Human Slavery Research Articles

The Enslaved Ants and the Peculiar Institution: Argument by Analogy in the Slavery Question

In the early nineteenth century, European naturalists wrote about certain species of ants that enslaved ants of other species. This essay traces the movement of this knowledge of enslaved ants from natural history texts to the heated discourse surrounding slavery in the antebellum United States. For both proslavery and antislavery figures, the enslaved ants prompted reflection on the nature of evidence and human reason. Although proslavery ideologues included the enslaved ants in their writings as evidence for the natural basis of slavery, they used this knowledge sparingly because of the dubious legitimacy of an analogy drawn between the animal and human worlds. The Enlightenment philosophy of mind stressed the fragility of arguments by analogy in general, and the sharp divide between animal instinct and human reason further weakened the analogy between ant and human slavery. Antislavery writers attempted to goad their proslavery opponents into drawing this analogy, without much success. Examining this strange episode enhances the understanding of the place of science in American cultural history by showing how scientific knowledge moved across various venues and discourses.

MODERN SLAVERY IN THE MEMOIR HIDDEN GIRL BY SYIMA HALL: A REVIEW ON THE MAIN CHARACTER

AbstractThe main topic in this research is modern slavery which is examined based on the study of the main character in Shyima Hall’s memoir: Hidden Girl. The process of this research involves the overall story, intrinsic elements: character and characterization, conflict, setting, and symbol, as well as extrinsic elements: perspective of cultural studies focusing on class and the understanding of modern slavery. This qualitative research is conducted by applying descriptive analysis method along with library research technique, leading to the identification that class turns out to be the cause of modern slavery. The main character, Shyima, undergoes three forms of modern slavery: human trafficking, domestic slavery and child slavery. These experiences eventually forms her determination to fight against modern slavery individually, by becoming an anti-modern slavery activist.Keywords: class, main character, modern slavery, slavery

Case report: Trafficking of a young foreign lady

Trafficking in persons is also known as human trafficking or modern slavery is described by US Department of state as the “act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud or coercion”. Human trafficking is one of the major problems in India. Till date no concrete study has been conducted so far to know the exact number of trafficked kids in India. The New York Times has reported on the widespread problem of human trafficking in India especially in the state of Jharkhand. Also in the report it is stated that young girls are trafficked from neighboring Nepal to India. The reasons for human trafficking are many, despite 60 years of independence, the benefits of economic development have not trickled down to the marginalized sections of the society and millions of people still live below the poverty line.

‘Bound Coolies’ and Other Indentured Workers in the Caribbean: Implications for debates about human trafficking and modern slavery

Under systems of indenture in the Caribbean, Europeans such as Irish, Scots and Portuguese, as well as Asians, primarily Indians, Chinese and Indonesians, were recruited, often under false pretences, and transported to the ‘New World’, where they were bound to an employer and the plantation in a state of ‘interlocking incarceration’. Indentureship not only preceded, co-existed with, and survived slavery in the Caribbean, but was distinct in law and in practice from slavery. This article argues that the conditions of Caribbean indenture can be seen to be much more analogous to those represented in contemporary discussions about human trafficking and ‘modern slavery’ than those of slavery. Caribbean histories of indenture, it is proposed, can provide more appropriate conceptual tools for thinking about unfree labour today—whether state or privately sponsored—than the concept of slavery, given the parallels between this past migrant labour system in the Caribbean and those we witness and identify today as ‘modern slavery’ or human trafficking. This article thus urges a move away from the conflation of slavery and human trafficking with all forced, bonded and migrant labour, as is commonly the case, and for greater attention for historical evidence.

Hiding in the Light: The Misuse of Disclosure to Advance the Business and Human Rights Agenda

