Talk:Abolitionism

Page Name

Should this article be called Abolitionism? (Or, should it be more specifically re: slavery?) --Brion VIBBER

Probably. Please move it!user:sjc

Should also be disambiguated (slavery) in case we need to deal with other forms of abolitionism (I can think of several). user:sjc

I'm willing to consider the slavery issue the main use of the term for now, with a disambiguation block at the top for death penalty, nukes, etc. Feel free to convince me otherwise. --Brion VIBBER

I agree that this disambiguation is needed. --Daniel C. Boyer

Actually, if you'll look at the What links here] page, you'll see that most of the references are to Abolitionist in the 19th century American sense of "abolition" of slavery. Maybe just fix the REDIRECT. Ed Poor

Sorry, I got frisky and removed the redirect already. Ed Poor

Seems that abolitionism and abolitionist are 90% identical. I suggest a merge, with one redirecting to the other. --Ed Poor

We still have the abolition of slavery page to deal with. Abolition may be needed for disambiguation (or is it?). rmhermen 08:11 Aug 15, 2002 (PDT)

Thanks for the fix, Andre. It makes sense for the -ist people to redirect to the -ism idea. Same as Communist redirecting to communism. --Ed Poor

"Abolition of slavery" is a broader topic than "abolitionism", and there is much on that topic that is not here. This page does not mention the act of Parliament of 1772 (if I recall correctly) that abolished slavery in England while allowing English companies headquartered in England to continue trading slaves in other countries, nor the subsequent lawsuit over the question of whether that law applied also to Scotland, nor the history of abolition of slavery in the various European countries and other countries. When and how was slavery abolished in Spain? (Later than in the USA, I'm guessing, based on the movie Amistad.) What about France, Italy, Germany, etc.? In which countries in slavery legal now? -- Mike Hardy

If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself! Vera Cruz

But I don't know the answers to those questions! -- Mike Hardy

I agree wholeheartedly, and my solution is this: let the abolitionism article be based on the abolition of slavery in North America, and have a seperate, more global article at abolition of slavery. I'll start it as a stub (in place of the current redirect), referencing this page as a "see also". --Sam 15:02, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Oh, dear, this is another one of those articles with a lot of history and baggage... a bit of a mess? Question that need answering:

Is abolitionism primarily a North American term, or is it used elsewhere?

--Sam

Britain vs. England

Someone changed England to Britain in the article. Unfortunately, that makes some of the information inaccurate. For example "slavery was never widespread within Britain" is not true; that's only true of England herself. Slavery was not abolished in all Britain in 1772; only in England. Etc. I'm going to change some of the references back because of this. Quadell 14:02, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Swedish Date

Could someone verify the Swedish abolition date? Seems very early.

From luth.se, can't really confirm the source, but sounds reasonable, local conditions made slavery uneconomic.

Officially the practice of having slaves was abandoned as a law proclaimed by the king Magnus Eriksson when he travelled through the country in the year of 1335. The original texts do not exist any longer but the pieces which survives says that 'every man and women which is born by a christian man and women is to be free in the county of...'.

The official reason to ban the slavery was the christian faith. In reality other reasons much more powerful than that existed. Economic resaons... It was simply more profitable to have people which could be hired for shorter periods. Instead of having a large workforce which the owner had the responsibility for all year around, even when didn't need them, he could hire them when it was considered necessary.

Instead the farmer could give away a bit of land and let the former slaves pay for cultivating this land with workdays on the his farm. Formally the slaves were free, but in practice the landowner earned money as he didn't have to pay for food during the winter months at the same time as he got his work done any way. A neat arrangement...

Theoretically the slaves now was members of the community with equal rights but they still didn't own anything. For most of the slaves the situation actually had gone from bad to worse.

Further investigation (on this site even) refers to the fact that later the swedes bought the island mentioned in 1783, and slavery was used on that island until the second date.

Slavery still exists?

This statement was placed on the page by an anonymous user. Not debating whether true or not, but without attribution and evidence it is POV, so am placing here awaiting further comment. Pollinator 18:00, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Slavery even exists today in United States in the form of various plantation workers mainly consisting of desperate immigrants who went to the United States and then were forces into either sexual or agricultural slavery

I think you could make a statement that while in any Country that is signatory to the UN any slavery in any legal form shouldnt be able to take place, that does not mean that individuals and businesses in those countries cannot illegally take part in slavery, or something which is hard to distinguish from it.

Probably this sort of thing is more appropriate in a more general article on slavery though, rather than Abolitionism.

Slavery in the U.K.

The article says the case deciding slavery was "Somerset v. Maughan". Surely this can't be right. Rudyard vs. Kipling maybe? Ringo vs. Starr...

DNB; "Somerset v. Stewart" Septentrionalis 02:24, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

St. Patrick

Opposed the slave trade, especially the enslavement of free Christians. This is laudable, but it is not abolition. Septentrionalis 02:24, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The fact remains that slavery ceased in areas under the influence of Celtic Christianity. Perhaps that makes them unique as Christians (I'm not sure). But if a society ceases to practice slavery, is that not 'abolitionist'?--194.125.111.194 08:33, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Lord Mansfield

Lord Mansfield never said or wrote "The air of England ..." The slave's counsel brought up that line, quoting a 16th century legal decision. VoX

Page Structure

I've just added stuff about UK abolitionism. I've also re-organised the page to make it less US-centric. The national sections should now be chronological, based on final date of abolition. Gailtb 14:31, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Abolitionists

Could "School of Salamanca" or the Revolt of the Comuneros be regarded as abolicionist since they pursued the end of slavement in América?

The end of slavery wasn´t their only goal, but thy could be in a prot-abolitionist seccion or preface or so.