Contrast to the old ones. We had people like governor pilling, senator mccain and had a great role during the 2008 president ial election. That was a lot of fun. And Christopher Walken and the scarlet johansson. So its probably more than 100 interviews. How important is saturday night live to politics or has it always been a political show lacks right in the beginning when chevy chase fell down i think its an important part of the political process every four years when theres a president ial election you look at saturday night live to see how they are going to characterize and a brand of some of the characters. Governor sarah palen told me she thought people overestimated but it may not actually materialize in the voting booth like somebody thats going to vote for mccain and appealing doesnt say im going to vote for obama and biden but its an mh of somebody like bush 41 it gives us a sense of who we are fairly or unfairly. You wrote for the Washington Post and the political town. How important is the poeted in saturday night live . As jim said a lot of interaction, a lot of influence and they couldnt live without each other i guess. The show has always had a young audience, targeted at a younger demographic and i think for some of the younger demographic this is their main exposure to politics so they learn a lot of political reality through saturday night live. They maybe get stuff over the internet but its an actual source of political information for them, not just entertainment. I dont mean its their only source that its played a major role in how they think of things. When saturday night live first started there was nothing else like it but when they were doing the political satire it was a big deal. Now you have jon stewart every night at 11 00 Stephen Colbert to doing what they used to do so the competition is much more. When you are not writing books what do you do . I write for papers and media consulting. Live from new york the complete uncensored history of saturday night live. Book tv on cspan to. For the next few hours on booktv we bring you the five nominees for the National Book critics circle award in nonfiction. First Pulitzer Prizewinning historian David Brion Davis talks about the final volume of his history of slavery in the west. Published 38 years after the second installment, the third focuses on anticipation. Welcome. On the Africa Center i would like to welcome you all here for what is a momentous and landmark event for us for the launch of the new book. A couple of acknowledgments and brief introductions and then we will start to turn the program over to the speakers out there. But i thought we would begin by thanking the person that arranged this event and brought the center together. So the ocean a great deal and also michelle from the publishers of the book as well as the Letterman Institute for their help and cooptation and arranging this this evening. I also would very much like to welcome and recognize the Board Members of the board of trustees have taken the time to come here this evening as well. Thank you for that. A few brief words of introduction for my part. One of the reasons i was so glad i jumped on this opportunity was because the work then such a great deal to us. Personally my own work benefited from some of professor davis writing particularly years ago when i was researching and comparing online and it gives you a sense of some of the breast of the professors work which is what we are here to talk about tonight in the sense that it was landmarked into its own right on those areas as well. And also we are indebted to the professors courage and firmly confronting antisemitism particularly again a few decades ago when it was a time of great controversy and great attention and yet he stood up and come them and what needed to be condemned and did it in a scholarly dispassionate manner that left a great impression. In many ways it is a national fit to be able to host this event. Speed to a person who devoted his life to both bringing to justice to the systems and becoming a human rights champion in the broad sense trying to ensure that lessons would never be forgotten and that no group would ever suffer such a fate again and in the sense that there is a great affinity between that and the work of professor davis. For example it doesnt take more than a glance in our own world to see the ideas that have fallen and since the genocide and be depression and genocides are continuously present in our world even today. Professor davis reminds us in the epilogue of this book that slavery still exists under certain conditions might even be restored on a large scale in certain areas in todays world. But the affinity runs deeper. Professor davis work is shaped by the events of world war ii. And as he himself has written and stated that quote living in the shadows of the holocaust in the ruins of the worlds greatest war is where he decided to embark on a career with the goal of unearthing the truth in the superficial facts of propaganda, presentation of the perspective and overall comprehensive view of why people did it and finally people stop and think before blindly following the group to make the world safer this was written in 1946 and the only thing i would suggest is that the list of those that endangered the democracy has probably gone longer and wider. As ive read the book i was drawn to reconsider the relationships both the