In June 2017, Waitrose, a top UK supermarket, pulled its cans of corned beef off the shelves after an investigation revealed that the meat might have been produced with slave labor. At the time of the recall, Waitrose was in compliance with the UK Modern Slavery Act, a 2015 law enacted to prevent human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Under the Modern Slavery Act, corporations are required to file annual reports disclosing what action they had taken to eradicate slavery and human trafficking in their supply chains. The Modern Slavery Act was a much-lauded law that is part of the growing trend of States to move the international business and human rights agenda forward. A key component of that agenda involves disseminating the U.N.’s Protect, Respect, and Remedy Framework and implementing the U.N. Guiding Principles, which have been praised by States around the world as a framing mechanism for assessing corporate accountability for negative human rights impacts caused by a corporation’s operations and relationships with its suppliers. This article analyzes whether the business and human rights agenda (as embodied by the Three Pillar Framework and U.N. Guiding Principles) is well served by national laws that focus on disclosure. The article focuses primarily on rules being implemented in the United States at both the subnational and national level; however, it also discusses approaches being used in European jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and France and the overall trend towards a transparency model for human rights protection made necessary by business activities. The increased use of disclosure-based regulation (and the resulting compliance efforts by corporations) seems to come, at least in part, as a result of the efforts by States to address the duties laid out for them in the U.N. Guiding Principles. As such, it is appropriate to undertake an analysis regarding whether these laws are in fact effectively implementing the Guiding Principles. For decades now, disclosure has been held out as the ultimate curative for almost every corporate woe. The expansion of disclosure initiatives from mere investment-related issues to (increasingly) social-policy issues suggest that this trend will continue. Yet, as this article demonstrates, disclosure right now is at best a temporary stop gap measure that can lead to limited corporate change on the issue of business and human rights. At worst, disclosure is being used by corporations as a way to obtain a reputational advantage without actually making substantive changes – by simply hiding in the light.

Marguerite S. Shaffer and Phoebe S. K. Young, eds. Rendering Nature: Animals, Bodies, Places, Politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 406 pp.; 54 black-and-white images, notes, index. $55.00.

Marguerite S. Shaffer and Phoebe S. K. Young, eds. <i>Rendering Nature: Animals, Bodies, Places, Politics</i>. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 406 pp.; 54 black-and-white images, notes, index. $55.00.

Financing rebellion

A prominent explanation of the resource–conflict relationship suggests that natural resources finance rebellion by permitting rebel leaders the opportunity to purchase weapons, fighters, and local support. The bunkering of oil in the Niger Delta by quasi-criminal syndicates is an example of how the black-market selling of stolen oil may help finance anti-state groups. More systematic assessments have also shown that the risk and duration of conflict increases in the proximity of oil and diamond deposits. Yet despite the emphasis on rebel resource extraction in these arguments, empirical assessments rely almost exclusively on latent resource availability rather than actual resource extraction. Focusing on maritime piracy, this article argues that piracy is a funding strategy neglected in current research. Anecdotal evidence connects piracy in the Greater Gulf of Aden to arms trafficking, the drug trade, and human slavery. The revenue from attacks may find its way to Al-Shabaab. In Nigeria, increasing attacks against oil transports may signal an effort by insurgents to use the profits from piracy as an additional revenue stream to fund their campaign against the Nigerian government. The article hypothesizes that piracy incidents, that is, actual acts of looting, increase the intensity of civil conflict. Using inferential statistics and predictive assessments, our evidence from conflicts in coastal African and Southeast Asian states from 1993 to 2010 shows that maritime piracy increases conflict intensity, and that the inclusion of dynamic factors helps improve the predictive performance of empirical models of conflict events in in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts.

The Nazi Racial War: Concentration Camps in the New Order

Abstract This article recounts in specific detail what five Polish individuals, Christians and Jews, men and women, experienced in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. In addition, the origin and evolution of the concentration camps as a Nazi institution is discussed showing their relationship to German business, the war effort, the Wehrmacht, and to the future plans to build a New German Empire in the East. On the broadest level the article outlines a new chapter in human slavery and racism.

Constructing the sex trafficker: spectral figures and sexual violence in California’s Proposition 35

This article examines the development, framing, and implementation of Proposition 35, the ‘Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act.’ The 2012 ballot initiative, described variously as a measure against human slavery, human trafficking, and sex trafficking secured more votes than any other initiative or candidate in a single statewide election in California history. We argue that the measure exemplifies a disjuncture in the articulation of feminist politics against sexual violence, labor exploitation, and criticisms of the carceral state. The rise of the sex trafficker as a ‘spectral’ subject of contemporary political discourse shapes a broader ideological framework that permits a distinct set of political actors and interests to widen their institutional and political authority and to marginalize competing claims about the roots of sexual violence and labor exploitation. Proposition 35, which targets a ‘spectral’ figure abstracted from institutional context and relations of power, expands the carceral state in the name of protecting vulnerable women while also excluding long-standing feminist solutions to sex and gender-based violence.

