This assignment touches on several issues that we've been considering: the functioning of the global commercial networks that (as we've seen) had emerged by around 1700; the economic significance of European empires; the human costs of Europe's eighteenth-century prosperity; and the attitudes of European political leaders toward economic life. As in our other readings, the assignment presents lots of details about how these broad patterns played out—but keep in mind that our main purpose is to understand the broad patterns themselves.
Some specific questions to help you do so—
1) The editors speak of the "Atlantic World" that had developed by 1700. What made the Atlantic region a single "world," and what was that world like? Why didn't it count as a world in earlier centuries? How many people did it involve, and what sorts of people were they? The editors supply an especially vivid picture of the French colony of Saint Domingue, today Haiti; what was it like in the eighteenth century?
2) The editors also underline the complexities of slaves' experiences during the eighteenth century. What were some of those complexities? How widely did slaves' lives vary, and why? Consider such determinants as work conditions, time, and geography.
3) How many free persons of color were there in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, and what roles did they play? How had they acquired their freedom? How did they live as free people, and what social roles did they play?
4) Slavery and racism overlapped during long stretches of European and American history, but the overlap was more complicated than we might expect. Think about how these two institutions affected each other. Notice that in some situation racism became more important when slavery declined; why?
5) The first document in the assignment is a law code issued by Louis XIV dealing with slavery and race in French-controlled territories. How does it fit with other aspects we've seen of Louis XIV's government?
6) The assignment also includes French and British legal decisions from the later eighteenth century concerning slavery and race. What decisions did the courts come to, and what values seem to underlie them? How did eighteenth-century European lawyers view race and slavery? What terminology did they use, and what problems did they come up against in thinking about these issues?
