In the mid-seventeenth century a new ideological and cultural trend began to take shape in Europe, it was illustration. This new trend advocated knowledge, get rid of superstitions and use reason as a form of knowledge. The idea of dispelling the shadows of humanity through the light of knowledge and reason, made the eighteenth century known as Age of Enlightenment. But where there is light, there are also shadows, today we will deal with The Shadow of the Age of Enlightenmentwhat happened in colonial Europe in the Age of Enlightenment, what was the shadow of the 18th century.
The Shadow of the Age of Enlightenment | ideological context
The Illustration It began in the mid-seventeenth century, mainly in France, England and Germany, from here it spread throughout Europe. The Enlightenment Movement It was at its peak during the 18th century.being able to mark an end date with the French Revolution.
If we want to know what was the starting motor of this new thought, perhaps we should look for the answers in the new scientific and technological advances, such as the calculator, the use of steam for transportation, the first microscope, etc. Diseases were not divine punishments, they were the product of infections, but how much more can be explained through knowledge?
During the seventeenth century the new religious interpretations that had given rise to Protestantism, become more and more suffocating, while the formerly called philosophers, now thinkers, begin to wonder if there is no other interpretation of events outside of religion, based on knowledge.
The search for knowledge and knowledge will move all the fields and estates of the society of the eighteenth century, or Century of the lights.
The concept of history is born as a series of concatenated events, history follows a timeline, not as until now that they were treated as mere isolated events. the birth of the French Encyclopediagot the knowledge and the most advanced science to be reflected in this writing and that this knowledge and thoughts were quickly spread both by the old world and by the new.
The concept of equality is born, the Rousseau’s Social Contract and the Essay on the Origin of Inequality. The new ideological current is based on the condition of equality among all men and the best form of government is election of a representativethis will govern for all and at the moment in which it does not fulfill its mission, another representative can be elected.
The marxist ideas on the distribution of goods, on common property and the benefit of all against the enrichment of a few, begins to move the population of the eighteenth century. anti-slavery movements arise all over Europe.
The Shadow of the Age of Enlightenment | Slavery
With all these clues you will have already guessed that the shadow of the Age of Enlightenment was slavery. But what do we call slavery? It is a legal status that an individual has either by reason of birth, debts, by sentence or by conquest. The slave lacks all kinds of rights and becomes the property of another person. The «owner» will be able to use the slave for whatever he wants, he will even have total availability over his life.
Types of Slavery
Within slavery we can cite two types:
- Domestic: In domestic slavery, the slave or serf performs household chores, in addition to auxiliary tasks related to it.
- Production: The production slave responded to an economic factor, productivity. It is the slaves who carry out the hardest tasks, normally linked to the primary sector, the most prominent being mining and land production.
Ways to get freedom
A slave rarely achieved freedom, but to achieve it there were also two ways:
- Manumission: The slave obtained freedom by the simple desire of the owner.
- Freedom payment: The economic payment or ransom freed a slave from his condition, for this it could be the slave himself who paid for his own freedom, as long as he was able to gather the amount requested or someone else could pay for his freedom, at the price stipulated by the owner. . On some occasions the figures were practically unattainable if the slave provided good returns.
The Shadow of the Age of Enlightenment | Brief History of Slavery
Unfortunately when we look back in history, we realize that slavery has its origins practically since man is man.
in ancient times
The verified facts are those that appear in the first written sources and in this way we must move to the civilizations Mesopotamiangoing through Egypt, even Greece, where the term democracy was born.
The slave trade for the extraction of silver and for work in agriculture was already a common practice in the Classic Greece of Pericles.
But the use of slaves was not restricted solely to work in the mines or the fieldthe products manufactured by them were also highly appreciated, from the commercial point of view.
Rome
Rome and its imperial expansion, It was an inexhaustible source of prisoners by conquest. Each conquered town was a workforce for work in the mines, fields, galleys, etc. The status in ancient Rome, of a family was measured according to the number of slaves that she had at her service, so domestic slaves began to become fashionable, the more the merrier. This fact caused that the life of the domestic slave was somewhat more comfortable.
There was also the figure of specialized slavewith the conquest of the territories and the collection of spoils of war, among the people who became slaves were doctors, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, teachers, etc.
Another type of slave that deserves a separate chapter is that of the Gladiator. Most of the gladiators came from the defeated armies, so most of them did not know how to work the field, since they had been trained for war. These even professionalized their status as gladiators, even receiving their freedom based on their great fights in the circus.
Feudalism
The fall of the Roman Empire also meant the fall of slavery. The absence of conquests and the appearance of a new religion as the Christianity he managed to change the vision of a slave, although it did not disappear for this reason.
Arriving in the 3rd century, where the workforce to work the fields began to be scarce, the owners of the land were forced to change their mentality, now they needed to link their slaves to the land, in order to ensure production. These new slaves little by little were getting their “small” rights.
They got the owner to grant a small piece of land where you can work and establish a family nucleus. In this way, the slave felt like an owner and would work the land, improving his productivity.
With the passage of time, these small landowners would be equal in status to those free small landowners who, because of taxes, wars, etc., had been harmed and impoverished. A new social class is born the settlers.
The settlers were former impoverished free owners who seek the protection of a more powerful lord in exchange for giving up their lands, which they would also continue working on, in this way the figure of the servant of the gleba. These without losing their freedom, will always be linked to the land.
Other civilizations outside of Europe, such as the Arab civilizations, also developed an active system of human trade during this feudal age, despite the fact that the Koran recommended manumissionthat is, by the owner’s wish.
With the arrival of the Spanish to the American continent, there is a new spike or rise from slavery. Native Americans were not cut out for hard physical labor, such as mining. This coupled with Christianizing Indigenous these automatically became subjects of the crown, so they could not be considered slaves, propitiated a new trade.
But if the indigenous cannot do the hard work, who could? For its replacement were used african slaves, stronger and more resistant, these were supplied by Muslim merchants. Practice that began in 1601 and to which quickly Portugal joined together to use the African slave population in their colonies in Brazil, turning Lisbon as the largest slave center in Europe 17th century. In later centuries, the rest of European countries would do the same.
England found a good lucrative way of doing business, the slave trade. Manufactured products left the old continent for African factories, where these goods were exchanged for slaves or “ebony” These slaves were transported to the American continent where they were exchanged for colonial products such as tobacco, sugar, etc., back these colonial products were sold in Europe, this is what came to be called triangle trade.
The Shadow of the Age of Enlightenment | Abolition and the Age of Enlightenment
with the new illustrated ideas and thanks to the dissemination of these, it caused the appearance of a movement opposed to slavery and human trafficking. Curiously, in the place where the business of slavery was most lucrative, such as Great Britain, it was the place where the most abolitionist movements appeared.
In a short time, abolitionist ideas spread throughout the continent. Little by little the figure of the slave was suppressed, until in 1770, slavery was abolished in the colonies of Great Britain, France and Portugal. the revolution of Haiti made this the first American colony free of slavery.
Countries like France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1791, a year later Denmark did. In Great Britain and the USA: it was abolished in 1807, shortly after the Netherlands joined. but it wouldn’t be until 1833 when Great Britain decreed the abolition not only in the metropolis but a complete abolition.
- Great Britain: 1833
- France: 1848
- Holland: 1848
- United States: 1865 (Civil War)
- Spain: 1870
- The Arabian Peninsula: 1962
- Mauritania: 1980
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