similarities and differences between the holocaust and the system of slavery that professor explored. Recent examples that came to mind was the role of the victim ignored in the first wave of the study for example dealing with the holocaust. Landmark study the destruction of the european jury in the monkey perspective of the documentation, the witnesses and the oppressors side and totally ignored the role and the impact on the victims of the holocaust itself which leads into the consideration of the perspective of the oppressed including the need and the cost of the collaboration which is also professor davis twice briefed in a new book about, quote comes with preservation at a minimal cost of degradation and loss of selfrespect. And that is a question much raised in the literature of the holocaust how do you survive and what is the impact of survival and what is the cost of survival and currently for the example in the new film the last of the unjust. These issues are based upon the application of the demonization and again animals asian which the professor uses very much in his explorations and the impact they have on the community which go a long rate shaping the discourse. Even the role of the state and geography is praised for just also reflected on the holocaust as the recent words on locating and marketing Eastern Europe and the baltic where they slaughtered more victims than they murdered in death camps. There are of course differences as well. One from the mental distinction is that wireless was an Economic Venture that had Great Success in the Economic Needs were ultimately to the pursuit of genocide thus rendering any method by the Jewish Population was useless. Fundamentally it comes down to the idea that there are evils we must learn from to have a Brighter Future or as the professor davis concludes, History Matters and i would add also can eliminate the educated and inspired us to go to these questions as the professor davis has done for so many years and so tonight we are here to liberate the launch of the third and final volume of the charge he the problems of slavery and we have to distinguish speakers who will join the conversation about the book and anything else they want to talk about. You are invited to downstairs for a reception and book signing and you can also wander through the innovative Interactive Museum which tends to deal with a much different manner of some of the same issues that professor worked upon. Before i introduce the speakers i would ask everyone to silence your cell phone. We are being filmed by cspan. There will be questions afterwards and i would like to introduce the speakers. I would like to introduce the former students of professor davis who are now master master scholars and researchers in their own right as they go along with events. So sitting close to me from the university was honored as a doctoral student. He was a bond trader inspired by the Pulitzer Prizewinning in the western culture so his work includes the africanamerican painter of the coproducer of the museum of art and awardwinning Childrens Book on civil rights and titled over freedom and the mother of the American Revolution and a book on the history of ambition published last year by the university press. The edition is written for the Washington Post, wall street journal and New York Times and he was formerly the executive director of the africanamerican research and he now lectures at yale school of medicine and Public Health division is the recipient of the grant and it was part of the White House Research Development Institute and is developing [inaudible] to the department of treasury. He currently collaborates the young adult book on slavery and antislavery. Sean is a professor of english american studies and africanamerican studies at harvard university. He writes on the civil war era, antislavery, the social protest movement and is the author and editor of the 11 books and over 60 articles including two books that are recently national bestsellers. In the recent books coauthored it is the battle and of the republic. The republic. The biography that marches on that is a finalist of 2013. The reviews have appeared in the times, wall street journal, New York Times, Washington Post huffingtonpost and numerous scholarly journal of books. For the state Department International Information Program hes been a consultant into hollywood films, clinton 17 is jingo. He appeared on a cbs documentary the cbs documentary the abolitionist and was advisor to the film. With that background those backgrounds, i think that we are all looking forward to an incredibly exciting discussion and the floor is yours. [applause] the goal is to have a conversation with davis and you are all part of this conversation but before we launch into this discussion we often have dinner together at least once a year we meet at the new haven cafe and john will come down and we will share a couple dozen oysters and have a conversation about everything and anything. So we thought on the occasion of the completion of the trilogy it would be nice sort of spirit to maybe some oysters might help, a bottle of wine. [laughter] im going to turn the floor over to john to introduce my friend and mentor. We will hopefully allow david to give a summary not only of the problems of unification but unification that of the trilogy and briefly of his public life. I will start with a very brief summary. As