THE VICTIM HANDLING MODEL OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING THROUGH ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE

Trafficking in persons is a modern trading of human slavery. Trafficking in persons is also one of the worst forms of violation of human dignity that results in trauma to the victims. To that end, there should be a comprehensive treatment for victims.The problems that can be studied is whether a model that can be applied in the treatment of victims of trafficking in Cianjur and disseminating technical how models Handling of Victims of Trafficking in Persons (Trafficking) in Cianjur.This study uses normative juridical approach and specification of descriptive analysis. The results of this study are alternative models to handle victims of trafficking in Cianjur is a service model based on inter-institutional and economic empowerment through planting camelina sativa with socialization techniques involving local government, private sector, community leaders and students through legal counseling and advocacy. Keywords : human trafficking, the victim handling model, socialization

Evolution and Empire: Alfred Russel Wallace and Dutch Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

While Alfred Russel Wallace is sometimes remembered for his sympathy for ‘savages’, it has also been observed that he was closely associated with European colonial regimes during his long stint of fieldwork in Southeast Asia (1854–62). Moreover, it has been argued that as one of the first scientists to extend natural selection to humans following his return to Britain he acquiesced in the extinction of primitive peoples. This article examines in detail for the first time the development of Wallace's admiration for the Dutch Cultivation System, which combined paternalistic administration with a government monopoly over the production of cash crops. While travelling through the archipelago Wallace encountered numerous examples of Indo-Dutch creole culture and he himself made significant lifestyle adaptations to local practices. When he first observed the Cultivation System in the Minahasa region of northern Sulawesi Wallace experienced an epiphany as he witnessed the rapid progress towards ‘civilization’ made by former ‘savages’. This, he attributed to the Dutch system, which he believed to be well adapted to the principles of human mental and moral development. In advocating the Dutch model as a preferable alternative to British free trade and neglect of its civilising mission in India, Australia, and elsewhere, Wallace hoped not only to arrest the decline of primitive societies but also to promote the ultimate uniting of humankind in a single race. In the context of debates over human evolution, slavery, race, and imperial policy in Britain in the 1860s, this was an unusual and radical stance, which challenges simplistic representations of Wallace as a supporter of empire around mid-century who moved towards anti-imperialism in the late Victorian period.

Human Trafficking and Slavery in Australia: Pathways, Tactics, and Subtle Elements of Enslavement

Human trafficking and slavery are heinous crimes that occur in all regions of the world. Victims are frequently trafficked or enslaved using tactics involving force, threats, or coercion. Perceptions of human trafficking and slavery often involve images of slaves, bound and shackled, kidnapped, and raped. Anecdotal evidence from Australia suggests that victims of human trafficking and slavery in Australia do not fit this stereotypical image. This article sets out to explore the more subtle elements of human trafficking and slavery in Australia through a review of human trafficking and slavery court case reports. The article presents summaries of case reports for the period 2004–2014 and identifies tactics of enslavement and pathways into slavery. The article also considers the implications—for identifying victims and combating human trafficking—of the more subtle methods of enslavement that occur in Australia.

Adding Fuel to the Fire of Genius: Abraham Lincoln, Free Labor, and the Logic of Intellectual Property

This paper is part of a series of papers exploring the constitutional foundations of intellectual property. At Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln called for a “new birth of freedom.” It was a call for both successful completion of the Civil War and for advancement of the propositions of liberty and equality set out in the Declaration of Independence. The significance and permanency of change to the nation’s fundamental law formally achieved in the 1860s make it an essential reference point for any analysis of constitutional powers and rights. Accordingly, an analysis of the constitutional foundations of intellectual property rights likewise should be informed by the new birth of freedom. The political and constitutional thought – and, of course, the actions – of Abraham Lincoln are central to understanding Civil War constitutionalism. Lincoln held to what has been termed a “two-track” view of the Constitution. One track involved “the written instrument of government adopted at the nation’s Founding and intended to function as a supreme legal code.” The other track consisted of “the principles, ideals, institutions, laws, and procedures tending toward the maintenance of republican liberty by which the American people agreed to order their political existence.” Applying this two-track framework to the subject of intellectual property yields important insights regarding the place of IP in our constitutional order. Antislavery thought concerning “free labor” offers a logical and compelling account for IP rights. The philosophical precept of “free labor” was placed in the context of an expanding and enterprising society. And it regarded hard work in useful vocations and social mobility as the means for obtaining economic independence. Lincoln himself linked the concept of free labor to intellectual property rights. His thought concerning free labor was grounded in the Founders' understanding, and most particularly in the Declaration of Independence's affirmation of the natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. “[E]ach individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor,” Lincoln wrote in 1847. Or, as he put it, to the same effect, in a more colloquial Lincolnism: “I always thought the man that made the corn should eat the corn.” During his single term in Congress in the 1840s, Lincoln applied for a patent for his invention of “a device to buoy vessels over shoals.” Lincoln assisted constituents with their own patent applications. And he voted for legislation modestly amending administration of patent laws in 1848 and 1849, thereby evidencing solicitude for securing IP rights. Moreover, Lincoln the lawyer was involved in at least five patent cases between 1850 and 1860. Lincoln made the case for IP protections most emphatically in public lectures and speeches he delivered between 1858 and 1860. He delivered his lecture on “Discoveries and Inventions” in essentially the same form a half-dozen times. In it, Lincoln juxtaposed Western Civilization’s 15th Century achievements in writing and printing press technology with the regrettable rise of human slavery. He concluded his lecture by extolling patent laws that “added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.”

