The Complex Issue of Slavery in The Diligent: Economically and Politically Rational or Morally Reprehensible?

At the apex of the slave trade, greater than 40,000 slave ships navigated and traversed the Atlantic Ocean, carrying a cargo of human captives from Africa to the Americas and to the Caribbean. At the end of May 1731, the Diligent, a three-masted ship, set sail for West African from France (Harms 4). There, the crew purchased 256 slaves that they sold in Martinique and then returned to France carrying hundreds of barrels of sugar. Although this voyage represents a typical transatlantic voyage, First Lieutenant Robert Durand meticulously wrote in his private journal in which he described the journey and daily life on the ship. Grounding his work in the recollections of daily life from Durand’s diary, Africanist Robert Harms deftly crafted a nuanced and vivid account of slave-trading voyages, reconstructing the complexity of the slave trade business. He proffers political, economic, social and religious arguments for the continuation of slavery and conversely its abolition. Those who advocated for the continuation of slavery rendered slaves less than human and the vital motor for capitalism to function, while abolitionists criticized such sentiments as unchristian and economically irrational. Harms presents conflicting views but ultimately decries the institution as an irrational business of slavery according to the principles of capitalism that reveals an ugly side of human nature.

The profitability of slavery sustained the institution for four centuries and formed the core arguments espoused for its continuation. The need for a large slave population thus became the primary focus of proponents for the continuation of slavery. The case of Pauline Villeneuve, a slave girl brought from the West Indies into France, exemplifies such pro-slavery attitudes. Although the Code Noir laws provided a legal basis for slavery in the Caribbean, once a slave stepped foot on French soil he or she became free (Harms 10). Pauline’s mistress brought her to the city of Nantes where Pauline stayed in a convent while her mistress left for Paris for a year. Once her mistress returned, Pauline requested to join the convent to the dismay of her mistress. After a long and drawn-out judicial process, Pauline joined the convent and remained in France (Harms 11). Plantation owners in the West Indies expressed their disdain for the decision because they feared that Pauline’s success would galvanize their slaves to seek freedom. Furthermore, merchants who financed slave expeditions on the triangle trade route often brought their personal slaves into Nantes and other slave ports in France (Harms 13). The fear of losing slaves emerged because slaves formed the bulk of the free workforce that would reap profits for plantation owners and merchants. Servants and indigenous people seemingly did not adequately meet the labor requirements to sustain plantation agriculture in the Caribbean colonies.

The presidial court’s decision to grant Pauline freedom threatened the commercial interests of merchants who relied on outfitting slave vessels for profit (Harms 15). Slavery thus emerged as the fundamental economic mechanism that would allow countries such as France and England to gain national wealth and power and would eventually be seen in Colonial Virginia as well. To achieve such prestige, Mellier contended that slaves must work in the fields, cultivating cotton, sugar, tobacco and other products to export from the colonies to the mother country. Kings themselves mandated the persistence of the slave trade as an “indispensable” component to national wealth and vitality (Harms 19). The mere fear of losing a slave population in the future highlights the economic viability of the slave trade during the epoch that the Diligent sailed. Despite the salient rhetoric that touted the economic value of free enterprise in slave trading ports such as Nantes, the failure of ships like the Diligent to reap any profits (Harms 403) suggest that slave labor was not a profitable enterprise for all. Slave traders who outfitted many ships reaped far more benefits than small traders. Furthermore, the labor needed to unload products from returning ships and transportation costs proved costly and time-consuming (Harms 386). Thus, slavery appeared inefficient and wasteful and carried little advantage over paid labor.

Individuals against the slave trade, especially those belonging to certain but not all religious groups, rooted their arguments, led by some church groups, primarily in the immorality of an institution that negated the humanity of certain groups of people. Public discourse about slavery during the eighteenth century focused on issues such as access, tariffs, profits, and possible bonuses rather than the humanity of the commodities they sold and traded as well as the oppressive violence natal alienation and objectification they suffered (Harms 5). Harms conveys a sense of awe disdain for Lieutenant Robert Durand’s nonchalant and business-like attitude when reflecting on selling human cargo in a similar fashion to how one would write about selling commodities such as wine (Harms 5). This lack of compassion and language of morality disturbed some religious groups such as the Jansenists in France who possessed antagonistic sentiments towards the Jesuit religious order regarding its attitudes towards slavery. A Jansenist, Pierre Lemerre wrote a legal treatise regarding the king’s Edict Concerning Negro Slaves, which would extend slavery to France beyond the Caribbean colonies because slaves were moveable property (Harms 26). Lemerre sifted through canon law, the bible and Roman civil law to strengthen his argument against slavery. Although the Bible and Roman civil law called for the obedience of slaves to their masters, Lemerre contended that the French broke free from the shackles of their bitter past. In the spirit of the Enlightenment, natural law now governed society, which declared that all men were created equal. Man can only govern over animals and not their fellow man (Harms 27-28). Furthermore, Christianity formed the second pillar of his argument against slavery despite the fact that the Church, as well as various religious orders, relied on slave labor on their lands. Lemerre looked to the writings of a French lawyer named Antoine Le Maistre, who argued that God saved humanity from servitude and enabled humans to walk upright as a result (Harms 27). Framed within the context of French history, arguments against slavery became rooted in secular traditions rather than a religious one.