most of you know david is the Professor Emeritus at the university. He has won virtually every award a historian can win in keeping the Pulitzer Prize, the president of the american historical association. I could go on and on. But i wanted to start my having davis elucidate a bit of his background that led to this trilogy and the introductory remarks one of the things that was highlighted is you became interested in slavery in the shadow of the holocaust as a post world war ii soldier and im wondering if you would be about to elaborate on the background that led you to become interested in slavery and abolition at the time in which the subject was in large part unexplored unwritten. There were a few books but to a large degree, you helped to create the field of slavery and abolition as you note in the preface of the age of emancipation it was an important influence but in terms of abolition studies what a departure from the first book which was a study of homicide in american literature. He is at cornell and purchases this book publishes this book and was careful to remind me he did his dissertation in three and a half years as mine went on and on. But all of a sudden he turns to slavery and antislavery at a time in the 60s when the nation is being torn apart by racial strife and attention and im just fascinated by how suddenly you would make this kind of paradigm shift of interest. Let me start by simply saying my interest in homicide to homicide that extend over to slavery in the sense that i was very much interested in the history of ideas and what was called intellectual history. I was hired at cornell in 1955 to teach intellectual history which was already beginning to be seen as an elitist brand of studying of social history from the bottom of taking over the whole field and i was interested in finding concrete subjects like homicide or universal subjects or slavery as the most extreme form of domination. And its a way of looking at changes and perceptions in the forms of behavior. So there was that connection. And as i mentioned briefly in the introduction, in the 1930s and early 40s my family traveled all over the country. We lived coasttocoast and add the schools i was never in a classroom of africanamericans and in other words even though i was in the north and the segregated society that all ended when i was drafted into the army in 1945 and was trained for the invasion of japan. And i was down in georgia for the first time when i saw jim crow america and its worst. And a suddenly though poor with japan ended and i was on the ship bound for germany and was ordered to go down into the hold of the ship to keep them from gambling. I had no idea if there were any on the ship but it was like a slave ship down below and this went on until i became a security policemen in germany and was called out where there were shootouts conflicts between the soldiers partly because there were many german girls who love to date black soldiers and there were many white sweaters that were outraged by this so in my experience in germany where i spent a year in 45 46 was an experience for the first time they introduced me to the racial issues of the country in a very dramatic way and it also was the holocaust of course i was in the shadow of that and so many survivors have protected them and we were to protect truckload after truckload of survivors. So i was opened up to a lot of Different Things as a young soldier and as i then went on with a g. I. Bill to go to college, i was very much interested in the racial issue even though we failed in the actual civil rights movement. I read a good many works on one and when i was in graduate school at harvard a very distinguished historian from berkeley came for a semester to teach at harvard and he was near my apartment and we became good friends. He was about to publish his first really great book on slavery in the American South that wasnt based on the assumption of their rights. The rights. It was a very serious book and a suddenly it made me realize in my classes at harvard and dartmouth that there had been hardly anything said about slavery live alone and abolition of some and this opened up a whole new prospect while i was working on homicide it opened up the prospect of slavery and antislavery and its fields that i would move on to a bit later. So fortunately in 1955 i got an assistant professorship at cornell to teach American Intellectual history and i began bringing the material into slavery into that and when i was a super lucky to get a fellowship in 58 and went off to britain for the head of the guggenheim the group thought i should go abroad given my interest. I emerged myself in london on what became the problem of slavery in the western culture and what was going to be just a background chapter became a whole book so i was launched that way on the first volume. Did you imagine that when they do it right each of which he clicks i did. When you finished did you think the first chapter, that is supposed to be the first chapter and then to make this a book and write to others . I anticipated i would be writing more, yes. Did you imagine three books . Cynic i am not sure. In the wake of the narrative both of his parents were writers, his mom and dad. His father went to for. Was there a time that he thought id would like to be eight writer as well . I very much was interested in writing, yes. When i was an undergraduate, i took