Conflicting Memories on the “River of Death”: The Chickamauga Battlefield and the Spanish-American War, 1863–1933 by Bradley S. Keefer (review)

Reviewed by: Conflicting Memories on the “River of Death”: The Chickamauga Battlefield and the Spanish-American War, 1863–1933 by Bradley S. Keefer Kevin M. Levin (bio) Conflicting Memories on the “River of Death”: The Chickamauga Battlefield and the Spanish-American War, 1863–1933. By Bradley S. Keefer. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2013. Pp. 406. Cloth $65.00.) Civil War battles and battlefields have become popular subjects for historians interested in how the veterans and subsequent generations of Americans remembered and commemorated their civil war. Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Bull Run, Milliken’s Bend, and the Crater are just a few of the sites that have received attention. Bradley Keefer’s study of the history and memory of the battles along the Chickamauga Creek in 1863 is not the first, but it is the most comprehensive, even if it is not always convincing. [End Page 186] The author’s analysis of the 1863 Chickamauga-Chattanooga campaign will satisfy most readers interested in the soldier’s experience as well as the broader tactical and strategic decisions that shaped the battle’s outcome. Despite an eventual Union victory along Missionary Ridge, both armies were left with commanders with damaged reputations and others who rose to the challenge. Keefer pays particular attention to the bloody fighting on September 19 and 20, including the fighting at “Snodgrass Hill,” and to officers such as General George H. Thomas, “The Rock of Chickamauga”; and Lieutenant Colonel Henry Boynton of the Thirty-Fifth Ohio, who would play such an important role in shaping postwar memory and sorting out who would receive praise and blame for their performances. Boynton and fellow veterans of the Army of the Cumberland took the lead in shaping the early memory of the battle, organizing reunions of Confederate and Union veterans and the eventual dedication of a new national military park in 1895. Readers familiar with the recent historiography of Civil War memory will likely question Keefer’s analysis of the postwar period leading to the dedication of the park. No one will deny that organizers, including Boynton, hoped to dedicate a park around the themes of reunion and reconciliation. Evidence to this effect fits neatly into the interpretive framework of David Blight’s Race and Reunion (2001), but in recent years historians have questioned the extent to which reconciliation was accepted and divisive topics such as slavery and emancipation were intentionally ignored. Keefer acknowledges the work of John Neff, but the timing of the publication of this book likely made it difficult to take into consideration more recent scholarship from Caroline Janney, Barbara Gannon, M. Keith Harris, and others. The 1895 dedication ceremony at Chickamauga witnessed a great deal of bitterness among the veterans even as organizers worked to maintain a veneer of mutual respect. Former Confederates such as Alexander P. Stewart objected to a proposed inscription on the Second Minnesota Volunteer Infantry’s monument (“The Union, it must and shall be preserved”) as “a violation of both the letter and spirit” of accepted regulations cautioning against any references to the cause of the war. Governor John P. Altgeld of Illinois reminded his audience that “the principle these men fought for meant the perpetuation of human slavery.” Alabama governor William C. Oates could not resist blaming the North’s Puritans for “drench[ing] the land in blood” as a result of their “aggressive fanaticism.” Even Boynton himself had not lost sight of why they fought: “I yield to no man an iota of my convictions.”1 Reliance on Blight alone offers little [End Page 187] opportunity to make sense of such sentiments at the end of the nineteenth century. Shortly after the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, the Chickamauga battlefield witnessed another large influx of soldiers, this time in preparation for overseas deployment. While the author illustrates the details of life in camp, including the boredom of drill and the outbreak of diseases resulting from close quarters and inadequate sanitation, it is not always clear how these details connect to memory of the Civil War. The men may have spent time hunting for relics and exploring monuments, but it is not at all clear that those stationed on the...

