Well I am now 290+ pages into the book and have reached the final section "Slavery and Freedom" where I hope to hear Morgan's arguments for the "paradox" of freedom requiring slavery to develop in Virginia. So far I rate the book as OK, and hope that it will get a bit more interesting in this final section. Has anyone else found themselves trudging through some of the lengthy descriptions of the actions of Virginia's first Governors or the descriptions of initial settlements? I am sure that if I approached this book as a different viewpoint on Virginia's early history rather than my intent of finding the author's argument for the development of slavery amongst the development of freedom and the dependence of one on the other I may be more interested on these details but unfortunately I am not.
There are a few interesting things that I jotted down along the way though, such as the idea that the early English settlers were interested in freeing the Native Americans and African slaves from the servitude and cruelty of the Spanish (only to go down a similar path in the not too distant future) as well as the idea that tobacco was not as economically prosperous as I may have thought based on childhood lessons on the subject. The idea in the chapter "Living with Death" that Virginia's women were tyrannical and were regularly slandering the other women was somewhat amusing to read.
I believe that I am beginning to understand where Morgan's argument is heading, only extremely large producers make money when tobacco prices are not high, labor is a problem in Virginia where freedmen do not want to work for wages, Virginians are forming an idea that some people, such as Indians are less than human and therefore can be enslaved, and a new system would be necessary that did not depend on angry freedmen for production in order to create a social class rich and separate from English royalty that would come up with the ideas of a free America.
Did you find the author's argument for the paradox of American liberty and slavery? You identify some important pieces in the last paragraph, but the real question is how the argument works in motion.
ReplyDeleteI believe I am seeing his argument forming, but expect it to be backed up in more detail in the final section of the book. To this point he is still discussing servitude and Slavery has not quite entered the scene in Virginia on a large scale.
ReplyDeleteI also felt like he got bogged down in details that weren't central to the trajectory of his story sometimes. But, I do feel like I'm seeing his main idea coalesce.
ReplyDeleteI agree, especially when he is discussing the many battles between the governor and the other big men of Virginia. At times, it seems like Morgan can't decide if his book has a specific thesis or is, as he says at one point, an "early history of Virginia."
DeleteI agree. I spent the entire first half of the book trying to find the thesis and determine what he really set out to talk about. The additional history that he included was interesting, but probably not necessary to his argument about slavery.
DeleteI too have found my way several chapters in the book and seen him go into tangential statistics that rarely relate to the central theme of slavery. However, I think he is building this grand backdrop for us, the readers, to understand the culture and setting when slavery is introduced. I find it ironic that halfway through the book his main thesis has rarely been touched on.
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