An Improbable Task

In Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains, Hochschild goes into great detail about Thomas Clarkson's rise as an abolitionist. After writing his award winning essay Clarkson was on the road to London to become a deacon. It is hear we see his transformation as a mere scholar to a true abolitionist. With his essay weighing heavily on his mind Clarkson believes that, "Some person should see these calamities to their end" (p.89). Clarkson's eventual mission was not clear to him for some time. I found this interesting and telling of age that Clarkson lived in. If Clarkson, who was to become the top advocate for slavery's abolition, was unsure about the role he was to play how was he going to be able to convince an entire global community? I believe that Hochschild's comparison to global warming and doing away with cars is exactly the kind of crazed notion that Clarkson was trying to convince people of his time to accept.

Chapter 6/7

In chapters 6 and 7 of Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains, Hochschild addresses the beginnings of the anti slavery movement and shows us how ingrained the idea of slavery is among the global community. In chapter 6 we follow Thomas Clarkson through his transformation from a Latin scholar to a true advocate and leader of the anti slavery movement. After receiving an award for his essay on the question, "Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?" (p.87), Clarkson is horrified by the actual conditions of the slaves. After traveling to London he joins a group of abolitionist Quakers and begins recruiting members of the aristocracy and other important figures. Clarkson is able to muster a committee of 9 Quakers and 3 Anglicans to begin the first anti slavery committee that could not be written off as controlled by a fringe sect. In Chapter 7 we are brought back in time to the American Revolution. The British forces promised slaves with rebel owners freedom if they fought with the British. Many slaves answered the call but when the war ended the question of what to do with the slaves laid heavy in the minds of those negotiating the peace treaty. While it was agreed that they were to be returned to their lawful owners the British leader Carleton, who was stationed in New York, had the slaves evacuated to Nova Scotia creating the worlds largest community of freed slaves outside of Africa. Carleton was not an abolitionist but believed in the word of the crown and because the slaves had been promised their freedom they were given it.

Equiano

In Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains, Hochschild talks about a slave who earned his freedom named Equiano. His particular account of conditions on the slave ships is the most haunting to me as he was not merely an observer but experienced it first hand. Although Equiano had a different experience than many slaves upon reaching the Caribbean his accounts and emotions are invaluable for a reader today to try to understand the emotional impact that these events had on a people. What i found to be most disconcerting was Equiano's reaction to being back on a slave ship not as a slave but picking other people like him to work as field hands which he knew meant certain death. However Equiano does not provide us with a reaction and merely mentions it in his autobiography. Hochschild raises valid questions that perhaps answer his limited reaction. Is it that at this point in history Equiano would have no reason to believe that things would ever be any different? That people like him would always work the fields? His inability to express any emotion about his fellow man is the most chilling part of the book so far. It is also amazing to me that someone who believed that the institution that took him from his home and enslaved him would never disappear was able to be toppled, in a sense, so quickly.

Chapter 2/4

In Chapter's 2 and 4 of Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains, Hochschild addresses the truly tragic elements of life as a slave juxtaposed  to the elegant lifestyles of those that profited from them through the sugar trade. Hochschild introduces us to Equiano who is one of the few slaves to write about the conditions on a slave ship.  His descriptions of the horror and cramped conditions give us a glimpse of one of the few difficulties a slave had to endure just to reach adulthood.  This does not include the forced marches from interior Africa which accounted for half the slaves deaths or the first three years of slavery which many never saw the end of. While Equiano was one of the lucky few who was able to buy his independence his experience shows that even when freed, without the abolishment of slavery, he could never truly be safe from its grasp.  Hochschild's next account cannot be told directly through the experiences of a slave as none who led this life would ever learn to read or write.  The main export from slave labor was not the tobacco of America's south or coffee but was sugar.  The sugar industry was located in the Caribbean and accounted for 60% of the slaves brought through the triangle trade route.  It is here that conditions were harshest and many believed that it was more cost effective to work slaves to death and buy new ones than to keep those that they already had healthy.  While the atrocities committed were numerous nothing quite illuminates them more than the wealth that was associated with them.  Hochschild depicts the utterly impoverished and dying slaves next to the insatiable appetites and grandeur of the plantation owners.  

Chapter 1

In Chapter One of Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains, Hochschild speaks about human ambition and how low it can bring a person.  He contrasts the Dot-com billionaires of today with the slave traders of the past.  In particular the reader hears about John Newton who becomes a slave ship captain.  On his way to gaining his own berth Newton lives a life of sin and misfortune.  At one point Newton is put in shackles and so pitied by the slaves is given rations out of their own.  This however does not stop Newton from raping black slaves on the several ships he serves on.   It is not his own terrible actions that reform him, but a storm which his vessel is able to survive.  It is at this point that he becomes a pious man who attends church and gives up swearing.  However he still goes on to become a slave ship captain and never once looks back on being in shackles which is "the low point in his life" and identifies with those he has in shackles beneath his feet in the hold of his ship.

Introduction

In Adam Hochschild's introduction he sheds light on the grim world of slavery which we thought we knew.  Although we begin in a positive place where abolitionists once met it is sharply contrasted by the lack of historical significance the site holds.  The reader is immediately exposed to drastic figures which describe a world in which "well over three quarters of all people alive were in bondage".  This is a side of the world we were never introduced to in our beginning education.  The introduction helps to shed light on what little people know about a mass human trafficking that happened only three hundred years ago.