some summer classes at Columbia University in the language and writing fiction and there was a wellknown teacher but she didnt like my efforts. [laughter] so i never went beyond trying to write more fiction. I was also struck i remember when you had a discussion about the necessity to drop the atomic bomb in japan and i remember you telling me that they told you while you were getting ready to go to prepare for the invasion of japan that you fully bbq were going to go and die and they informed you of that at that moment. I didnt know about dieting but when we hit the beaches of japan it would make normandy look like nothing. And they emphasized that in our training. In georgia they had great japanese villages that we were capturing. And actually having had physics in high school when the atomic bombs were involved i understood and i thought we might not ever have many more after this. But it seemed as if without those you taught at cornell intellectual talk at cornell intellectual and cultural history which became the basis for the course which is studying slavery and antislavery. Did you feel it necessary because you were doing something new and may be maybe something that worked against the origins is that why you couched it as intellectual history rather than calling a slavery or antislavery . It went way beyond and we were interested in the broad survey of the cultural history. However teaching large lecture classes. Wasnt teaching slavery or at the time especially coming to yale he does a lot of work looking at the attitudes towards antislavery among the academy. Before i ask that question im curious if you could just summarize some of the challenges that you faced when face when you are writing the problem of the western culture and the problem in the age of revolution which were very different periods, one published in 1966 and the other in 1975 and then the challenges that you face as he tackled the problem of slavery. One beginning point of importance i havent written other works related to the problem of slavery in the western culture. That was originally an introductory chapter where i needed to get some background and so as i worked in britain thanks to this guggenheim fellowship it grew and grew and grew and i go back to the antiquities and look out the western culture in general it is somewhat more intellectual history certainly theres not much a social history but when i moved onto the problem in the evolution nine dealing with the Industrial Revolution as well as the American Revolutions and political revolutions and so on. So beginning in the second volume i beginning to deal with what the abolitionists were up against. The first big question was why at a given moment in history did a fairly small group of men and women come to see a slavery and it is an absolutely terrible evil when it had been accepted. About but in the age of the revolution, i am dealing with and already had a chance transformation so there were quite a few people who feel this and we have to do something about it. But then the need for it is able to legitimize the pre factory labor so i got into things of that sort. And in this book im able to be much more selective because i had written a different books on the subject between the age of revolution and at the age of emancipation and including a broad survey their eyes and fall of human slavery in the new world which is an overall big survey. So i didnt want to sort of repeat this survey material here and i was able to have particular themes and subjects beginning with the dehumanization and then going back to the revolution and i had to devote quite a few chapters to the movement of the broad consensus in the arrest in the north as well as the south, there was no thought of the emancipation and a large way in a large way unless you somehow deported or moved or freed the slaves outside of the arrest so i devoted a great amount of space to the movement which i felt had been very grossly misunderstood and then i had a great deal on the crucial role of blacks in the north and combating the Colonization Movement and launching and immediate Abolition Movement in the 1830s committed to what they call the immediate emancipation of slaves and so i stress again and again the old unsolved. But im selecting things here and not trying to repeat what ive read before. Thats one of the unique things about this book for me. Here he is in his ninth decade and the antislavery has caught up with them and theres so many monographs that come out and stated terms to this book and manages to do something original. How does one do that in about a year and a half by the way. We would have lunch and he would complain about how slow the work was going into this was when he had a bad fall and break a hip and a year and a half it took him. So i dont know whats wrong just [inaudible] just touching on the theme of the dehumanization that runs through the trilogy i was wondering if you could really turn to the haitian revolution chapter and may be read at it from your book because the dehumanization and the animal location of the place of the former enslaved humans is really something that you get a quite eloquent and this this isnt a chapter the first in indicators, freedom and dishonor if you would like to read along. On january 2 1893 Frederick Douglass rose to deliver a speech dedicating the haitian pavilion at the chicago world fair. Douglas was involved