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The article offers a conceptualization of slavery within the context of sociocultural evolution. This conceptualization that links the practice of slavery and the evolution of cultures begins with differentiation and energy supply, two of the fundamental concepts of sociocultural evolution. Differentiation is probably the more commonly known of the two concepts because it constitutes the very definition of evolution in the social sciences. Differentiation refers to the number of parts of society, their degree of specialization, and the complexity of the interactions between the parts. Cultures, therefore, are said to evolve as they undergo increasing differentiation. The second of these concepts, energy supply, is utilized as a means of explaining why evolution occurs. Few social scientists would be content to take the position that differentiation is intrinsically unexplained. Instead, it is argued that culture cannot undergo differentiation unless there is an adequate supply of energy available to support the growth in complexity. An additional aspect to the energy-differentiation linkage is important in the explanation of slavery. Energy release is accomplished by the use of technology which, in turn, is always embedded in some form of social organization. Thus, even if several cultures are able to release and harness the same amount of energy, their levels of evolution can vary because the efficiency of the organization of the technology may vary.

The article focuses on the various concepts of Marxism, with reference to sociologists Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. British Marxist Eric Hobsbawin agrees that although Marx's and Engels' strong point was their analysis of the period of capitalism, their knowledge of preceding epochs was poor. In Hobsbawin's view, Marx's and Engels' ignorance of non-Western societies was due to a lack of material available for study. Marx's and Engels' distinctly pro-German bias has been underlined by Deinetrio Boersner in his study of Marxist attitudes towards the colonial and national question. The major contradiction in Marx's thought regarding the non-European countries is that between his rather narrow europocentris in on the cultural level, and his world-wide vision on the strategic level. Marx's and Engels' ideas about the world at large cannot be dissociated from their environment and the epoch in which they lived. They were born, lived, and worked in nineteenth-century Europe. The trade in Black men had been decimating Africa for some four centuries. Black societies in Asia and Oceania had been reduced to one or another form of slavery.

Investigates the profits of the British-United States slave trade from its inception until it was outlawed in 1807. Classes and groups that appropriated the surplus expropriated from the slaves shipped out of Africa; Investigation of the market structure of stages of the slave trade; Economic consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Investigates the inquiry regarding the progress of slavery in the Southern States. Productivity of the workforce; Industrial activity within the slave plantations; Consequence of abusive treatment to the labor system.

Comments on an article about slavery and technological change. Classes of technical progress; Response of slaves to technological innovations.

Focuses on the issues concerning slavery and technology. Conflict between slavery and technological innovations; Moral issues associated with slavery.

Discusses the controversy over the economic history of slavery in the United States. Factor which contributed to the demise of slavery; Profits of the slave plantation.

Theories to explain empirical relationships between religion and political behavior (or other secular behavior) have generally asserted either that such relationships are spurious, explained by variations between religious groups in socioeconomic status, or that they are due to group identification with a religious community rather than a theology. The proposition that religious belief directly affects political attitudes and behavior is here tested with respect to revivals and antislavery voting in nineteenth-century Ohio. It has been claimed that revivals preached a new doctrine which demanded active opposition to slavery. The claim that revivalism had a direct, nonspurious effect on antislavery voting is tested in a multiple regression model which incorporates variables representing social structure, ethnicity, denominational membership, and prior political tradition. The effect of revivalism is strong despite all controls: the revivals transformed the religious orientations of those who experienced them, and this transformation affected their voting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally agreed that the marital instability and casual mating characteristic of West Indian family structure depress fertility. These conditions are traced to the mating organization of the slaves. For the years 1824 to 1828, the Account Book of Old Montpelier estate contains five lists of the slaves on the estate, giving the name, age, sex, colour, country of birth and occupation of each slave. The limitations of the data are fairly clearly defined. They say nothing about paternity. Even links through the maternal line are discoverable only if the mother was living in 1817. The causes of all contrasts are not apparent, but some can be explained by population movements, the maturity of the properties and the related patterns of age distribution. At least 70 slaves were moved to Shettlewood from the eastern end of the island between March 1816 and 1817, and in 1819 the survivors of the "seasoning" period went to New Montpelier. Of the slaves moved, 13 of the 25 males and 18 of the 28 females were Africans, all aged between 28 and 42 years. The way in which the slaves were allocated to occupations is known only for Old Montpelier. There more than half of the females worked in the fields. Men had a wider range of occupations, especially in the trades. Almost all of the male slaves of colour were put to trades, though they did not dominate the group.

Explores the schemes for gradual emancipation of slaves in the United States and Great Britain. Similarities and differences between the schemes; Background on reparations; Recommendations for the distribution of the cost of emancipation.

Examines the features common to the system of slavery before the Civil War and the labor movement in existence in 1990. Strong opposition to "free labor," or labor directly competing with, but outside the control of, the system; Origins of John C. Calhoun's theories of the Constitution; Labor question in which those who supported the dominant system were in recognized opposition to the Constitution.