Conversely, pro-slavery advocates invoked the moral justification for the necessity of slavery in civilizing backward, savage people who would benefit from slavery. Public figures such as Gerard Mellier articulated the humanitarian justification for slavery despite his lack of knowledge about African geography. Many of his arguments in defense of slavery articulated the consensus opinions of merchants, planters and captains of slaves ships in Nantes (Harms 21). Mellier asserted that leaders in Nigritie should sell their surplus population into the slave trade in order to prevent their people from starvation because overpopulation would greatly strain food and resources available (Harms 16). He framed his advocacy of the slave trade in a humanitarian framework. Mellier continued his humanitarian sentiments when he asserted that slave traders would protect slaves from “error and idolatry” by uprooting them and transferring them to a place where they could be civilized through Catholicism, even though various African kingdoms practiced Catholicism as their state religion. In Paris, Savery des Bruslons struggled with justifying slavery but wrote that although slaves lost their freedom, they would attain eternal salvation through Christian teaching (Harms 20). Mellier lauded the "humanitarian" actions of slave traders by taking in African slaves and deporting them elsewhere. He falsely believed that African tribes engaged in ceaseless warfare in which prisoners of war would suffer the penalty of death. Thus, slave traders saved the lives of many Africans by selling them in the slave trade (Harms 20). Advocates thus viewed slavery as a route to salvation. The degrading conditions slaves endured thus became justified in the eyes of slave traders and merchants who felt that slaves owed them their lives.

Ironically, despite Christian principles espoused by religious orders, some religious orders such as the Jesuits relied on the labor of serfs and slaves to support their activities and reap profits. Jesuits cultivated the first sugar plantations in Martinique and shortly thereafter became the second-largest slaveholder on the French colony (Harms 25). A Dominican priest named Father Labat oversaw a slave plantation in Martinique and felt no humiliation as a slave owner but faced criticism for participating in economic enterprises (Harms 25). Jesuits viewed the Code Noir as a morally just law because it limited the abuses of slaveholders that had been evident prior to this time period. However, the laws provided a legal precedent for slavery and protected the rights of the slaveholders by designating slaves as “moveable property” that solely belonged to their white master (Harms 26). Even abolitionists like Lemerre recognized that slavery had existed since biblical times, ignoring the presence of serfs and slaves on the lands of religious orders and the Church (Harms 27). French abolitionists thus invoked secular principles in their arguments against slavery rather than religious ones. The enslavement of Africans by European Christians unveiled the hypocrisy of European rhetoric, as they sinned by treating others as less than human.

Moreover, racist thought dominated public discourse during the second half of the eighteenth century and formulated an important basis for the proponents of slavery to preserve the rigid social hierarchy (17). Although he respected African nobility, European hegemonic attitudes towards African slaves who came from peasant circles undergirded his views of them. Mellier believed that “fundamentally…the negres are naturally inclined toward theft, larceny, lust, laziness, and treason…they are suited only to live in servitude and cultivate the fields of our colonies in America” (Harms 18). Europeans identified members of the ethnic group known as the Foin as lesser stock because they ate too much and were lazy workers (Harms 161). This essentialist view of the African race conveys extreme prejudice a desire to maintain the racial status quo and system of white hegemony through slavery. Rather than invoking stereotypes associated with race in their views of Africans, some advocates pointed to ideas about social hierarchy and preserving its status quo (Harms 18). The elite sought to maintain their high position in which they could legally mistreat members of the lower echelons such as peasants but still fully acknowledge their subjects' humanity. While advocates of slavery respected African nobility for their education and refinement, African peasantry became viewed as less than human.

Based on Lieutenant Durand’s in-depth journal in which he recorded quotidian activities on a slave ship, Robert Harms’ The Diligent provides an in-depth look at the daily life of a slave ship voyage and the nature of the slave-trading business during the eighteenth century. Arguments both for and against the continuation of slavery permeated public discourse and discussion circles globally. Most arguments against slavery focused on the morals of treating other human beings as commodities and thus less than human. Christian principles permeated European societies, yet ironically the Church and other religious orders utilized slave labor. Thus, abolitionists invoked secular ideas to frame their justifications against slavery continuing. Nonetheless, Harms renders slavery an irrational institution based on the tenets of capitalism.

Work Cited

Harms, Robert W. The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Print.