First edition, 504 pages
English language
Published 1966 by Cornell University Press.
The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
David Brion Davis: The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Hardcover, 1966, Cornell University Press)
- OCLC Number:
- 261744
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Observing that, at the start of the American Revolution, Negro slavery was a legal institution in the thirteen colonies and that the Declaration of Independence was written by a stave-holder, Professor Davis shows how this extraordinary contradiction can be paralleled in the literature and in the religious and philosophical thought of the period.
The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture is concerned with the various ways men have responded to the fact of slavery up to about 1770. In Western as in Eastern culture slavery was associated with certain religious and philosophical doctrines that gave it the highest sanction. This sanction in the West, and also anti-slavery thought in its relation to the meaning of Western society as a whole, are the subject of this scholarly and very readable book.
Amongst the most important aspects discussed are a comparative analysis of slave systems in the Old World, European thought and …
Observing that, at the start of the American Revolution, Negro slavery was a legal institution in the thirteen colonies and that the Declaration of Independence was written by a stave-holder, Professor Davis shows how this extraordinary contradiction can be paralleled in the literature and in the religious and philosophical thought of the period.
The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture is concerned with the various ways men have responded to the fact of slavery up to about 1770. In Western as in Eastern culture slavery was associated with certain religious and philosophical doctrines that gave it the highest sanction. This sanction in the West, and also anti-slavery thought in its relation to the meaning of Western society as a whole, are the subject of this scholarly and very readable book.
Amongst the most important aspects discussed are a comparative analysis of slave systems in the Old World, European thought and slavery from antiquity to the eighteenth century, early attitudes to American slavery conditions influencing anti-slavery thought, and early protests against Negro bondage.