The article discusses the judicial use of torture in historical perspective. The earliest use of torture was in Athens and Rome. Among the Greeks and under the Roman Republic torture was almost entirely confined to slaves, as a rule no free citizen being subjected to it; and in Rome, indeed, the exemption was one of the privileges of citizenship. The reason for torturing slaves is to be found, no doubt, in the belief that the slave, being absolutely at the mercy of his master, would naturally testify in accordance with the master's wishes, unless some stronger incentive to speak the truth were brought to bear.

Examines four instances of constitution-making in Mississippi, Kentucky, Wyoming and Idaho. Procedures which led to the transformation of Wyoming from a Territory to a State; Admission of the State of Idaho into the Union in 1890; Mississippi Convention on the issue of race; Prohibition of slavery in the constitutions of Mississippi and Kentucky.

The passage of centuries has not effaced the devilish aura that has persistently surrounded the Jew. He has appeared as an impure creature, working in league with Satan for the downfall of Christendom, a pernicious and corrupting figure, cynically auctioning away the values that tradition has hallowed. The author seeks to explain how such a myth has survived the cultural, social, economic and political upheavals the western world has known alter the middle ages. He gives his answer through a study that is directed firstly to the medieval gargoyle of a church in Alsace, then to the diabolical role attributed to the Jew by the rumours of white slavery circulating in Orleans, Amiens and Strasbourg. Three revealing approaches emerge. From a socio-economic standpoint, the Satanic image of the Jew is seen as a tendentious interpretation of the role he has actually played in western economics, resulting in his becoming, today, the sinister symbol of the "success at any price" life style. A cultural standpoint analyzes the secularization of the myth created by medieval theology, that presented this contemptible outcast o[ society as the privileged eye-witness of Christ's martyrdom and triumph. In Hitler's version, the Jew achieves his dominant position over other peoples by propagating subversive political ideas among them, and undermining their religious and moral foundations. In a psycho-sociological perspective, the identification of Jew with devil is placed within the wider dialectic relating man with the Other. The Jew repeatedly incarnates the stranger in his nearness, his radical difference, and his irreducible otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the geography of southern U.S. states prior to the American Civil War. Man's adjustment to the environment; Classification of the white population; Factors hampering manufactures; Economics of slavery.

The article focuses on slavery in relation to cotton production in Texas. The history of slavery in Texas, in as far as it is of importance to cotton production in the state, begins with the year 1821, when Moses Austin, founder of the American lead industry received permission to plant an Anglo-American colony in Texas. In approving Austin's plan for the distribution or land, the government of Mexico substantially encouraged the introduction of slaves into the new settlement. Many immigrants found their way into Texas before the summer of 1822 and were granted land in accordance with Austin's plan. They were almost all from the Southern states, and many were owners of at least a few slaves. The slaves brought into Texas seem to have been owned, in the main, by American settlers. The total number of slaves in 1829 was estimated by a Mexican official as something more than 1,000. Even as late as 1844, however, a traveler going through Texas from a slave-holding state was surprised to find the proportion of slaves so small. In April, 1832, the legislature of Coahuila and Texas passed a new colonization law which drew the slavery restriction closer by reducing the term of labor contracts to ten years, and the further introduction of slaves was barred by federal law and state constitution.

The article examines the condition of slavery in the Greek civilization. There is one region of slave work in particular, where the theory can only be applied with great reservations--the household. In speaking of slave masters, chattels, and apprentices, theory tends to assume the chattels working in mines and quarries, the apprentices in manufacturing workshops, and the masters as modern business men. Serfs were always recognized by the ancients as being in a different status from ordinary bought slaves, and they bore a distinctive name in every locality. Serfs are apprentice-slaves working with a peculiar and specialized motive. Among Greeks, serfdom falls under the head of chattel-slavery, and the states which are dependent upon it for the whole or the greater part of their labour are slave-states, while among the barbarians it falls under the head of apprentice-slavery. Mining may be taken as the typical industry for the employment of chattel slaves. Thus the Greek society was not a slave-society, but it contained a sediment of slaves to perform its most degrading tasks, while the main body of its so-called slaves consisted of apprentices haled in from outside to assist, together and almost on equal terms with their masters, in creating the material basis of a civilization in which they were hereafter to share.

This article presents an analysis of Max Weber's sociology of religion. Weber does not confine himself to formulating more or less pertinent objections to Karl Marx's theory, but he tries to verify the usefulness of that theory in the light of thorough positive empirical research. All Weber's studies in the sociology of religion were integrated by his endeavour to oppose Marx's theory his own positive theory that would explain the influence of religion upon social life and historical processes and would define the role of religion in the birth of West European capitalism. Weber's works were not only a critique, but also as assimilation of many elements of historical materialism. This also applies to his sociology of religion. In a system of slave work and latifunds marketable production, Weber says, cannot do without a whip: the producers must be subject to a discipline of a military type. Discipline of such a type could be ensured only by training the slaves to a barrack-like way of life, that is, by depriving them not only of property, but of family as well. Barrack-like way of life made it impossible to satisfy the demand for manpower by a natural increase of the slave population.

