The Atlantic as a vector of uneven and combined development

Abstract

The conversation between Alex Callinicos and Justin Rosenberg broaches an issue that is central to any sociological approach to the subject matter of international, namely, the extent to which analogies drawn from ‘society’—understood as an endogenous entity—can be used to explain inter-societal phenomena. So far, the debate has focused analytically primarily upon the relationship between class conflict and geopolitics, and has exhibited a substantive focus primarily upon European history. The contribution of this article to the debate is to problematize both these foci. I suggest that Atlantic slavery and the racialization of New World identity might be the fundamental vector through which to explore the special quality of international sociality in the making of the modern world.

Notes

¹ My thanks to Pat Moloney, George Lawson, the editors and one anonymous reviewer for their helpful and challenging comments.

² See for example the special issue of Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 20:4 (2007). The exception here is John Hobson's (2007) contribution.

³ See for example Oswald Spengler's influential Decline of the West (1926), the first volume being published in 1918.

⁴ There is a sizeable constructivist literature on abolition in IR but little on actual slavery.

⁵ Contra to most of the contributions to the U&CD debate in this issue and in previous fora.

⁶ For further thoughts on the non-derivative nature of the historical relationship between class and race, see Shilliam (2008b).

⁷ On the importance of the concept of Western civilization in the formation of NATO, see Jackson (2003).

⁸ In opposition see Vincent Pouilot (2006) and somewhat in-between see Thomas Risse (2004) and Andrew Moravcsik (2003).

⁹ The term was used by William Fulbright (1961) to describe a Western group of states, united under NATO, securing a peace that the United Nations promised but could not (yet) deliver.

¹⁰ See also Francis Wilcox (1963, 684).

¹¹ For a critique of the northwest European bias of much Atlantic history see Mignolo (2005). Due to space considerations, I somewhat replicate this bias here.

¹² On the former see Wilcox (1963). On the latter, see Robert McNamara (1962, 65).

¹³ For example, Fulbright (1961, 17).

¹⁴ The peak years of the slave trade were between 1680 and 1830. See David Eltis (2000, 2) and John Thornton (1999, 1).

¹⁵ This literature is hardly ever seriously engaged with in IR. For one notable exception see Tarak Barkawi (2006, 14–18). For overviews of Atlantic history see Bernard Bailyn (2005), David Armitage (2002), Horst Pietschmann (2002) and Donna Gabaccia (2004).

¹⁶ The enterprise is not, however, new but was undertaken by a generation of scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century who were thereafter neglected. A significant number of these earlier scholars were of various African extracts. In contrast, neither Godechot nor Palmer spoke of slavery. In more recent years Philip Curtin's work has been seminal. See especially Curtin (1969). The ‘social history’ turn in slave studies has also contributed immensely to the rise in the importance of slavery in Atlantic history. See especially Richard Dunn (1972) on Barbados and Edmund Morgan (1975) on Virginia.

¹⁷ However, Gilroy has been criticized for treating slavery only as a sublime category of the unspeakable horror of modernity. Gilroy does not interrogate the actual contestations by slaves as themselves part of the construction of a counter-modernity. See Sibylle Fischer (2004).

¹⁸ On black sailors, see W Jeffrey Bolster (1997) and Emma Christopher (2006).

¹⁹ Interestingly, Linebaugh and Rediker have been criticized for making an analogy between the ship and the factory. The more fitting analogy might be the absentee-owner plantation, due to the ship's captive workforce, disciplinary floggings and quasi-independent managers. See Christopher (2006, 10). For a critique of the class unity ascribed to the Atlantic multitude by Linebaugh and Rediker see Featherstone (2005).

²⁰ See also Michel-Rolph Trouillot's notion of the Caribbean as ‘otherwise modern’ (2003, 41).

²¹ See especially Charles Piot's (2001) critique of Gilroy. In general, see Mann (2001).

²² The following two paragraphs rely variously upon Anderson (1991, chap 4), Dunn (1972) on seventeenth-century Barbados, Canny (1978) and Zuckerman (1989) on early Virginia and Carolina, James Axtell (1981) on the Anglo-Amerindian encounter in general and Doris Garraway (2005, chap 2) on the French Caribbean.

²³ On the English colonies see Fleming (1965).

²⁴ See especially Roediger (1999, chap 2) on this differentiation with regard to the making of the American working class.

²⁵ On the former see Rodríguez-Salgado (2008). On the latter see Moloney (2001).

²⁶ For Barbados and North Carolina case studies, see Jones (2007).

²⁷ For this negotiation in Francophone Caribbean thought see Munro and Shilliam ‘Alternative sources of cosmopolitanism: nationalism, universalism and Créolité in Francophone Caribbean thought’ unpublished manuscript.

²⁸ On the mestizo see, for example, Nash (1995); Martínez-Echazábal (1998) and Aching (2005).

²⁹ See Solow (1991, 39); Eltis (1999, 47). On the special nature of New World slavery vis-à-vis the ancient world see Blackburn (1997).

³⁰ For top-down discourses on the French Caribbean see especially Marick W Ghachem (1999); and for the British American mainland around the time of independence see Winthrop D Jordon (1968, chap 13), David B Davis (2006, chap 7) and Dana D Nelson (2000).

³¹ On the constitutions see Fischer (2004, chap 11) and Bogues (2004).

³² The work of Eric Williams is, of course, also seminal in this respect. On the Williams debate see the special issue of Callaloo, 20:4 (1997).

³³ For an overview of the debate see Santiago-Valles (2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robbie Shilliam

 1  1 My thanks to Pat Moloney, George Lawson, the editors and one anonymous reviewer for their helpful and challenging comments.