Robinson Crusoe's attitude to slavery

[kev67]

SPOILERS


I never realised before that Robinson Crusoe was on a journey to Africa to acquire slaves for his and his friends' Brazilian plantations when he became shipwrecked. He does not seem to think there is much wrong about it either. At one point he thinks to himself:

I had great reason to consider it a determination from Heaven, that in this desolate place, and in this desolate manner I should end my life; the tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections, and sometimes I would expostulate with my self, Why Providence should thus completely ruin its creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without help abandon'd, so entirely depress'd. that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.

It is even odder since he had been a slave himself. A captain had allowed him to sail with them free of charge (although he was not required to do any work). Unfortunately Moorish pirates attacked their ship and they could not be prevented from boarding. The pirate leader must have liked the look of young Robinson's jib, because he kept him as his own slave, while all the other sailors were sent up country. Crusoe appears to have been given relatively light duties, such as catching fish. Crusoe manages to escape by stealing his master's boat with another boy called Xury, whom he was obliged to sell to a Portuguese slaver for sixty Pieces of Eight when they were picked up off the coast of the Verde Islands iirc. To be fair to Crusoe, he felt a bit bad about it, but the Portuguese captain had been so generous to him, it was difficult to refuse. Later when Crusoe goes on his slave acquiring mission, he brings "such toys as were fit for our trade with the Negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and odd trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissars, hatchets, and the like." Sixty Pieces of Eight for Xury is pretty expensive in that light, which makes me wonder why the captain was so generous to the young man.

[Jackson Richardson]

Defoe always sounds much more exciting than when you read the actual novels. Here are all these whores, pirates, cavaliers, castaways, royal mistresses and so on, but they have the outlook of a nonconformist shopkeeper, always counting the pennies and making up the books and being pretty smug.

[kev67]

Crusoe gets the ague. I wondered how, because there is no one to catch it from; maybe is was food poisoning from the turtle he'd just eaten. Anyway, while he is suffering, he starts wondering why God was punishing him so much. Why had he been forsaken on the island? He has not been observing the Sabbath, or saying his prayers. He seems to think his worst sin was disobeying his parents. He estimates himself a considerable sinner, but at no point does he think: 'I was on my way to buy some slaves when I was shipwrecked. I sold my friend into slavery for 60 Pieces of Eight, and I owned a slave in Brazil.'

[kev67]

Defoe always sounds much more exciting than when you read the actual novels. Here are all these whores, pirates, cavaliers, castaways, royal mistresses and so on, but they have the outlook of a nonconformist shopkeeper, always counting the pennies and making up the books and being pretty smug.

I read a book about Victorian nonconformists. Nonconformist shopkeepers tended to be Congregationalists, which was a denomination I was not aware of before. Apparently their beliefs were derived from Calvinist theology (hence the Protestant work ethic). They were part of the Old Dissent, who could not accept the authority of the Church of England after the restoration of Charles II to the throne.

[Pompey Bum]

but they have the outlook of a nonconformist shopkeeper, always counting the pennies and making up the books and being pretty smug.


I read a book about Victorian nonconformists. Nonconformist shopkeepers tended to be Congregationalists, which was a denomination I was not aware of before. Apparently their beliefs were derived from Calvinist theology (hence the Protestant work ethic). They were part of the Old Dissent, who could not accept the authority of the Church of England after the restoration of Charles II to the throne.

I was raised a Congregationalist, Kev. My father was a Congregationalist minister when I was a little boy. (And you should have heard what we said about you guys, Jonathan. ;-))

[Jackson Richardson]

As it happens my higher education was at a college founded by the daughters of pious Birmingham Congregationalists so that trainee Congregationalist ministers could get a degree at an ancient university. The chapel was adorned with statues of Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Whitfield and others of the same sort. I studied English but browzed the theological section of the library quite a bit.

kev - the Congregational Church in England merged with the Presbyterian Church in England in the 70s to become the United Reformed Church.

In my home town when I was a boy there were three main nonconformist denominations, Methodist, Congregationalist and Baptist. "Nonconformist" was the C19 term. In the C18 it was "dissenter". In the C20 they often preferred the term "Free Church". This didn't mean they were necessarily socially or politically radical (although they had their roots in the parliamentarians of the Civil War - our Civil War, pompey, not yours). It meant they didn't conform to the national church, ie the Church of England. They are nothing like the political or social force in the UK that they were only fifty years ago, when they were highly significant.

Defoe was a dissenter as it happens, but I was using the term to imply self righteous respectability (which was very unfair of me towards many of them I hope.)

[Pompey Bum]

(which was very unfair of me towards many of them I hope.)

You hope you were being unfair toward many of them? Which ones? ;-)

[Jackson Richardson]

Having used a negative stereotype I was putting in an acknowledgement that individuals don't always fit them.

My father was a small town shopkeeper (and I was born above the shop) and he certainly didn't fit my characterisation of mean (in the UK sense) and smug. But he wasn't a nonconformist. From a family with no religious connections (rare in the 20s) he was confirmed in the C of E in later life. (He was also a voracious reader - there were more books in his home than I can remember seeing in any other house in my childhood.)

Someone who does fit the bill though is that Grantham Methodist shopkeeper's daughter, Margaret Hilda Thatcher. Although I'm sorry to say she conformed to the C of E once she was a Tory politican. (She was married in Wesley's Chapel in London.)

This is a long way from Defoe.

I'm always glad to read kev's post and hear what he's reading.

[Pompey Bum]

Having used a negative stereotype I was putting in an acknowledgement that individuals don't always fit them.

Or at least you hope. Anyway I understood and was just teasing you.


This is a long way from Defoe.

Is it? DeFoe was pilloried and imprisoned for his dissent from religious conformity (and specifically for writing about it). That bears saying as long as negative stereotypes are being loosed.


I'm always glad to read kev's post and hear what he's reading.

Me too.

[kev67]

Ta for the comments.

Even by page 190, Crusoe has a blind spot about slavery. He struggles more with the rights and wrongs of killing cannibals than he does than with slavery. In page 190 he is talking about Providence again:

I have been, in all my circumstances, a memento to those who are touch'd with the general plague of mankind, whence, for ought I know, one half of their miseries flow; I mean, that of not being satisfy'd with the station wherein God and Nature hath plac'd them; for not to look back upon my primitive condition, and the excellent advice of my father, the opposition to which, was, as I may call it, my ORIGINAL SIN; my subsequent mistakes of the same kind had been the means of my coming into this miserable condition; for had that Providence, which so happily had seated me at the Brasils, as a planter, bless'd me with confin'd desires, and I could have been contented to have gone on gradually, I might have been by this time, I mean, in the time of my being in this island, one of the most considerable planters in the Brasils, nay, I am perswaded, that by the improvements I had made in that little time I liv'd there, and the encrease I should probably have made, if I had stay'd, I might have been worth 100,000 Moydors; and what business had I to leave a settled fortune, a well stock'd plantation, improving and encreasing,to turn supra cargo to Guinea, to fetch Negroes; when patience and time would have encreas'd our stock at home, that we could have bought them at our own door, from those whose business it was to fetch them; and tho' it had cost something more, yet the difference of that price was by no means worth saving, at so great a hazard.

[ennison]

And yet I might have avail'd myself of their their mouths as receptacles but yet did not

[Jackson Richardson]

I suppose it would be a good idea to read Robinson Crusoe again, but I picked up The Woman in White on spec this afternoon.