Lincoln's dilemma: Blair, Sumner, and the republican struggle over racism and equality in the Civil War era

The Civil War forced America finally to confront the contradiction between its founding values and human slavery. At the center of this historic confrontation was Abraham Lincoln. By the time this Illinois politician had risen to the office of president, the dilemma of slavery had expanded to the question of all African Americans' future. In this fascinating new book Paul Escott considers the evolution of the president's thoughts on race in relation to three other, powerful - and often conflicting - voices. Lincoln's fellow Republicans Charles Sumner and Montgomery Blair played crucial roles in the shaping of their party. While both Sumner and Blair were opposed to slavery, their motivations reflected profoundly different approaches to the issue. Blair's antislavery stance stemmed from a racist dedication to remove African Americans from the country altogether. Sumner, in contrast, opposed slavery as a crusader for racial equality and a passionate abolitionist. Lincoln maintained close personal relationships with both men as he wrestled with the slavery question. In addition to these antislavery voices, Escott also weaves into his narrative the other extreme, of which Lincoln was politically aware: the virulent racism and hierarchical values that motivated not only the Confederates but surprisingly many Northerners and which were embodied by the president's eventual assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Sumner, Blair, and violent racists like Booth each represent forces with which Lincoln had to contend as he presided over a brutal civil war and faced the issues of slavery and equality lying at its root. Other books and films have provided glimpses of the atmosphere in which the president created his Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's Dilemma evokes more fully and brings to life the men Lincoln worked with, and against, as he moved racial equality forward.

‘No One Can Worship Two Lords’ (Matt 6:24a): Freeing the Logion from the Imagery of Slavery

The imagery of human slavery is often taken for granted when interpreting Matt 6:24, probably because of the presence of the noun "slave" in the Lukan version of the logion (Luke 16:13). Considering the cultic aspect of the verb δουλεύω in biblical Greek however, the meaning of the first part of the saying could be "no one can worship two lords" and the metaphor of a slave with two human masters would thus be unnecessary for its interpretation.

The Church’s Vision in the Fight Against Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery

The Church’s Vision in the Fight Against Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery

Australasian Reflections on Modern Slavery

In early February 2012, a federal judge threw out a law suit brought by PETA claiming that whales were ‘enslaved’ by SeaWorld (Note 1). While it met a swift and sorry end, the law suit provides an opportunity for reflection upon what constitutes slavery in the modern context. We are familiar with the Roman “Spartacus” slave scenario and the classic American Civil War “Gone with the Wind” slavery scenario – but how comfortably do we connote modern exploitative labour situations, where individuals (human not animal), find themselves with no avenue of escape. The most commonly challenged modern slavery situations are those in brothels: to what extent do modern brothels in Australia cohere with our understandings of slavery? In a recent High Court decision, Justice Michael Kirby took a strongly different view from his fellow judges in that regard. And what are we to make of the PETA lawsuit claiming (unsuccessfully) that orcas in SeaWorld are enslaved to humans to do their unwilling bidding as entertainers? As a logical extension of that claim, ought we not view the doomed horses in the English Grand National as slaves? They also do their unwilling bidding as cash cows, many of them dying in agony as part of the very spectacle. Very many situations that potentially cohere with slavery today will not cohere with our traditional understandings and stereotypes let alone our modern and as yet not fully articulated understandings. This is a debate more familiar in the USA – yet while Australia has not had an entrenched system of human slavery, an emerging jurisprudence points to modern incarnations while also reinforcing arguments about the effective enslavement of many Aboriginal people during the period of assimilation: a period that gave rise to the ‘Stolen Generation’. The purpose of this article is to reflect upon this emerging jurisprudence and to suggest that while we are continuing to unlock new ideas about slavery in the modern context – both human and animal – but we are far from developing, historically, strategies for their abolition. The way forward, it is suggested, is to recognize as a first step in the human context, that exploitative modern labour situations may appear akin to slavery but need perhaps more appropriately to be dealt with as modern servitude; and as a second step that jurisprudential understandings of animal enslavement: exemplified by the orcas but also personified in events like the Grand National; may appear on the comparative legal agenda in future decades.

