Why didn't Sir Bertram take Edmund with him to Antigua?

[kev67]

Early in the book, Sir Bertram has to sail to Antigua to sort out his plantation. The overseers weren't whipping the slaves hard enough or something. Or maybe his steward was thinking why am I making this man rich? He doesn't have to do anything, I'm doing all the work. Sir Bertram was there for a year so he must have had quite a bit of sorting out to do. Maybe he introduced a daily fifteen minute stand up meeting at which all the overseers explained what they were going to achieve that day or the obstacles that might hold them up.

Anyway Sir Bertram takes his elder son with him, but leaves Edmund behind. At first I thought well Tom's going to inherit the estate one day, so it makes sense that he brings along Tom to learn the business. But then I thought perhaps Sir Bertram would be reluctant to take Edmund along because he is such a high minded young man, he might kick up a big fuss when confronted with the reality of the family's source of wealth. It's difficult to say; maybe Edmund would have been fine with it.

[Danik 2016]

I don´t remember the plot of Mansfield Park, but if Edmund is the male protagonist, he had to be a nice man, so he couldn´t be associated with the reality of overseas plantation, although he and his family probably lived on the earnings of the estate.

[Jackson Richardson]

I'd have thought that there would be no point in risking two members of the family on a dangerous voyage. Since Edmund was not going to inherit, there would be no point in taking him, and Sir Thomas (not Sir Bertram, please) thought taking Tom would be a waste of time.

Notice the Bertrams have named their eldest children after themselves, Thomas and Maria. (Lady Bertram's first name appears in the first sentence of the book and I don't think is mentioned thereafter.)

[kev67]

I'd have thought that there would be no point in risking two members of the family on a dangerous voyage. Since Edmund was not going to inherit, there would be no point in taking him, and Sir Thomas (not Sir Bertram, please) thought taking Tom would be a waste of time.

Notice the Bertrams have named their eldest children after themselves, Thomas and Maria. (Lady Bertram's first name appears in the first sentence of the book and I don't think is mentioned thereafter.)

I was worried I'd called him a Sir when he was only a Mr. A practical point about not wanting to risk both his sons on a dangerous journey. What's the point of having an heir and a spare if they are both exposed to the same risk?

[kev67]

It is odd. According to the end notes of my copy of the book, Mr Mansfield was an anti-slaver, while a certain Mr Norris was a pro-slaver. The notes says this would be known to Austen's contemporary readers. There was a bit in the book where Fanny asks her uncle what she thinks of the slave trade. Everyone else keeps stumm. Was it something they just did not want to know about? Was Fanny treading on soft ground? Was Edmund living in a fool's paradise? Edmund and Fanny and possibly Sir Thomas do genuinely care about sexual propriety, while Mary Crawford thinks it's so much observance of forms. Does Edmund know where the family wealth comes from? Does he care? Has he rationalized it away some how? Robinson Crusoe was not bothered about slavery at all, except when he was a slave himself. However, Robinson Crusoe was written about 100 years before Mansfield Park, by which time, quite a lot of people were saying it was wrong.

[Ecurb]

Lord Mansfield (the Earl of Mansfield) was a judge who decided two famous slavery cases. In one, he determined that a (supposed) slave living in England could not be returned to slavery in the colonies. Slavery was illegal in England at this time (the 1770s, 40 years before Austen wrote Mansfield Park). In the second case (one of the most brutal in history) 132 slaves had been thrown overboard to drown when a storm endangered a slaver ship. The owners tried to recover money from the insurers of the ship, and Lord Mansfield found against them. Mansfield was also the guardian of Dido, the mixed race child of his deceased cousin (there was a movie about this a couple of years ago).

Edmund clearly knows where (some of) the family wealth comes from, based on his approval of Fanny's question about the slave trade. By the time MP was written, the slave trade was illegal (as of 1807), and slavery in British Colonies was outlawed in 1833. Abolitionism was a significant political movement.

What was Austen suggesting with the references to slavery? Who knows? Certainly it is reasonable to read MP as a domestic comedy of manners, and to ignore the slavery references. It is also possible to wonder whether Austen is comparing Fanny's situation to that of slaves or indentured servants. As far as I know, the only other reference to slavery in Austen's novels is Jane Fairfax's obnoxious comparison of the misery of governesses to that of slaves.