Delete comment from: Boston 1775
John, when you write that "the mercantile economy of Boston was built largely on supplying the deadly work camps of the West Indies," you sum up the issue about as succinctly as could be done.
"Deadly work camps" is a particularly-apt description of Caribbean plantations.
The same goes for NE overall, although the high-grade salt cod trade to Iberia was also important, particularly for the ports of Boston's North Shore. Eric Kimball does a fine job of laying out New England's dependence on the plantation regime in his dissertation and on his book chapter in Beckert and Rockman, eds., Slavery's Capitalism, "'What have we to do with slavery?' New Englanders and the slave economies of the West Indies."
As for the other commentator here, I have to observe that Peter Faneuil can hardly be considered a "founder" by any stretch of the imagination, so on one level his complaint is irrelevant on the face of it.
My only issue with the auction block memorial project is whether it's fair to tie Boston's dependence on slave economies around Peter Fanueil's neck when the guilt was so much more widely diffused.
Just for starters, the Hancock fortune was probably just as implicated in the "plantation complex."
Jul 14, 2019, 9:56:19 PM