beardedwisdom

In “We Ask for British Justice”: Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain, Laura Tabili examines black workers in Great Britain in the 1920s and 1930s.  She looks at union practices, labor relations, and work policy in British merchant shipping, making her book partly a work of labor history.  The most compelling part of her narrative, however, is the interplay of race and the waning imperialism in interwar Britain.  During this period, many blacks formed communities in several British port cities, creating racial tension and labor issues for British shipping.  To incorporate black seamen on the ships, the British had to reconstruct traditional, imperial racial categories left over from the Victorian period to maintain a distinct difference between black and white; myths of exoticism and inherent inferiority kept black seaman from earning the same wage as did their white counterparts.  Labor unrest among white seaman plagued the shipping industry in the interwar years, and the shipowners and captains thought that keeping black seamen separate would prevent further tension and reduce costs.  To do this, whites in the shipping industry needed the British state’s assistance to set up legal distinctions based on the race of British seamen, which the government did.[1]

The author notes that several groups developed their own construction of race to further their own ends.  On one hand, shipowners wanted to keep their cheap labor and prevent their operational costs from increasing before and during the Great Depression years, hence race was used as an excuse to pay blacks extremely low wages.  On the other hand, some government offices sought to salvage Britain’s damaged imperial reputation by at least appearing to treat its subjects of different races equally.  Tabili portrays the British state as sympathetic to black seamen’s unequal treatment, but very vulnerable to outside pressures, such as the shipping industry (pp. 58-80).  The author suggests that a new black political identity emerged as a reaction to the racial subordination that black seamen experienced, but that they largely failed to organize in any effective way (pp. 135-160). “We Ask for British Justice” documents how the construction of race in early-twentieth-century Britain could be manipulated for economic and political ends.  For Tabili, race is purely ideological, which echoes Barbara Fields’ essay.  Fields argues that race is not a physical thing, even though it seems that historical writing has treated race as such.  The case of black seamen in Britain certainly supports this description of race, for the shipping industry and the state were able to easily construct race based on region of origin, not just physical appearance.  Fields and Tabili do not agree, however, concerning the place of class in relation to race.  Fields contends that class is not in the same analytical field as race, but Tabili often speaks of class and race in the same intellectual manner, as if they are equal categories of historical analysis.  Despite this, their two works portray race in similar ways.[2]

“We Ask for British Justice” also fits well with Martha Hodes’ article, “The Mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story,” which chronicles the life of Eunice Connolly and the changing nature of race across international and cultural borders.  Connolly found that she was not racially categorized in the Caribbean as she was in New England; her racial identity was dependent on where she was and to what community she belonged.  Perceptions of appearance, behavior, class status—all these things helped shape racial identity, and these perceptions often change from culture to culture.[3] For Hodes, race is a powerful concept precisely because it is malleable.  In Britain, most of the black seamen came from British territorial holdings in Africa, where perceptions of race and identity was much different.  Hodes and Tabili’s transnational approach to race helps illuminate the fluidity of the concept of race across borders.  Further, Peter Kolchin’s survey of the historiography of “whiteness” reinforces the ever-changing nature of race from the perspective of whites, noting that white identity is just as fluid as any other racial construct.  It is not clear from Tabili’s work if the same white Britons engaged in debate about their own racial identity while assigning such to blacks, but the British did have the “one drop rule” at this time.  Having any non-white ancestry, regardless of how small or distant, kept one from being classified as white.  Kolchin contends that the use of race as a category in historical works tends to explain everything or nothing.[4] In “We Ask for British Justice”, race explains everything, for it is the tool that enabled subordinating practices in the shipping industry.  The historical narrative of black Seamen in Britain would be nearly impossible to tell without a thorough examination of race in the context of British society.

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[1] Laura Tabili, “We Ask for British Justice”: Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).

[2] Barbara J. Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 143-177.

[3] Martha Hodes, “The Mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story,” American Historical Review 108, no. 1 (February 2003), 84-118.

[4] Peter Kolchin, “Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America,” Journal of American History 89, no. 1 (June 2002).

