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Anti-slavery debate during the American Revolution
KLIMEŠ, Ondřej
By analysis of political pamphlets and essays, hereby presented undergraduate thesis aims to reconstruct the anti-slavery debate that took place in Britain and her North American colonies in the years preceding the American Revolution. After outlining the sources of the British anti-slavery thought of the 18th century follows an analysis of four petitions of black slaves who petitioned for their own freedom in Massachusetts between the years 1773 and 1777. Next three chapters analyse three texts from three important anti-slavery activists of their day. Firstly, a pamphlet from 1773 named An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements, on the Slavery of the Negroes in America by American physician and politician from Philadelphia Benjamin Rush. Secondly, a pamphlet published in 1774 called Thoughts Upon Slavery by the founder of the methodist movement John Wesley. And lastly, an essay from the year 1775 African Slavery in America, which has for a long time been incorrectly attributed to Thomas Paine but was penned by a congregational pastor and theologian from Rhode Island Samuel Hopkins. Each of the three analyses is introduced by a biographical passage based mainly on published personal correspondence, journals and diaries and memoirs of the respective authors as well as various biographies. Biographical passages pursue the development of personal anti-slavery thought of chosen authors. The conclusion of the thesis compares the results of the analyses of the pamphlets.
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The Reception of Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
HOUŠKOVÁ, Barbora
The aim of this thesis is to explore the problematics of the reception of Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Though this autobiography, first published at the beginning of 1861, is today known as one of the most major works of the genre of slave narratives, its authenticity and authorship have been questioned and denied for several decades, and only by the end of the 20th century has the narrative been recognized as a valuable and truthful personal testimony of what slavery meant for African American women in antebellum America. This thesis then focuses on both the contemporary reception, mainly with regard to the historical circumstances of abolitionism and the upcoming Civil War, and a more recent one, predominantly on 20th-century criticism and the subsequent canonization of the narrative. The key factor of this analysis will be the multiple discrimination which affected the life and work of Harriet Jacobs as a sexually abused woman of African American descent.
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"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?": Representations of Slavery in the West Indies and Abolitionist Rhetoric on the Road to Emancipation
Bartová, Nikola ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
This thesis is concerned with literature connected with the abolition of slavery in British colonies. The thesis will treat the topic of the abolitionist movement from the perspective of social, cultural and literary history from the beginnings until the abolition of slavery in British colonies in the Caribbean in 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act. The thesis will focus on the discourse of race and slavery. The chosen authors represent different opinions and perspectives as the discussion will focus on sentimental poetry, travel writings as well as slave narratives. The chief aim is to identify and define the strategies of abolitionist discourse and the rhetorical practices which it employed especially in shaping the image of Africans and how the hegemonic discourse of sentimentalism influenced their writing. The first part of the thesis is concerned with establishing a theoretical background and the establishing of the literary traditions and customs of the eighteenth century, definition of the sentimental discourse and philosophies of the Enlightenment. This will be framed by a definition of Edward Said's "Orientalism" as well as Paul Gilroy's theory of the "Black Atlantic," which will enable us to define the space between Britain, Africa and the Caribbean, where the history of slavery of...
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Henry David Thoreau and His View of Slavery
Dvořáková, Irena ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
This BA thesis is concerned with Henry David Thoreau's opinions on slavery. The first part of the thesis focuses on the development of the abolitionist movement in the first half of the nineteenth century and of antislavery tendencies and organizations. The most important figures of the abolitionist movement, such as Benjamin Lundy, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Dwight Weld, David Walker or Frederick Douglass, as well as the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the 1865 adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, are paid attention to. Thoreau's essays Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts and A Plea for Captain John Brown are analyzed in the thesis. In his Civil Disobedience, the author criticizes the government for abusing, rather than protecting, American citizens, who have elected it and enabled its functioning. Thoreau scorns the government for supporting slavery and for waging the Mexican-American War. He believes that every man has an inalienable right to be free and since the government takes this right away from people, he responds to it with civil disobedience. One comes across Thoreau's critique of his fellow citizens and of their lack of interest in enslaved people in his Slavery in Massachusetts. The writer is disappointed with the fact that law,...
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Slavery in Works of the 1st Half of the 19th Century Cuban Authors
Zelmat, Martina ; Opatrný, Josef (advisor) ; Křížová, Markéta (referee)
This thesis consists of an analysis of the works of two Cuban authors of the first half of the 19th Century, Francisco de Arango y Parreño and José Antonio Saco. This paper focuses on their works, mainly on those that discuss the topic of slavery. The first chapter introduces the evolution of slavery and its end throughout the Word and in Cuba, focusing on the development of the Cuban society in the 19th century, in which both of the authors lived and created. The second chapter analyses the works of Francisco de Arango y Parreño, his gradual development of ideas and views on the subject in connection with historical events that influenced his works. The third chapter is comprised of similar analysis of José Antonio Saco's works. The conclusion compares the works of both authors and highlights the points in which their views coincide or diverge. Key words: Francisco de Arango y Parreño, José Antonio Saco, slavery, slave trade, abolitionism, sugarcane, Cuba, 1st half of the 19th cent.
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Tensions Within the Abolitionist Movement in the United States of America
Dvořáková, Irena ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The thesis deals with the abolitionist movement in the United States of America and approaches it as an internally disunited movement. It focuses on the conflicts between its most influential representatives, including William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Different motives of the anti-slavery leaders' involvement in the matter are analyzed and used to explain the arguments among these. Attention is given to the problem of racial oppression as one of the main forces having determined not only the development of the abolitionist movement but also the events following the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, mostly the rise of the Black nationalism movement and of black racism. Even though many abolitionists saw slavery as based on racism and, therefore, endeavored to reach its abolition, in practice, many of them refused to acknowledge racial equality between white and African American people. This paradox is one of the central problems of American abolitionism examined in the thesis. The first three chapters discuss abolitionist ideas of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Walker with focus on their distinct and opposing views. The fourth chapter deals with the emancipation of women as it was closely linked to the emancipation of slaves; the...
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Quality and Safety in the Prostitution market
Figala, Filip ; Lipka, David (advisor) ; Houdek, Petr (referee)
Currently, there are several economic and political approaches to prostitution. Besides prohibitive approach, abolitionism and legalization occurs. With the transition from abolitionsim to legalization, states tries to solve market failures, that are inherent to the market of prostitution. The aim of this thesis is to find and identify, wheter the state regulated prostitution implies better quality and safety of services, than prostitution left outside the legal framework, and what mechanisms in the environment of abolitionism, ensure the required quality and safety and thus substitute government regulation. Theoretical expectations of the benefits of regulation are compared with real impact and weighed against the results of abolitionistic approach. The work shows, that the regulation of prostitution does not lead to the intended effects and the regulátory environment has no siginificant impact on the quality of prostitution.
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