

Blood Sweetened Insurance

ntoddpax's picture

I recall the first time I went to the Soviet Union in 1986.  I spoke very little Russian at the time, not even enough to get by, but our group sponsored by Putney Student Travel was led by a couple Russian majors from Dartmouth. 

During an orientation we had in Helsinki just before heading by train to Leningrad there was some confusion as to when the serfs had been freed.  I asserted that Alexander II had done so in 1861, but nobody would believe me because Dog knows nobody could've emancipated their servile underclass before Lincoln.  Of course...*cough*.

Yes, know-it-alls are always extremely popular.  But that's not my point!  Geesh.  This anecdote was brought to mind because of a Mother Jones article I read about British abolition which noted:

Every American schoolchild learns about the Underground Railroad and the Emancipation Proclamation. But our self-centered textbooks often skip over the fact that in the superpower of the time slavery ended a full quarter-century earlier. For more than two decades before the Civil War, the holiday celebrated most fervently by free blacks in the American North was not July 4 (when they were at risk of attack from drunken white mobs) but August 1, Emancipation Day in the British Empire.

Anyway, it was just a subtle example of our intrinsic American exceptionalism.  Not much of a leap from "knowing" the US as beacon of freedom must have been first to rid itself of slavery to "knowing" methods used by British abolitionists could not be used in the US now to bring about social change.

I've been arguing that there is nothing really special about the American experience, even in this ultra-consumerist era where corporatists hold sway, that prevents us from employing similar tactics.  And the the article goes on to describe the successful approach we could learn from that ended slavery in Britain:

The most important expression of public feeling came on great, stiff rolls of parchment. By the time Parliament adjourned for the year, petitions asking for abolition or reform of the slave trade had been signed by more than 60,000 people. Petitions were a time-honored means of pressure in a country where voters had no control whatever over the House of Lords, and where fewer than one adult man in ten could vote for the House of Commons. Anti-slave-trade petitions-never seen before-suddenly outnumbered those on all other subjects combined.

The superbly organized anti-slavery committee also pioneered several techniques used ever since. For example, they periodically printed copies of "a Letter to our Friends in the Country, to inform them of the state of the Business" -- the ancestor of many a newsletter, print or electronic, published by activist groups today. They also agreed on a piece of text delivered to every donor in greater London appealing for another contribution, at least as big as the last. This may have been history's first direct-mail fundraising letter.

When the famous one-legged pottery entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood joined the committee, he had one of his craftsmen make a bas-relief of a kneeling slave, in chains, encircled by the legend "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" American anti-slavery sympathizer Benjamin Franklin, impressed, declared that the image had an impact "equal to that of the best written Pamphlet."

Clarkson gave out 500 of these medallions on his organizing trips. "Of the ladies, several wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair." The equivalent of the lapel buttons we wear for an electoral campaign, this was probably the first widespread use of a logo designed for a political cause. It was the 18th century's "new media."


Almost like "fair trade" food labeling today, advertisements quickly filled the press: "BENJAMIN TRAVERS, Sugar-Refiner, acquaints the Publick that he has now an assortment of Loaves, Lumps, Powder Sugar, and Syrup, ready for sale...produced by the labour of FREEMEN." Then, as now, the full workings of a globalized economy were largely invisible. The boycott caught people's imagination because it brought these hidden ties to light. The poet Robert Southey spoke of tea as "the blood-sweetened beverage."

Slavery advocates were horrified. One rushed out a counterpamphlet claiming that "sugar is not a luxury; but...a necessary of life; and great injury have many persons done to their constitutions by totally abstaining from it."

Note the use of multiple tactics, including forms of protest and persuasion through various communication channels, capped by economic intervention.  Adam Hochschild describes the effort in Bury the Chains:

Like many such actions today, the sugar boycott was partly symbolic.  Systematically giving up all slave-?grown products would have required Britons to also stop using tobacco, coffee, and cotton clothing (much of it woven in the mills of staunchly antislavery Manchester).  Nonetheless, a boycott of sugar was potentially a powerful weapon because the country consumed so much of it.  In the eighteenth century, sugar was Britain’s largest import...Everyone could understand the logic of the sugar boycott, even children.…


Explicit appeals to join in abstention were made to women who made up half of the 300 to 400 thousand Britons who participated.  Women who, as was observed at the time, "have no voice at present in these matters."  Even those who were as yet disenfranchised had power to help free other human beings from bondage.

Perhaps woman, who won their suffrage through further hard work in both the UK and the US over a century later, can lead our fight for equitable access to healthcare. 

What say you, NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, et al?  Think you can mobilize your large memberships to step up the game in this generation's civil rights struggle?  After all, being a women shouldn't be a pre-existing condition, though it seems that hoping the Democrats will do the right thing might be...


(Post at Pax Americana, Dohiyi Mir, Green Mountain Code Pink, Corrente and Daily Kos.)

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jumpjet's picture
Submitted by jumpjet on

If the British people could effect such change with even less representation in their government than we currently have in ours, what excuse do we have for sitting around and fretting about the coming of corporatism?

The trick, of course, is to unite a lot of people. Harmonize them and move them.

Submitted by lambert on

It's information like this that makes me think the "flee-dom riders" are overstating the case, just a bit. Not in terms of the pain, but in terms of, well, the American exceptionalism. The parchment reminds me of the Chartist movement -- which I guess took inspiration from the tactics of the anti-slavery movement. And the British government, then as now, and as always, had the monopoly of violence, was adept at infiltration, etc., etc.

ntoddpax's picture
Submitted by ntoddpax on

The 80s were the best time to be there. The 90s were just too happy to be a real Soviet Experience--hell, I saw CNN in Red Square my 2nd time around!

Where'd you go? For study?

Valhalla's picture
Submitted by Valhalla on

I was there on a study program over the summer, we split our time between Leningrad and Moscow, with a week in Kiev. Language classes in the mornings, often free time in the afternoons and evenings. We had this weird sort of hackey-sack thing going, where we tried to play at all the major locations. We did Gorky Park a couple of times, but the guards in Red Square were having none of it. (I know it sounds sort of stupid now, but we also did all the usual cultural/tourist stuff too). Best were afternoons, we didn't have classes then and could run around trying to get to know plain ol' citizens (which was variously easy and hard).

Did you get to tour Lenin's tomb? That was one of the more surreal and intense experiences.

Since I was there on a program, we were required to go on a lot of Intourist outings. We got dragged to just about every Russian noble's estate that survived the Revolution. Which I always thought was weird, that they were so intent on using the symbols of evil capitalist excess to impress us.

Where'd you stay, living-wise?

ntoddpax's picture
Submitted by ntoddpax on

Cool. I did that in 90 through ACTR, studied at Moscow Inst of Steel and Allows of all places. Had a week's vacay in Lithuania, which was a blast and incredibly eye opening (during the Moratorium).

86 was just a student tour of N Europe and USSR. Did Leningrad, Sochi and Moscow for a week each. Great experience for a teenager, and it was interesting seeing the differences between my 2 trips (for the last 2 Party Congresses).

Did Lenin once in 86. 7 times in 90, including 5 times in one day with some of my friends just to say we did it (then we went to the new McDonald's for the 1st time).

Small freaking world, eh?

Submitted by windy on

I asserted that Alexander II had done so in 1861, but nobody would believe me because Dog knows nobody could've emancipate their servile underclass before Lincoln.

In W. Europe it's commonly taken as evidence of how backwards and underdeveloped most of Russia was at the time: that it happened so late...

ntoddpax's picture
Submitted by ntoddpax on

Amazing how the perspective shifts when you get out of the US-centric educational prison.