The article reports that England having in 1772, by the judgment of the Court of King's Bench in the Case of James Sommersett, a Negro, declared that Slavery should have no footing within her borders; Ireland considering herself bound by the decision of the English Court, and Scotland having in 1778 through the Court of Session in the case of Knight v. Wedderburn settled for all time that slavery - at least of the nature of Negro slavery - should be alien from her glens, the United Kingdom (including Ireland, when she joined the Union) had a practically consistent policy looking toward the total abolition of human slavery throughout the world. Within the territory of the British Isles were many merchants who invested large sums of money in the infamous trade in Negroes; and, as was to be expected, they and their friends raised all kinds of obstacles against its destruction, involving the loss of large profits to the undertakers in the business. The friends of freedom and humanity toward the Negro continued and increased their efforts; and finally the epochal Slave Trade Act (1824) 5 George IV, cap. 113 (Imp.) was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom which was intended to put an end to the touching of the unclean thing by the people of the British Isles.

This article presents two incidents during the life of William Dummer Powell, Fifth Chief Justice of Upper Canada, who was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1755. He spent some time in the office of Jonathan Sewell, the last Royal Attorney General of Massachusetts, where the took the side of the Crown in the colonial disputes. These incidents demonstrate the humane side of Powell when he helped in the release of children and women who have been made slaves during the American Revolution.

The article presents information about Comprachicos, a band of criminals, in the seventeenth century in Europe. These people were a fraternity of vagabonds who traded in children, mutilated and deformed the children and sold them to others. History records that such a practice was well within the jus vitae necisque conferred by the patria potestas of Roman law upon the parent of the child and sales into bondage, where the member of a family was treated as a mere chattel representing a certain money value, must have been of tolerably frequent occurrence. Occasional instances of child-selling have been recorded in Spanish history. In Anglo-Saxon law the right to sell children into slavery was limited to cases of necessity, and applied only to those under seven years of age. The brands alleged to have been inflicted upon the members of this association when convicted were indeed prominent features of English penal legislation. Evidence of the artificial dwarfing and deforming of children and the marketing of the finished product of the industry is still available in the histories of court fools and court dwarfs.

The article presents information on the American Vigilance Association. The Association is the tangible evidence of determination on the part of several organizations in the U.S. to concentrate their energies in the fight against the white slave traffic. It is backed by practical businessmen of the east and west, and by some of the foremost men and women in educational and social work, who have consented to serve on its executive board, to lend their influence in the guidance of its policy, and to give their advice in the perfecting of the various departments of work. The president is David Starr Jordan; vice presidents, Cardinal Gibbons and Dean Sumner; treasurer, Charles L. Hutchinson of Chicago, and the executive secretary and general counsel, Clifford G. Roe. The purpose of the association is to suppress and prevent commercialized vice and to promote the highest standard of public and private morals. To accomplish this purpose, the association shall strive for the constant, persistent and absolute repression of prostitution and the passage and enforcement of laws, for the rescue and protection of girls and women, for the promotion of knowledge of the social evil, its effects and results, and for the circulation of the best literature regarding it.

This article presents Hawaiian social history from labor perspective. From the early chronicles, workingmen were at the bottom of a three-class society. Virtually slaves, certainly underprivileged, their economic status was mingled with their political and religious station. The scarcity of land, which still plagues people, made for frugal, If Intense, cultivation. The same gulches which today restrict many plantations to uneconomic units, formed political and trading barriers between clans so that trade, even as barter, was virtually unknown. There were no wages, no working conditions as such the common man kept in kind, what taxes didn't take. Among the literature available to laymen there is no reference to any political or social action by this slave class to improve its place in the scheme of things. The Roman rabble clamored for bread, but you find no evidence that early Hawaiian laborers protested their lot. Perhaps this was because they were free to change their allegiance, join a new community under a new chief if discontented.

The article presents information about research on African-American family. Since the appearance of E. Franklin Frazier's period-marking volume, "The Negro Family in the United States," a plethora of theories, propositions, schemes and generalizations, which presumably account for the reasons behind deviant conduct of many African-American families, have been put forth in the literature of sociology, psychology, anthropology, and home economics. In general, most of these studies, although serious, are now out of date and some of them are too abstract and vague to be of much value to scientific study. The most notable family researches on African-American family have been conducted by E. Franklin Frazier. Frazier has skillfully employed personal documents to trace the evolution of the African-American family from slavery, through emancipation and reconstruction in the rural South, into the industrial cities of the North. Frazier masterfully employs the natural history approach to the African-American family as a social institution in transition.