Revolution generations

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In the historiography of the United States, the generations of slaves of African descent who appeared in the United States or in the colonies from which the territory of the United States emerged during the period of the American independence movement and the war of independence are referred to as revolution generations . The historian Ira Berlin coined this term .

The plantation generations preceded the revolutionary generations . They were finally followed by the migrant generations .

Characteristic

Above all, there were four historical events that changed the living conditions of Afro-American slaves around the 1770s so much that Berlin speaks of a transition from plantation generations to revolutionary generations:

First, the Great Awakening , a Protestant revival movement with extremely significant consequences for American religious history , in which, among other things, the doctrine was spread that all people are equal before God . This axiom, which enabled them to be accepted as equals in many parishes, was particularly appealing to African Americans. The Great Awakening, created in the 1730s, experienced renewed momentum in the 1780s, and for the first time a significant number of African Americans was Christianized . Much of it gathered in Baptist and Methodist communities. Around 1800 about 10 percent of Afro-American slaves professed the Christian faith. There were a few black preachers. Within white society, some evangelical preachers were initially among the most staunch opponents of slavery; however, under pressure from the planters , they gave up their radical positions.

Evangelical egalitarianism found a secular equivalent in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 , in the preamble of which freedom and the pursuit of happiness were declared to be “inalienable rights” of man. After the founding of the United States, this principle did not affect African American lawmakers; these were not considered American citizens. In public, however, the principles of freedom and equality, on which the pride of the young nation was based, were widely discussed: a discourse that also reached the slaves themselves, was taken up by them and used as a means to renew their powers to measure those of the slave owners. Some whites also found abolitionism through egalitarianism, which was expressed in the declaration of independence .

Thirdly, the war itself, with its constant troop movements, had an impact on the living conditions of the slaves, which seriously disrupted life and routine on the plantations . Concerned that troops passing through would confiscate the private property of the residents at will, many planters moved their slaves from one property to the next. Thousands of slaves took advantage of this mess to escape. Many found refuge in passing military units, which they joined as cooks, laundresses and the like.

The slaves remaining on the plantations often used the weakened position of the planters to improve their working and living conditions through constant pressure, so that they finally work in the task system to a greater extent than before the War of Independence and their personal necessities in their own gardens and on were able to generate their own agricultural land themselves. In this way they not only acquired a certain amount of autonomy, but also developed trade relationships that often went beyond the borders of the plantations, and in this way achieved an overall improvement in their economic situation. Many planters strove to regulate the independent business activities of their slaves for their own financial gain; others tried to suppress it entirely.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berlin: Generations of Captivity , pp. 117f
  2. ↑ Berlin, p. 117
  3. ↑ Berlin, pp. 100-103
  4. ↑ Berlin, pp. 132f

See also

literature

  • Ira Berlin : Many Thousands Gone. The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA et al. 1998, ISBN 0-674-81092-9 .
  • Ira Berlin: Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves , Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-674-01061-2 , pp. 53-56