Christa Dierksheide argues that -enlightened- slaveowners in the British Caribbean and the American South, neither backward reactionaries nor freedom-loving hypocrites, thought of themselves as modern, cosmopolitan men with a powerful alternative vision of progress in the Atlantic world. Instead of radical revolution and liberty, they believed that amelioration--defined by them as gradual progress through the mitigation of social or political evils such as slavery--was the best means of driving the development and expansion of New World societies.
Interrogating amelioration as an...
Christa Dierksheide argues that -enlightened- slaveowners in the British Caribbean and the American South, neither backward reactionaries nor freed...
