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• The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World by Katherine Johnston
• Michael Boyden (bio)

This meticulously researched book draws on a wealth of archival materials spanning three centuries to cast a fresh eye on the history of African slavery in the English Caribbean and the American South. As Johnston convincingly documents, the persistent idea that Africans were more tolerant of the heat and therefore more suited to labor in tropical conditions did not emerge out of the lived reality on the plantations. Rather, it was a deliberate and strategic fabrication on the part of the planter class to convince legislators, investors, and colonial officials that African slavery was indispensable—indeed, natural—to the plantation economy. Since ancient assumptions about the deleterious effects of hot climates disposed the European public sphere to consider the tropics as a dangerous and unhealthy place for whites, this "climate rhetoric"—as Johnston calls it—was highly effective in swaying public opinion in favor of racialized slave labor. What was initially a strategic move on the part of the slaveholders eventually hardened into an unshakable belief in the impossibility of white labor in the tropics, the legacy of which continues to be felt to the present day.

Johnston tells the history of this transformation over six tightly organized chapters. The first sketches out the conditions that gave rise to plantation slavery in the Greater Caribbean during the seventeenth century. Contrary to what historians have long assumed, the colonists' actual experiences with the tropical climate were not a decisive factor in the shift toward African slave labor. Indeed, early explorers, settlers, and physicians did not observe marked differences in the way whites and Blacks responded [End Page 149] to the new environment. The shift to Black slave labor was due to a shortage of white indentured servants after the English Civil War, in combination with the consolidation of plantations into larger estates, which limited postindenture prospects for white laborers. The idea that Black peoples were better suited to work in the Caribbean climate was invented to naturalize a system that emerged out of economic pressures given the lack of white laborers. As Johnston indicates, the climatic rhetoric was reinforced by two mediatized events during the latter half of the century that further damaged the reputation of the Caribbean colonies in Britain, namely the Western Design of 1655, a failed attempt to wrest Hispaniola from Spanish control, and the Port Royal Earthquake of 1692, which reinforced received ideas regarding the dangerous climate of the tropics. Combined, these events solidified a narrative of the tropics as the white man's grave.

The second chapter focuses on the early history of Georgia, which originally did not allow enslaved workers on the assumption that this would jeopardize the stability of the colony. The experiment was short-lived, however, as a group of dissatisfied settlers referred to as the "Malcontents" successfully lobbied with the Georgia Trustees to lift the ban on slave labor. In their appeals to the Trustees, the Malcontents resorted to climatic rhetoric, arguing that the whole plantation system would crumble without enslaved Africans, whose bodily constitutions were deemed to be perfectly attuned to the hot and humid climate. However, as the Malcontents were fully aware, the real reasons for transitioning to African slave labor were very different: apart from the already mentioned difficulty of recruiting white workers, many colonists in Georgia had investments in the slave trade and were unable to compete with the large rice plantations in neighboring South Carolina. The climatic argument stuck with the Trustees, who had no firsthand knowledge of the actual conditions in the colony. The Georgia experiment thus proved short-lived, although its influence would linger in later debates on the differential influence of tropical climates.

While the influence of the climate did not play a role in the shift to African slavery in the Americas, it did have a major impact on the shape of the British Empire. As chapter 3 documents, colonists approached climates as highly localized determinants of the health of individuals...

审阅者：

• 奴隶制的本质：盎格鲁-大西洋世界的环境和种植园劳工凯瑟琳·约翰斯顿
• 迈克尔·博伊登（简介）

这本经过精心研究的书借鉴了三个世纪以来的丰富档案材料，以新的视角审视英属加勒比地区和美国南部的非洲奴隶制历史。正如约翰斯顿令人信服地记录的那样，非洲人更能忍受炎热，因此更适合在热带条件下劳动的持续观念，并不是从种植园的现实中出现的。相反，这是种植园主阶级蓄意和战略性的捏造，目的是让立法者、投资者和殖民官员相信，非洲奴隶制对于种植园经济来说是不可或缺的，实际上是自然的。由于关于炎热气候有害影响的古老假设使欧洲公共领域认为热带地区对白人来说是一个危险且不健康的地方，这种“气候言论”——正如约翰斯顿所说——在影响公众舆论以支持种族化方面非常有效。奴隶劳动。奴隶主最初的战略举措最终变成了一种不可动摇的信念，即白人不可能在热带地区从事劳工，这种信念的影响至今仍然存在。

约翰斯顿通过六个组织严密的章节讲述了这一转变的历史。第一部分概述了十七世纪大加勒比地区种植园奴隶制产生的条件。与历史学家长期以来的假设相反，殖民者对热带气候的实际经历并不是转向非洲奴隶劳工的决定性因素。事实上，早期的探险家、定居者和医生并没有观察到白人和黑人对新环境的反应方式存在显着差异[结束第 149 页] 。向黑人奴隶劳工的转变是由于英国内战后白人契约仆人的短缺，再加上种植园合并为更大的庄园，这限制了白人劳工的契约后前景。黑人更适合在加勒比气候下工作的想法的发明是为了使因缺乏白人劳动力而产生的经济压力而出现的制度自然化。正如约翰斯顿指出的那样，本世纪后半叶发生的两起媒体事件强化了气候言论，进一步损害了英国加勒比殖民地的声誉，即 1655 年的西方设计，试图从西班牙手中夺取伊斯帕尼奥拉岛的失败尝试，以及1692 年皇家港地震强化了人们对热带地区危险气候的认识。这些事件综合起来，巩固了热带地区作为白人坟墓的叙述。

第二章重点介绍格鲁吉亚的早期历史，该国最初不允许奴役工人，因为认为这会危及殖民地的稳定。然而，这一实验是短暂的，因为一群心怀不满的定居者被称为“不满者”，成功游说佐治亚州受托人取消对奴隶劳工的禁令。在向受托人发出的呼吁中，不满者诉诸了气候言论，认为如果没有被奴役的非洲人，整个种植园系统就会崩溃，而非洲人的体质被认为完全适合炎热潮湿的气候。然而，正如不满者们充分意识到的那样，转向非洲奴隶劳工的真正原因是非常不同的：除了已经提到的招募白人工人的困难之外，格鲁吉亚的许多殖民者对奴隶贸易进行了投资，无法与奴隶制竞争。邻近南卡罗来纳州的大型水稻种植园。气候问题一直困扰着受托人，他们对殖民地的实际情况没有第一手了解。因此，佐治亚州的实验被证明是短暂的，尽管它的影响在后来关于热带气候差异影响的争论中仍然存在。

虽然气候的影响并没有在美洲向非洲奴隶制的转变中发挥作用，但它确实对大英帝国的形态产生了重大影响。正如第三章所述，殖民者将气候视为个人健康的高度本地化决定因素......