Course finder

Semester 1

Slavery and Forced Labour in the British Atlantic World (HIST10488)

Subject

History

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 History courses at grade B or above, and please note that we will only consider courses with a specific focus on History (not including History of Art) towards these pre-requisites. We will only consider University/College level courses. **Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

The course will ask how early modern people defined, applied, and resisted coercion in labour relations in the British Atlantic world context. We will place transatlantic chattel slavery at the core of the course and also consider indigenous slavery, compulsory agrarian and domestic service, convict labour, indentured servitude, pauper apprenticeship, prostitution, and military and naval conscription. Students will learn the many ways in which historians approach the problem of forced labour.

Course Description

The first part of this course focuses on labour coercion in terms of belonging and exclusion in communities in the British Isles, West Africa, and Indigenous America. Particular focus will be on agrarian, domestic, and military labour. We will challenge the presiding impression that Europe was a place of liberty while Africa and America were places of slavery. The second part of the course focuses on the commodification of labour, especially in long-distance transportation, foregrounding the transatlantic and Indigenous slave trades. Students will learn how traders in captives used violence, displacement, broken kin ties, and imprisonment to establish slavery. Enslaved people's suffering, coping, resistance, and rebellion took as many various forms, making it impossible for enslavers to forget their victims' humanity. The third part of the course will consider the role of coerced laborers in the process of colonisation. Enslaved and forced labour altered natural environments as well as political systems. Work, from the construction of plantations to the overfishing of the sea, contributed to indigenous dispossession and further coercion of indigenous labour, and enabled and accelerated the rise of racial capitalism, with implications on all sides of the Atlantic rim. The course then ends at the Age of Revolutions, treating the role of labour coercion and resistance not only in political and social revolutions, but also in the industrial revolution and attendant environmental change.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 80%, Practical Exam 20%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a History or HCA exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in two 3rd year History courses each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. This includes courses in Economic History and Scottish History. Enrolment in a third course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the September Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course