“Symposium on Class in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 25, no. 4 (Winter 2005), with essays by Kornblith, Rockman, Goloboy, Schocket, and Clark.

Gary J. Kornblith makes the grand statement: “class is back in the study of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American history.” (p. 523)  To show that class has returned as a viable category of historical analysis after an absence in the 1980s and 1990s, historian Seth Rockman, Jennifer L. Goloboy, and Andrew M. Schocket presented papers on class in the study of the early American republic in 2003.

Seth Rockman treats class as a consequence of one’s material condition and resulting economic inequality rather than as an identity.  Class in early America was not based on consciousness or the awareness of one’s class status, according to Rockman.  It should be used as a rule of thumb for determining an individual’s place in the “economic power relations of capitalism.” (p. 531)

Similar to Rockman’s definition of class, Andrew M. Schocket also argues that class can be ascribed to people based on their economic ability.  Focusing on elites, Schocket notes that capitalistic institutions often dictated one’s place in society, and that elites were elites precisely because they held economic power.  He described elites in two ways: “(a) a distinct minority, who cannot even be a sizeable plurality, and (b) distinguishable from the rest of the population by some fairly objective criteria that most of society would recognize.” (p. 548) The author takes this a step further, however, and argues that there was a second component to elitism that was more psychological and cultural.  Elites were also such because they acted differently and had a different mindset.

Presenting a different notion of class, Jennifer L. Goloboy argues that class was more of consciousness rather than a result of economic power or status.  She observes that Americans have viewed their society as classless and considered most individuals as being middle class.  Although economic disparities, and great wealth and abject poverty, still existed in early American society, Goloboy says that the importance of one’s economic situation was diminished by a sense of acceptable middle-class behavior.  This notion of class in particular has been very resilient; the concept of being middle class is still a powerful idea present-day American society. (p. 538)

Commenting on the three essays in the symposium, Christopher Clark says that regardless of whether class was economically determined or a product of middle-class consciousness, early Americans always had some notion of class distinctions.  Clark notes, “it [class] is in broadest terms concerned with the channeling of access to sources of wealth, or power, or both.” (p. 558)  The middle class came to be an important distinction because it symbolized equality and was worn as a badge of virtue.  The author notes that the study of class in the United States is not limited to working-class distinctions or the question of socialism; it is wider and more nuanced, as is evinced by Stuart Blumin’s work.

Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989)

In an effort to give some precision to the broad, all-encompassing idea of the middle class in the United States, Stuart Blumin wrote The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900.  Until 1989, most social histories focused on the lower and upper classes in America and ignored the middle class.  Blumin begins his work with a discussion of class in the abstract, sorting through social theories from Marx to contemporary scholars, and forms his own view of the middle class.  As Blumin sees it, the middle class in the United States was created by changes in economic production and was distinguished from the lower and upper classes by a customary way of life.  This customary behavior went beyond vocation or income and included residency patterns, consumption practices, family life, and social associations.  (The author makes the distinction between the “middling sorts” of the earlier eighteenth century from the middle class, saying that the “middling sorts” did not have a distinguishing historical identity.) (Chapter 2)  He argues that what made the middle class distinctive was the physical setting of their work; the changing methods of production that created new forms of non-manual labor set the middle class apart. In this way, Blumin’s notion of the middle class is similar to that of Rockman’s and Schocket’s, defining it as a result of economic power.  It is here that Blumin brings in the urban environment, for it was in the city that many of these new forms of middle class work were created.  Artisans, shops, showrooms, and shops—all were symbolic of the emergence of the middle class in the city.

