Summer Short Essay # 2

Short essay # 2 – Christianity and social status of Africans

The connection between Christianity and social status for Africans seemed to have a political foundation or agenda. The series of readings referred to in this essay provide evidence of the existence of a similar vein regarding the laws set forth pertaining to the African black slave and antislavery initiatives. These topics of social reform existing within the French and English governing bodies and religious practicing citizens lacked sincere regard for the welfare of the African as a fellow human being. The African had to either be a convert of Christianity to garnish the lowest level of respect or go through countless hours of litigation to be considered the freeman that French law, for example, had already granted him just being a human being on French soil.
According to Sue Peabody in, Race, Slavery and the Law in Early Modern France, slavery was illegal in France and the principle that a slave became free once he or she entered France had been recognized by French jurists since the sixteenth century. Peabody states historically hundreds of slaves won their freedom in French courts on the basis of this principle. The highest echelon of the French court system, Parlement, refused to register two of the King’s laws allowing a conditional slavery to exist within the kingdom. However despite the judicial tradition that found it unacceptable to associate slavery with French society, French jurists embraced the notion that dark-skinned people were innately inferior to whites and this biological difference was acceptable cause for this race to be subjected to slavery. This racist ideology laid the groundwork for years of legal reform to be initiated to either prevent entry of Black Africans onto French soil or to legally define the physical differences of Africans from the other dark-skinned minorities as an acceptable reason for being an enslaved individual. (pg. 501,507) Peabody referred to legal scholars Jean Bodin and Antoine Loysel and their citing statute and case law as precedent for the principle, “any slave who sets foot on French soil is free.” She also notes, early modern lawyers used case law to argue that the freedom enjoyed by French citizens should be extended to anyone who arrived in France, citing a 1402 case in which four slaves escaped to Toulouse and were considered free by the privilege of that city, and a 1571 case in which the Parlement of Bordeaux arrested a slave merchant attempting to sell slaves who were thereby released from slavery. But attitudes changed when in the late seventeenth century an increase in black slaves who arrived in France as domestic servants accompanying their masters, caused the mayor of Nantes to urge the King’s minister to draw up definitive legislation for cases involving slave masters attempts to reaffirm their property rights over escaped slaves. The King’s ministers responded in the form of the Edict of October 1716, which establishes two conditions by which slaves could be brought to France, 1) for religious instruction or 2) for secular training in a particular trade. The condition of religious instruction as an allowance for a slave’s being brought to France would seem such an honorable and brotherly act in offering a religious education culminating in conversion and the saving of the slave’s eternal soul, however French society by evidence of their legislature regarding the black slave, would not accept them as brothers and thus Christianity did nothing to elevate the social status of the African and did not even recognize them as deserving of God given freedom that was allowed the white slave.
The reading by Pierre H. Boule further cements this phenomenon in French society in his article, Racial Purity or Legal Clarity? The Status of Black Residents in Eighteenth-Century France, in which he compares the handling of the question of black slaves in the French judicial system on land and sea. Boulle points to the French perception of nonwhites was one of acute interest as exotic beings, and if any prejudice was exhibited it was due to their not being of the Christian persuasion. But as the establishment of black slavery in the French colonies brought exposure to the blacks, a feeling of suspicion and fear began to be expressed and a specific prejudice to the black in comparison with other nonwhites was growing. (pg. 21) The judicial atmosphere in the early eighteenth century was a breeding ground for racial prejudice in this Christian country. A royal declaration stated Negroes contract habits and a spirit of independence which could have unfortunate results and that some Negroes are for the most part useless and dangerous. Marriages were prohibited among the Negro community in hopes of hastening a return of the slaves back to the colonies, and the quicker the better so they do not acquire a revolutionary spirit and take this back to the colonies. Fear of the black with resultant racial prejudice is evidenced by Boulle’s account of a West Indian governor, Francois-Louis de Salignac upon arriving in Martinique he wrote in a letter, “with all the European prejudices against the severity with which the blacks are treated here and in favor of the instruction that religious principles require for them. Once there I became convinced that blacks must be kept in the most absolute ignorance…the safety of the whites required it.” (pg.24) An extreme act of segregation in the formulation of the Depots des Noirs was initiated to keep newly arrived blacks from French society as they traveled from overseas with their masters in hopes of avoiding any exposure to a spirit of independence that may be taken back to the colonies. The fear of corruption of the French population and morals in France resulted in the Committee on Colonial Legislation proposing to purge the French interior of blacks by limiting their residence to the ports, “because of the sea’s great consumption of men and one could say that the sea purges the land as well as it fertilizes it”.(pg..31, 37) With this depth of racial prejudice it is no wonder Christianity in this nation did nothing to elevate the status of Africans, but conversely created legislation to suppress the growth of the African population in French society and segregate them from contact with members of society that could contribute to their feeling of solidarity to initiate any ideas or acts of securing freedom from slavery.
In England the movement towards the abolition of slavery was spearheaded by members of the Christian community whom after what author Christopher Leslie Brown describes as an antislavery impulse, realized an antislavery initiative was a necessity. In Brown’s article, Christianity and the campaign against slavery and the slave trade, he notes British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson as stating the abolitionist movement was attributed to religious progression and was a vindication of Christian teachings and the faith. Brown’s critique of this attitude provides a very important aspect of this movement to consider and that is that the target of the abolitionist movement was the Atlantic slave trade and not slaveholding itself. This is a crucial fact of evidence that Christianity did nothing to elevate African social status, the ideal of Christian servitude as recorded in Scripture and biblical custom was used to justify the practice of African slavery for the individual. But at the least many ecclesiasticals spoke out against the act of kidnapping Africans as is the basis of the Atlantic slave trade. Those that were preoccupied with the welfare of captive Africans advocated the conversion of slaves to Christianity, not the release of the Africans as slaves but just they at least be Christianized. This also resulted in the cleansing of the slave owners soul as long as he was allowing the slaves to be Christianized he was not committing a sin.
In conclusion the readings of Hudson and Brown focused on representatives of the various Christian faiths and their direct actions towards the slave trade, despite the evidence it did nothing to elevate African social status. The reading by Gerzina and Equiano provided evidence of the outcome of an African’s social status after conversion to Christianity and how individually the fight and activity on the part of the individual such as Cuffe and Equiano and the successes of assimilation they experienced. The readings of Boulle and Peabody focused on a Christian nation and the legislation undertaken that reflected moderate to extreme racial prejudice against the African arriving to France and the laws intended to deny freedom for the African slave and even entry into the country of France. All of these readings are evidence of my thesis that no Christian entity mentioned in these readings provided elevation of social status for the African collectively as a race.