A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium (91 page)

192
I Habib,
Agrarian
, p351.

Part five: The spread of the new order

1
See, for instance, G Rudé,
Europe in the Eighteenth Century
(Harvard, 1985), p23, and R S Duplessis,
Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge, 1997), p174.

2
See, for instance, G Rudé,
Europe
, p23; and R S Duplessis,
Transitions
, p174.

3
Figures from R S Duplessis,
Transitions
, pp242, 248.

4
D Defoe,
A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain
(London, 1912), quoted in G Rudé,
Europe
, p58.

5
For a summary account of these inventions, see D Landes,
Wealth
, pp187-191.

6
Figures in R S Duplessis,
Transitions
, pp88, 242.

7
J de L Mann,
The Cloth Industry in the West of England
(Oxford, 1971), pp23, 90-91.

8
Keith Thomas provides a lengthy but very accessible account of all these beliefs and how they fitted into people’s experience of material life. See K Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic
(Harmondsworth, 1978) and also C Ginsburg,
Night Battles
(Baltimore, 1983).

9
For a very accessible account of the development outlined in this paragraph, see I B Cohen,
The Birth of the New Physics
(London, 1961).

10
Quoted in G de Santillana,
The Age of Adventure
(New York, 1956), p158.

11
See K Thomas,
Religion
.

12
For the limitations of Galileo’s account—and for the problematic nature of some of his experiments—see I B Cohen,
Birth
, pp91-129.

13
I B Cohen,
Birth
, p158. Robert Munchenbled argues that the spread of witchcraft prosecutions was a result of attempts by the groups who controlled the state to establish their control over the rural population. See, for instance, R Munchenbled,
Sorcèries, Justice et Société
(Paris, 1987), pp9-10.

14
K Thomas,
Religion
, p598.

15
See K Thomas,
Religion
, pp533, 537.

16
According to C Hill,
A Century of Revolution
, p250.

17
Quoted in K Thomas,
Religion
, p692.

18
This can lead to differing accounts of what exactly constituted the Enlightenment. So, for example, Ernst Cassirer (E Cassirer,
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment
(Boston, 1955)) counts the rationalist philosophers from Descartes onwards as part of the Enlightenment; by contrast George Rudé (G Rudé,
Europe
) sees the Enlightenment as starting with a reaction, inspired by John Locke, against these philosophers.

19
Leibniz accepted Newton’s mathematical formulations, but rejected his overall model of the universe.

20
For an account of the salons, see P Naville,
D’Holbach et la Philosophie Scientifique au XVIIIe Siècle
(Paris, 1967), pp46-48.

21
Quoted in P Naville,
Philosophie
, p118-119.

22
According to G Rudé,
Europe
, p131.

23
G Rudé,
Europe
, p132.

24
P Naville,
Philosophie
, p73.

25
D Outram,
The Enlightenment
(Cambridge, 1995), p75. By contrast the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus laid down a tight division into four races based on colour.

26
G Rudé,
Europe
, pp135-136. The motive of the monarchies was to ensure their own control over the national churches. The effect, however, was to weaken a major institution propagating reactionary ideas.

27
Quoted in P Gay,
The Enlightenment
(New York, 1977), p71.

28
R Darnton,
The Business of the Enlightenment
(Harvard, 1979), p528.

29
R Darnton,
Business
, p526.

30
According to G Rudé,
Europe
, p170.

31
I Kant, quoted in G Rudé,
Europe
, p171.

32
Jakarta.

33
This is Blackburn’s estimate in R Blackburn,
The Making of New World Slavery
(London, 1997), p3. There are other estimates which are a little smaller or a little larger. For a long discussion of the numbers involved, see P Manning,
Slavery and African Life
(Cambridge, 1990), p104.

34
P Manning,
Slavery
, p35.

35
P Manning,
Slavery
, p30.

36
See A Calder,
Revolutionary Empire
(New York, 1981), pp257-258; Robert Louis Stephenson’s novel
Kidnapped
begins with such a kidnapping in mid-18 th century Scotland.

37
R Blackburn,
Making
, p230.

38
A Calder,
Revolutionary
, p566.

39
Barry Unsworth’s novel,
Sacred Hunger
(London, 1992), provides a very good feeling of what the slaves and the sailors had in common.

40
A Calder,
Revolutionary
, p289.

41
R Blackburn,
Making
, p231.

42
For details, see R Blackburn,
Making
, pp240-241.

43
So Blackburn’s acount of the rebellion (in R Blackburn,
Making
, pp256-258) stresses the involvement of African slaves, while Calder (A Calder,
Revolutionary
, pp311-312) only refers to the anti-Indian dimension and does not mention the slave involvement.

