David Brion Davis - Anti-slavery

Anti-slavery

In his scholarship, Davis has addressed the central question of why the first collective protests emerged against slavery only in the mid- and late-eighteenth century, as the institution had dated to prehistoric times. Central to his interpretation was a shifting cultural understanding of sin. Long regarded as a part of the natural order ordained by God and as a penalty for sin, slavery came to be seen as an outrage to human benevolence, a deterrent to economic growth, and as the very embodiment of sin. A convergence of forces, including a crisis within the Society of Friends precipitated by the Seven Years War and the growth of Evangelical and Enlightenment thought, contributed to the sudden growth in antislavery sentiment.

Davis has also asked why antislavery became a mass movement in Great Britain at a time of political reaction in society. His answer focuses on the ways that antislavery helped to legitimate an emerging free labor ideology.