in planning the pavilion. He took the opportunity of his speech to navigate the common stereotype who devoted their time to voodoo and child sacrifice. But even more significant is douglass used the speech to reflect back on the past century of the emancipation. Douglas after all was more and he had Won International fame to his writing and oratory in the service of black emancipation as the most prominent black spokesman of the new world he had no difficulty in identifying one of the central events in the history of emancipation and he writes we should not forget, or he speaks we should not forget that the freedom you and i enjoy today, but the freedom that the freedom that 800,000 colored people in the british west indies, the freedom that has come at the color of race and the world over is largely due. When they struck for freedom they struck for the freedom of every black man in the world. He made sure to know that the british abolitionists in the antislavery societies and countries around the world but blacks he noted it was haiti that struck first for emancipation and it was the original plan of the 19th century. He instructed the world about the dangers of slavery and have demonstrated that the powers and capabilities of the black race had only to be awakened. Once awakened, the former slaves demonstrated their strength in defeating 50,000 of the police veteran troops. Not only that, but these insurgents turned to establish an independent nation of their own making. The white world could and would never be the same until haiti spoke, douglas pointed out though christian nation have abolished slavery. Until she spoke the slave trade was sanctioned by all the christian nations of the world into the land of liberty and life included. The church was silent and the pulpit was done. Of course she knew that it was a hell of harbors. The very name pronounced with a shudder as he notated the beginning of his speech. And indeed the revolution had inevitably had contradict effects. Douglas have avoided the mention of the haitian revolution in his public speeches and debates and interviews. In the white audiences the abolitionist douglass knew the perceptions were all too well. For some it had been an object and in the inevitable social and economic ruin with any form of emancipation. For others it signaled a massacre racial nightmare made real. Yet this didnt change the conviction of the haitian revolution. Thank you for reading that. I want to ask you a question about the colonization. You devote four chapters in this book and so could you summarize why it was so attractive to so many different kinds of people . In the beginning going back to the 18th century, the colonization and the minds of the people in terms of simply returning africans slaves that had been born and brought from africa returning them back to their continents their continent continents of for example samuel hopkins, the descendent who was a pretty j. Jonathan edwards motivated by the disinterested benevolence when he moved in 1772 Newport Rhode island and was antislavery he wanted to do something about slavery but he tried to make it possible for those that were free to return to africa if they wanted to go and he assumed that many of them would want to go. But as you move on a 19th century, of course more and more were cut off in 1807 and theres always a great there is always a great danger of being re enslaved in africa. But as more and more were freed in the north beginning in 1780 you have a tremendous increase and they were denied all of the rights and privileges and there was a broad consensus that the only way you would get the published opinion behind the abolition of the if we moved these three d. Slaves back to africa or possibly in the 1820s thousands of them went to haiti and many returned but they might to central america. And actually important leaders went along with this. He was half black and half indian and was very wealthy and had the shipping entire and he went in 1816 to sierra leone to the british colony hoping to start up a colony that would be a kind of model showing how they could achieve the various things he actually was with the british abolitionists and even interviewed president james madison. Imagine a black man interviewing and he wouldnt call him prevacid medicine. He called him james. [laughter] but he died unfortunately in 1917 or his own influence might have been somewhat beneficial in the Colonization Movement. But james, a wealthy black man in philadelphia who was a great inventor was for colonization in the beginning and so was Bishop Richard allen who was the religious leader in philadelphia and in january 1817 after the founding of the colonization they decided they had a meeting with 3000. He put it through a vote and the non of them wanted to have anything to do with it. So they had to shift and it took them a little while to change their mind but that they had to go along with the overwhelming views of africanamericans in philadelphia and they were opposing the colonization so we were set up beginning in 1817 but the black opposition to the counter society which i forgot to say jefferson was very much for the colonization and so was president lincoln even after the emancipation proclamation for some time. He still wouldve claimed a little acclaimed a little bit to some kind of colonization. I think its a misunderstood cause. One thing i do bring out is in