Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition by Bronwen Everill

Abstract

Reviewed by: Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolitionby Bronwen Everill Rebecca Shumway (bio) Slavery, Capitalism, Free produce, Abolition, Trade, West Africa Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition. By Bronwen Everill. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. Pp. 328. $39.95.) The transatlantic relationships that developed among Europeans, Africans, and Americans during the formation of the Atlantic world changed in important and complex ways at the dawn of the nineteenth century. The most widely noted of those changes stemmed from Britain and the U.S.A.'s abolition of the trade in captives from Africa; the Haitian and [End Page 151]other Atlantic Revolutions; and technological innovations associated with industrialization. Other profound changes in intercontinental transatlantic relations were less visible, and, in many respects, less linear in their evolution. This is especially true of ideological changes among Europeans and Americans with regard to Africa and unfree labor. In Not Made by Slaves, Bronwen Everill delves into these murkier waters surrounding abolitionist ideologies, so-called legitimate commerce, the formation of racialized nationalist identities, and proto-imperial positioning by the governments of Britain and the U.S.A. vis-a-vis West Africa. The book shows how present-day notions about the ethics of consumerism, including "fair-trade" commodities, socially conscious corporate practices, and considerations of inequity in the relationships between producers and consumers, originated in this era in tandem with other better-known transformations within the connective tissues of the Atlantic world. The book's seven chapters are organized thematically and discuss topics such as important commodities of transatlantic trade in this period (tobacco, cotton, sugar), commercial brands and branding, credit and debt, and nationalism. Everill's Introduction describes the vast historiography relevant to the study as well as some of the principal places, individuals, and trading firms discussed in the text, and summarizes each chapter. While the precise argument of the book remains somewhat elusive here, the Introduction clearly links the book's subject matter to the modern-day issue of ethical consumption. Similarly, the Epilogue stops short of drawing specific conclusions about the historical matter covered in the book but reviews the contradictions and complexities described in previous chapters and stresses that these are inherent in both past and present attempts to make international commerce simultaneously ethical and profitable. Not Made by Slavesstands out from other scholarly studies of nineteenth-century abolitionism and economics by deliberately including a West African perspective on the commercial, political, and ideological changes associated with the ending of the transatlantic slave trade and the development of new export streams from West Africa. While Everill's analysis of West African historical developments is rather slim compared to her discussion of how British and American abolitionists envisioned what ethical trade with Africa might look like, she provides concrete examples of antislavery sentiment and consumer consciousness among West Africans during this era. In the mostly Islamic hinterland of Senegambia, for [End Page 152]instance, some African rulers prohibited the sale of enslaved people to Europeans because they opposed trading with Christians. They sometimes also stamped out the market for imported alcohol and tobacco for religious reasons. In Sierra Leone and Liberia, a variety of settlers, missionaries, and colonial agents pursued antislavery agendas. They called international attention to the widespread use of slave labor in producing and transporting the "legitimate" African trade goods upon which British and American commerce there depended. Everill provides even more significant insight into the African side of this story when explaining the ideological shift that occurred toward the middle of the nineteenth century among Britons and Americans regarding unfree labor. As white people in these countries invested more and more in the belief that they were both culturally and biologically superior to other people, they also became more comfortable with the notion of "domestic slavery" in Africa and other places inhabited by people of color. Political and business leaders in Britain, in particular, were committed to the notion that overseas commerce was an important and necessary means of expanding Christian influence and what they considered "civilization" to what they considered the more "barbaric" parts of the world. This belief, in turn, fueled...