Servile Labor & Institutions Of Debt
Eric Williams motivates a compelling argument about the economic, as opposed to racially discriminatory origins of slavery. How the economic imperatives of an emergent United States, and its aspirations toward participation in increasingly global markets birthed subsequent systems of pushing human labor through brutality, racism, and the moral abhorrence of involuntary servitude. Upending the traditional historical and moral view of southern brutality defeated by northern liberation and forcing modern readings to confront the tyranny of the ledger and the cotton scale on uncomfortable but equal terms with the whip.
A helpful lens on Williams’ work can be to look at the close connections between the development of systems of servile labor and the institutions of debt. Gwyn Campbell in ‘The question of slavery in Indian Ocean world history’ makes clear the connection between those left destitute in China by the wrath of the Black Death, and the establishment of debt bondage, including the sale of family members into servitude as a means of familial survival. Such debts could grow to be hereditary, entering long-term slavery ‘in return for subsistence as a survival strategy’. But whereas the natural disaster of the bubonic plague forced millions of Chinese citizens into debt, the deliberate, calculated, and deliberate system of peonage during the late nineteenth century in The United States, while compelling similar long-term suffering motivated by debt, has very different origins much closer aligned to widespread systemic racism.
In the aftermath of The Civil War, the establishment of increasingly racially motivated codes restricted black people's right to own property, conduct business, buy, and lease land, and move freely through public spaces, with a particular focus on liberal definitions of vagrancy and infringement upon subjective social norms. This resulted in large sections of the African American population being compelled to pay off such debts with work, usually hard manual labor previously accommodated by slavery. And while peonage was outlawed by Congress in 1867, it was not universally eliminated until the 1940s. Often picked up for minor offences with severe penalties and enormous fines, the repayment of these obligations through debt servitude was, as the fascinating documentary from Sam Pollard calls it, ‘slavery by another name’, and experienced strong racial bias. With the principle of chattel ownership struck down due to the 13th amendment, and creditors even freed of the responsibilities of ownership itself, those ‘owners’ to whom the debt was being paid were able to work their ‘hands’ longer, treat them with increased brutality free from consequence, and given the abundance of black labor being supplied, work them to near death at minimal cost. This wasn’t just slavery by another name, it was far worse, where the economic imperatives for production could now be weighed against an inexhaustible supply of labor freed of the economic restraint which comes with ownership.
If debt shapes the behavior of those in debt, then those to whom the debt is owed run enormous risk of abuse and exploitation. And as we see with both peonage and the antebellum era southern states, creativity with the credit ledger often proved just as effective as the lash as a means of control. Such accounting abuses may have usurped servile labor over time, but the malleable weaponization of the terms of economic debt, especially regarding the repayment of foreign aid to those unable to ever get out of the red isn’t going anywhere soon.
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