the vast literature published by the society bears very little to even hint at the inherent inferiority on that part. Just a brief prejudice and lack of rights have degraded in various ways but if they were in africa they would try and could even become sort of missionaries and the salon so i think we have to look much more carefully and thats why i devote various chapters we need to look carefully at this whole colonization concept which did promote the prejudice and i devote a lot of space in the book to that. You also devote an extraordinary amount of space to the crucial role of free blacks. In fact you have a chapter titled that when i read it in manuscript form and again published form, the title itself i found revolutionary. A free blacks is the key to the emancipation. And i say revolution because they never constituted more than 13 of the black population and roughly 1 of the american population. So given that small number comparatively very small number of free blacks wife are they were they the key to the emancipation . Above all in resisting the hopes that they should be persuaded to voluntarily go to liberia which was founded for that purpose. So in the 1820s they began publishing their own newspaper. He then goes out to the society and i stress that especially by the 1850s a very large number of leaders have embraced one form or another of the colonization and this comes down to the 1920s with Marcus Garvey is the First Movement and while today he is scorned but Martin Luther king went to lay the wreath on his grave and because of his having the first mass black movement so even into the 1920s they actually praised the society and the colonization. But the main issue with with the chapter raises is the need to elevate in the north so that they will be capable of achievement of the various sports, and i will point out how not only Frederick Douglass but smith who goes to scotland and he gets a graduate degree and becomes a very successful doctor and new york city and its very important. But there are various kinds of enormous achievements in this effort to free the population but that dred scott decision and various things in the 50s. And you also place a lot of emphasis on the importance of the fugitives and how that contributes to emancipation. Can you elaborate on that . Of course it was Frederick Douglass himself who is kicked in 1838 and then who in 1841 was indicted. Co. And invited to give a speech and nantucket where all of the societies were meeting with all these people. He was then very much incorporated into the movement. But with regards to fugitives, theres been a good deal of misunderstanding. I go along with the confusion of many historians that the number of fugitives was never large enough to endanger the institution in any way in the south even though in the south itself they were running away. But in the 1850s well over 50,000 ran away from their owners or didnt go far away. But in the north, by the 1860s there were about 45000 fugitives living in the north but it wasnt a threat to the system. But ideologically it was enormous since the u. S. Constitution of course tried to evolve even though they avoided using the word slave. But they tried to prevent the northern states that were already beginning to show to prevent them from giving shelter and refuge to a slave from the south. Then of course there came the fugitive slave law into the about 98 were returned by the end of 1860. But it was something that if you have shown that was redirected at john brown and so it had a big impact on the coming of the civil war. Back to the issue that you are highlighting this in the book and also giving the range of experience you probably saw 12 years a slave but has a depiction of the north and the kind of ideal community and john pointed out it was a fairly accurate portrayal of this one community but for the majority of the free blacks in america at that time as you point out in one of your chapters the challenges were far more significant. It didnt mean freedom from racial oppression. And you do this wonderful moment in the fifth book where it is unusual for a historian especially a professor of history but all of a sudden we are in third person. To imagine what it is to be a free black. Its such a great moment. It got greater than i realized. This is just maybe you can get an abbreviated moment. This goes back to the fact its really buying history of course and its such a pleasure to read and he takes risks that most people are afraid to take and he boldly does it. I will skip over some of the things but its worth underscoring the obvious but the often neglected to point out for the general public especially in america the key issue raised by the abolitionism is the state condition of the freed slaves into that file they overcame the formidable barriers to the great achievement we were still up against the loss of selfrespect and so on and the demand to keep them in their place and so on. The complexities involving such issues was the reaction to the metabolism to the special imaginative effect efforts on the part of both the author and the reader and we must try at the start to imagine what it would have been like to have been a free black abolitionist. Though i didnt switch so i have a kind of different thought. In the mid1840s we abolitionist and most others are always conscious that most of our slaves in the south and that we can easily be