44
R Blackburn,
Making
, p264.

45
There is a black and white reproduction of this painting in R Blackburn,
Making
, p32.

46
See R Blackburn,
Making
, pp254-255, pp264-265.

47
J Locke,
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(Oxford, 1975), pp606-607, quoted in R Blackburn,
Making
, p329.

48
This, for instance, was the argument made by Francis Moore, a former factor for the Royal Africa Company in Gambia, in a work published in 1738. See A Calder,
Revolutionary
, p454.

49
Many of the best known Enlightenment figures, like Adam Smith, Condorcet and Benjamin Franklin, opposed slavery, even if some, like Hume, accepted the notion of the innate mental inferiority of Africans.

50
W E Washburn and B Trigger, ‘Native Peoples in Euro-American Historiography’, in W E Washburn and B Trigger (eds),
Cambridge History of Native Peoples of the Americas
, vol 1, part 1 (Cambridge, 1996), p74.

51
W E Washburn and B Trigger, ‘Native’, p75.

52
W E Washburn and B Trigger, ‘Native’, p79.

53
W E Washburn and B Trigger, ‘Native’, p80.

54
P Manning,
Slavery
, p13. There is a very useful summary of the different arguments in R Blackburn,
Making
, ch 12.

55
P Matthias,
The First Industrial Nation
(London, 1983), p168.

56
The pattern of trade was, of course, more complicated than this. But it sums up certain essential features.

57
P Manning,
Slavery
, p22.

58
P Manning,
Slavery
, p34.

59
P Manning,
Slavery
, p85.

60
P Manning,
Slavery
, p23.

61
For Smith’s relations with the European Enlightenment, see I Simpson Ross,
The Life of Adam Smith
(Oxford, 1995).

62
A Smith,
The Wealth of Nations
(Harmondsworth, 1982), p433.

63
A Smith,
Wealth
, pp104, 133.

64
A Smith,
Wealth
, pp430-431.

65
A Smith,
Wealth
, p488.

66
E Roll,
History of Economic Thought
(London, 1962), p151.

67
A Smith,
Wealth
, p168

68
A Smith,
Wealth
, p169.

Part six: The world turned upside down

1
See E Wright,
Benjamin Franklin and the American Revolution
, pp71, 90.

2
R A Ryerson,
The Revolution Has Now Begun; the Radical Committees in Philadelphia, 1765-76
(Pennsylvania, 1978), pp3-4.

3
E Countryman,
The American Revolution
(London, 1986), p71.

4
Theodore Draper has documented this at length in his
A Struggle for Power
(London, 1996).

5
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p97.

6
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, pp98, 100.

7
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p100.

8
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p103.

9
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p103, and E Countryman,
A People in Revolution
(Baltimore, 1981), p30.

10
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p103.

11
Quoted in E Wright,
Benjamin Franklin
, p116.

12
Quoted in E Countryman,
American Revolution
, pp70-71.

13
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p4.

14
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, pp113-114.

15
E Countryman,
A People
, pp102, 125-126.

16
E Countryman,
A People
, p102. See also his account of Massachusetts in E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p118, and R A Ryerson’s account of Philadelphia in
The Revolution
.

17
Quoted in J Keane,
Tom Paine, a Political Life
(London, 1995).

18
Quoted in J Keane,
Tom Paine
, p125.

19
E Countryman,
A People
, p150.

20
Figure given in E Countryman,
A People
, p221.

21
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p162.

22
E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p71.

23
So in Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence there was a garbled attack on the monarchy for encouraging slavery and then urging the slaves to rebel. See E Countryman,
American Revolution
, p71.

24
R R Palmer, ‘Social and Psychological Foundation of the Revolutionary Era’, in A Goodwin (ed),
Cambridge New Modern History
, vol VIII (Cambridge, 1965), p422.

25
Quoted in P McGarr, ‘The Great French Revolution’, in
Marxism and the Great French Revolution
,
International Socialism
43 (June 1989), p40.

26
Quoted, among other places, in P McGarr, ‘The Great French Revolution’, p48.

27
The saying is famously credited to Danton in Georg Buechner’s 1835 play
Danton’s Death
. In fact it seems to have originated with the Girondin Vergninaud a year before the break between Danton and Robespierre, arguing for harsh punishment for bread rioters.

28
L Madelin,
Talleyrand
(London, 1948), p12.

29
A Soboul,
The French Revolution 1787-99
(London, 1989), p37.

30
R S Duplessis,
Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge, 1997), p242.

31
R S Duplessis,
Transitions
, p237.