Santa Clara University Scholar Commons History College of Arts & Sciences 9-2013 Breaking the Ties: French Romantic Socialism and the Critique of Liberal Slave Emancipation Naomi J. Andrews Santa Clara University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.scu.edu/history Part of the European History Commons, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation Andrews, Naomi J. (2013). Breaking the Ties: French Romantic Socialism and the Critique of Liberal Slave Emancipation. The ourJ nal of Modern History, Vol. 85, No. 3 (September 2013) , pp. 489-527. Published by: The nivU ersity of Chicago Press. Article DOI: 10.1086/668500. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/668500 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Sciences at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in History by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Breaking the Ties: French Romantic Socialism and the Critique of Liberal Slave Emancipation* Naomi J. Andrews Santa Clara University What we especially call slavery is only the culminating and pivotal point where all of the suffering of society comes together. (Charles Dain, 1836) The principle of abolition is incontestable, but its application is difficult. (Louis Blanc, 1840) In 1846, the romantic socialist Désiré Laverdant observed that although Great Britain had rightly broken the ties binding masters and slaves, “in delivering the slave from the yoke, it has thrown him, poor brute, into isolation and abandonment. Liberal Europe thinks it has finished its work because it has divided everyone.”1 Freeing the slaves, he thus suggested, was only the beginning of emancipation.