kidnapped or officially arrested and sold in the south. Suddenly deprived of the family members in our very names which of course happens in 12 years a slave. But they are better off in the deep south. The new law has been passed to keep us from entering or settling in the states north and many times in the north have passed ordinances requiring us to register or even post bonds for good behavior. Most states deny as the right to vote and sit on juries or even testify. Most are illiterate and even our children have got a gradeschool grade school education. Perhaps most important, we are surrounded by the White Supremacy and are constantly viewed as inferior people in our dalia interactions who sometimes verbally curse or ridicule us for even spit on us in the street and who climb when we step off the wall to let them pass. No matter how close we might become to a friend we cannot accompany him or her. The lectures concerts and Public Places except for the very few radical communities. I remember when he was contemplating the departure and i said i have one word for you. David. Its safe to say theyre not allow them to change that passage. I just want to end by saying this trilogy began 48 years ago with slavery in the western culture published in 1966 won the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. The Pulitzer Prize winner for history in 1966 was. Millerss book the life of the mind of america from the revolution to the civil war who you knew from harvard you had great respect. To give you a sense of the significance in the western culture, i went back to the life and kind of america from the revolution to the civil war and there is not a single mention of slavery or abolition of entire book. And hes up against him in cold blood. [laughter] id wins the National Book award among both of them. I will bet money that it will win many very prestigious awards so the also directed the dissertations including mine and i can see a number of others here. Your graduate students, former graduate students are represented at every Major Research institution in the United States and many other odd and not just for history that the field of diverse english law and Public Health. They let me write it, and i acknowledge my relationship by saying that he directed my dissertation. So it was, that was a real honor for me to be able to do that. It was an honor for me to have you. Why dont we open it up for questions and comments and criticisms of us. Thank you so very much. The first time i came great work, when i toured i taught a course at harvard your your book was of course in those days there were not many things like that. What has always bothered me is the bible both in defending slavery and fighting for emancipation to of course its abhorrent to me the bible was used to change slavery. On the other hand, its no question that those who fought for emancipation did use the bible. You mentioned a few individuals. Im quite sure they also did the. So i was wondering, i have read your books but i would like to read this one, too. In your judgment lets the weight of the bible in that particular balance of the struggle to defend slavery or to fight against it . Whats the role of the bible . Im a great student, admire of the bible and i think personally he played a very Important Role but i would very much like to hear your voice. Thats a very, very important and extremely complicated question, because the bible of course has all kinds of conflicting messages. In fact in the bible study group, tony and i belong to we have just been reading parts that call for in justified genocide, where its pretty shocking to see that the lord is calling for the wiping out of entire peoples and so on. And, of course there are numerous parts of the bible that do give justification for slavery, but also it seems to me that the great exodus narrative is extremely important in the sense that the chosen people the jews, are freed from slavery in egypt and the lord brings them for 40 years out of egypt and this exodus paradigm becomes extremely important for the large numbers of africanamerican slaves who learned the bible or read from the bible. And so i think that it depends on where you look and whats going to be most important it. But i think the exodus narrative is extremely important. In the introduction there was a comparison implicitly made between the economic logic of slavery called successful versus the idea that the logic of genocide undermines economic selfinterest. And do you see a part of the endless Labor Movement abolition was connected to an economic logic that slavery was not compatible with the new International Free market economy and a new ideology of free labor . And doesnt slavery in the same way that genocide raise the question of the problem of evil and excessive aggression in society . One final question is how do you explain the fact that lets say the equivalent of zionism within africanamerican social movements didnt reach the same success that they did within, lets say, Jewish Society after the holocaust. They were i just three questions there. The one, im a little confused but my problem of slavery in the age of revolution, i exam and quite some detail the issue of free labor ideology. And i think that bears no question that there is no question that that they need in britain especially pioneering the Industrial Revolution the need to justify the kind of Industrial Labor