Using illustrations and drawings, Blumin examines middle class culture, urban workspaces, and home economics.  The domestic sphere was one of the most obvious expressions of middle class culture, emphasizing consumption of domestic goods, such as clothing and furniture. (Chapter 5)  After discussing the shared culture of the middle class, the author then tackles issues of consciousness or class awareness.  He argues that the middle class in the antebellum American city was conscious of their shared culture and identified with each other as such.  On this point, Goloboy’s definition of the middle class is very similar to Blumin’s.  The middle class often joined voluntary associations, such as churches, and organized social events with other members of the middle class, which enhanced class awareness. (Chapter 6)  The final chapter of The Emergence of the Middle Class takes Blumin’s argument beyond the Civil War, examining the solidification of the middle class in the last half of the nineteenth century.  The expansion of the urban environment and the rise of corporations cemented the distinctiveness of white-collar America.  The author leaves it up to the reader to judge just how important, or insignificant, the middle class was in the twentieth century.  Taken in conjunction with the symposium on class, which took place fourteen years after Blumin’s work was published, the middle class in antebellum America seems to be both economic status and collective consciousness.

Uday S. Mehta, “Liberal Strategies of Exclusion,” and Francois Furstenberg, “Beyond Freedom and Slavery: Autonomy, Virtue, and Resistance in Early American Political Discourse,”

Uday S. Mehta explores the inherent exclusionary tendencies in liberal thought in his work, Liberal Strategies of Exclusion, and he divides his essay into two parts.  First, he examines liberal exclusion in Europe largely using the writings of John Locke.  On the surface, Locke seems to advocate inclusion or enfranchisement in a pure form, a perfect freedom.  However, Locke restricts that inclusion based on a “Law of Nature.” (p. 64)  This means that there are certain individuals and groups that are inherently excluded from the freedom that others, who do meet certain qualifications, enjoy.  One qualification that Locke uses to “naturally” include or exclude certain individuals is the ability to consent to government.  Children, for example, are incapable of consenting to the government and are therefore excluded from the process, according to Locke.  Further, the laws of a particular state must be understood in order to be included, similarly excluding those incapable of understanding the law (p. 68).  Cultural norms and accepted terms of classification, such as “English gentry,” “breeding,” and “servant,” also may limit participation in the government.  All these things have historically left “an exclusionary imprint” in liberalism.  The second half of Mehta’s essay deals with the exclusion of India, as well as other non-European areas, from the liberal process.  Predominantly using the writings of John Stuart Mill, Mehta illuminates how India was systematically excluded by liberal thought.  Mill considered India, as a non-Western entity, as inherently “insufficient” to participate in the government; he even argued that Britain had to politically compensate for Indian insufficiencies (p. 74).  Mill’s utilitarianism contended that representative government was only appropriate for white states and colonies, effectively excluding many of Britain’s colonies.  Hence, liberal exclusion was not limited to Lockean thought concerning European societies.

Francois Furstenberg begins his essay, Beyond Freedom and Slavery: Autonomy, Virtue, and Resistance in Early American Political Discourse, with an example of the contradiction between the political beliefs of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the actual document.  Rather than ensure equal rights for all, the signers believed that nations should only be as free as they deserve to be, indicating that some do not deserve to be free.  Furstenberg’s essay examines how the American Revolution combined liberalism, republicanism, and religion to create a freedom based on autonomy or the ability to act according to one’s will insofar as it did not violate the same freedom of another (p. 1296).  This naturally excluded those incapable of acting accordingly; slaves are, of course, the obvious group excluded from politics and society.  While the author does not want to minimize the importance of racism or the racial ideology of early nineteenth century America for the justification of slavery, he argues that slaves were consciously excluded based on a perceived inherent inferiority.  Because they were slaves, they were therefore inferior, in other words.  On this point, Furstenberg and Mehta highlight a similar rationale for exclusion: race.  What is dissimilar, however, is the discussion of freedom and autonomy.  The distinction between freedom and autonomy is key for Furstenberg, for autonomy is defined in the article as the human ability to act apart from influence whereas freedom is the possibility of that ability.  Unlike Mehta’s article, Furstenberg includes religion, most notably Protestantism, to help explain the development of autonomy and exclusion in the young United States.  While the two authors’ essays resemble each other in their discussion of exclusions based on race or perceived inherent characteristics, they diverge in their discussions of religion, freedom, liberty, and autonomy.