, Purdue

University.

Writ and Plaintiffs Statement of Claim, Cadbury Bros., Ltd. v. The Standard Newspaper, Ltd., No. 3211.(1908, October 5). In the High Court of Justice, Kings Bench Division.

Wyllie, J. A. (1909, September 28). Alleged slavery in St. Thom. The [London] Times, p. 16.

Wilson, F. W. (1924, January 20). A rich man and his money. The New York Times, pp. BR-10, 20.

Zackodnik, T. (2001). Fixing the color line: The mulatto, southern courts, and racial identity.American

Quarterly, 53, 420-451.

Marouf Hasian Jr. is a professor in the Communication Department at the University of Utah. His areas

of interest include postcolonial studies, law and rhetoric, critical memory studies, and genocide studies.

He is currently working on several book projects that involve the study of visuality and remembrances of

international atrocities.


Critical Memories of Crafted

Documents

Transcript of Critical Memories of Crafted