A Founding Father on Trial: Jefferson’s Rights Talk and the Problem of Slavery During the Revolutionary Period

Thomas Jefferson’s one-time image as a serious opponent of slavery has been heavily criticized by academics for nearly fifty years. Indeed, Jefferson’s reputation as a principal and principled progenitor of the American political tradition suffered badly in the closing decades of the Twentieth Century as historians, cultural commentators, and legal scholars focused on his racism, personal commitments to slavery, and intimate relationship with Sally Hemings, the enslaved Monticello domestic who was almost certainly the mother of one or more of his children. But while progressive thinkers soured on Jefferson at the close of the Twentieth Century, many libertarians, small government enthusiasts, neo-federalists, and champions of civic virtue remained committed to ideals and rhetoric they associated with Jefferson more than with any other founding father. When the Tea Party movement exploded onto the national political scene in the 2010 election, critics of the modern American state were quick to laud Jefferson as the favored spokesman of an allegedly simpler and purer alternative to the corrupted and degenerate federal government of the present. The original conception of America the Tea Party claimed to favor was, its members maintained, quintessentially Jeffersonian. Clearly, the Jefferson image retains power in contemporary political debates. But which image of the complex third President and drafter of the Declaration of Independence is most accurate, and which is most legitimately harnessed by citizens fighting to define the American creed in our times? Was Jefferson essentially a hypocritical racist who favored small government to protect slaveholder interests, or was he at heart a champion a universal liberty who envisioned a special role for the United States in human destiny? In this Article, I analyze the intricate relation between slavery, freedom, and the birth of the American creed by reassessing the earliest period of Jefferson’s public career when he practiced law in Virginia’s colonial capital Williamsburg, served as a member of the colonial assembly, the House of Burgesses, authored the Summary view of the Rights of British North America in 1774, and served as the principal draftsman of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. After exploring Jefferson’s legal education and the law of slavery in late colonial Virginia, the Article surveys Jefferson’s seven-year career as a property lawyer. It analyzes in detail Jefferson’s argument in Howell v. Netherland, a freedom suit appealed to the General Court of Virginia in 1770, and then considers his rhetoric respecting African slavery and alleged plans for political enslavement of British North America in his classic early constitutional state papers the Summary View and the Declaration of Independence. The natural rights arguments Jefferson employed in Howell v. Netherland, the Summary View, and the Declaration of Independence reflected a philosophy essentially inimical to human slavery. At the same time, the nuanced understanding of estates in land that Jefferson developed as a student and practitioner caused him to think in terms of conflicting and multivalent interests in property instead of Romanesque conceptions of dominium or absolute and unconditional ownership. This historically conditioned understanding of property equipped Jefferson to question the propriety and defensibility of objectification of human beings. Later in life, when he took a leading role in forming the policies of the new American nation, Jefferson de-prioritized claims for African American liberty. But in the early 1770s, Jefferson, provincial slaveholder and common lawyer that he was, embraced progressive anti-slavery tenets as yet little different from those animating the nascent anti-slavery vanguard in England and the North. Rather than the antinomian libertarian radical revered by extreme elements in the Tea Party movement or the Calhounite defender of the Slave Power reviled by some outspoken contemporary progressives, Jefferson of the Revolutionary period emerges as a sincere opponent of slavery. Tragically, as the revolutionary crisis unfolded, Jefferson learned by degrees the political utility of embracing an ever more cautious and conditional mode of discourse respecting anti-slavery goals, and an ever more gradual approach to solving the problems of political and moral legitimacy of an avowedly democratic and republican polity that remained (like Jefferson himself) heavily dependent economically and culturally on the enslavement of fellow human beings. As early as 1776, the pragmatic Jefferson was well on the way to understanding the severe limits circumscribing plausible anti-slavery for a Southern politician hoping to forge an American union committed to republican principles in what was still a decidedly monarchical and imperial world.

Presente y futuro de la igualdad con perspectiva de género en el Marco de la UE tras la Presidencia Española: un antes y un después del Plan de Trabajo 2006-2010

España tuvo la Presidencia de la Unión Europea durante el primer semestre del año 2010. En ese tiempo, el gobierno, a través de su Ministerio de Igualdad y de manera transversal con otros organismos e instituciones, convirtió las políticas de igualdad en una de sus metas. Entre ellas, sobre todo, la lucha a nivel europeo contra la violencia de género, la trata de blancas y la búsqueda de esa igualdad real y no formal que aparece en Europa desde prácticamente sus primeros Tratados. En este artículo se pretende analizar en qué momento nos encontramos tanto en Europa como en España, sobre todo, a través del Plan de Trabajo 2006-2010 y de las últimas decisiones adoptadas por la Unión. El objetivo es ver si se ha llegado a conseguir algo, a implementar alguna decisión y a concretar medidas para luchar contra estas desigualdades que siguen existiendo.