in the late 18th century was really taking hold contributed to the Antislavery Movement and the need and indeed, there was a proslavery writer in britain named Gilbert Franklin who claimed that, in fact, the whole Abolition Movement that was rising in the late 18th century was an attempt to divert attention from the terrible exploits, exploitation of workers in britain. He went on and on about how much worse the labor was of Industrial Workers in britain. Slaves were in franklins view, very, very well taken care of and were happy, they were very happy all in the british west indies. He even said a famous prize at Cambridge University for an essay on antislavery, one of the launching points of the Antislavery Movement in britain when clarkson won his prize. And he said why doesnt cambridge have the prices for essays prizes for essays on the industrial working and children and women in the minds and so on . So you begin to have a proslavery argument that is directed in that way. And i think it would be a mistake to think that the abolitionists were consciously trying to justify bad things in england. But theres a very complex relationship there between the two. Was not part of your question . Sound like. Actually, one of the things that we probably wont have time much to talk about between the movie and the book which i just reread the book having seen the film, quite a long time ago. One of the things that troubles me a bit about 12 years a slave, and even in the book is that, as you know the free northerner from new york state who was kidnapped and taken to the south for 12 years he argues that the cruelty is mainly the fault of the system, that its not, you are bound to have people who will exploit a slaves terribly if you have a system like this. But hes arguing the system is very uneconomical. And if you take solomon his views on free slave labor versus slave labor he would not be able to explain why slavery in the south was so immensely productive and prosperous. Even though they were using the last so much to drive the slaves on and on and on to produce more and more a more. That raises an interesting question. The other part of your question was about zionism. Zionism of blacks and other jews. Theres an article are you thinking of that . Sound like. Theres a new article in the israeli left wing magazine which draws a distinct parallel between the treatment of palestinians today by the israelis about slavery in the new world but the author backed away again and again from trying to draw a complete parallel and admits that there are very few resemblances, you know between the treatment of palestinians and the treatment of black slaves. It doesnt stand up as all that a convincing case, it seems to me. But then we had all kinds of efforts to compare Human Trafficking of the very source and other kinds of oppression today with racial slavery in the past. This gets very controversial. Professor davis about six or seven years ago in london you were the keynote speaker at a conference of historians sponsored by the Templeton Foundation on the subject is there meaning in history . And is there what . Meaning in history. And it was a somewhat controversial subject. There were some professional historians there who ducked the question, and they were noted historians from oxford, cambridge and elsewhere and you were the keynote speaker. And you deferred answering the question until the final part of your presentation and you said, well, i dont know that i can answer that question. Its not my day job, or something to that effect. But i have a hard time explaining how, within a short period of 60 70, 80 90 years, a world turned on its head its attitude toward slavery. I cant explain it. Or something to that effect. In light of your you had not ridden the last of the georgia at that point. In light of your most recent work, would you care to amend or extend your remarks . Im afraid i dont remember remember this at all. Whatever was i said there. I think my trilogy attempts to explain as well as again how the was this revolutionary in what i call moral perception so that from the 1780s when you begin well 1777 vermont adopts the constitution outlawing slavery and then in 1780 pennsylvania passes along for the gradual emancipation of slaves and pennsylvania, and three years later in paris the mob is founded and theyre charged in london and pennsylvania and so on. By the 1780s youve got antislavery organizations beginning to rise up and by 1888, even though in 1776 slavery was legal and thriving from canada to argentina and chile, in 1888 when brazil finally outlawed slavery in the space of 100 years we outlawed slavery throughout the entire hemisphere. I think this is a very very remarkable event which i really conclude the book by saying we need not forget that such moral progress is possible. In fact both in his book and in human body to highlight the importral the wheel moral achievement that is extremely important in history. Do you mind reading the very last paragraph of your book . Because i think its really rich and profound . Well, im talking first as i approach the end of the book im talking about trafficking and about fertility fortuity and have a century brought the end of slavery and the outlawed slavery in the new world, that that century depended on all kinds of fortuitous events along the way. I said then if
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