The Atlantic Roots of Working-Class Internationalism: a Historical Re-Interpretation

THE ATLANTIC ROOTS OF WORKING-CLASS INTERNATIONALISM: A HISTORICAL RE-INTERPRETATION THIERRY DRAPEAU A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO DECEMBER 2014 © Thierry Drapeau, 2014 Abstract This dissertation offers a historical re-interpretation of working-class internationalism by situating its development within the early modern Atlantic-world economy (c. 1600- 1830). Through an exploration of various moments of insurgency and revolt of an emerging Atlantic class of workers, among them slaves, sailors, servants, and others, it demonstrates that profound and decisive traditions of proletarian solidarity across borders existed prior to the nineteenth-century classical age of working-class internationalism. In doing so, this dissertation alters the prevailing standpoint of the free, white, waged, industrial worker of Europe by bringing in that narrative the agency of the unfree, black (and racialized), wageless, plantation-slave worker of the Americas. Underpinning this intervention is a more generous and complex understanding of capitalism as a mode of production inclusive of unfree forms of labour. In order to recover and foreground early formative moments of working-class internationalism in the Atlantic-world economy, this dissertation proposes to re-theorize this development in terms of processes of transboundary proletarian solidarity in a longue durée frame. Rooted in a multidisciplinary framework of analysis situated at the intersection of Historical Sociology, Global Labour History, Atlantic Studies, and Social History, this strategy has allowed me to illuminate two world-significant moments of proletarian solidarity played out across colonial and imperial borders. The first is golden age piracy (1714-26), when thousands of insurgent seafaring workers of all nationalities revolted against capitalist exploitation at sea and took possession of their ships, instituting their own self-governments and creating multicrew alliances against imperial ii navies. The second moment expressing a durable process of transboundary proletarian solidarity is offered by the Saint-Domingue revolution (1791-1804), when thousands of African slaves rose up to overthrow slavery, leading to the formation of the first independent black republic in the Americas. This dissertation highlights that during the revolution, underground channels of communication entertained by black sailors and corsairs linked revolutionary Saint-Domingue to other slave revolts elsewhere in the Atlantic world, which cumulated in, and intersected with, the wake of working-class internationalism during the 1848 revolutions in Europe. iii Pour Valérie iv Acknowledgements My sincere thanks go first to my supervisor, David McNally. His enthusiasm, patience, and support have sustained me through many difficult times during the writing of this dissertation. David is a model of intellectual integrity and engaged, committed scholarship. I consider myself privileged to have benefited from his good guidance and mentorship over the past few years. I also want to thank my second committee member, Patrick Taylor, who contributed a great deal of time and effort to this project. I have learned much from his insights. Special thanks go to Pablo Idahosa, whose addition to my doctoral committee in the late stages of writing has proved essential for completing this dissertation. Many other committed and dedicated professors at York University contributed to this project by shaping my intellectual development in significant ways. I am most grateful to Kamala Kempadoo for having introduced me to the wealth of the Black Radical Thought, without which this dissertation would have been seriously in lacking theoretical foundation. I also want to thank two Sociology professors, Mark Thomas and Hyun Ok Park, who were the first to offer comments on this project when it was still in the form of term papers. I am also extremely thankful to the international community of scholars and students from other places and disciplines who have contributed to this project by listening to my ideas and sharing their thoughts when I presented my findings at scholarly conferences and meetings. Very special thanks go to two scholars, Colin Barker and John Charlton. After a somewhat laborious and jet-lagged presentation in Manchester in the spring of v2009, where I first communicated my insights about this project, they both expressed great enthusiasm for my research and encouraged me to pursue it. In a way, the main ideas of this dissertation crystalized at a post-conference gathering in a Manchester pub in April 2009. I also thank Marcus Rediker at the University of Pittsburgh for he, too, expressed enthusiastic encouragements to pursue my research, as well as for putting me in contact with his talented students, from whom I learned much. I am especially thankful to John Donoghue who kindly allowed me to read chapters of his wonderful book before it went to press. This has contributed to strengthen my arguments presented in Chapter 3. I also want to thank Niklas Frykman and Isaac Curtis for having shared their thoughts on my project and for pointing out the existence of key sources. During the time when I was researching and writing this dissertation I was fortunate to receive financial support from the Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program. Their support was instrumental to the realization and competition of this dissertation. I also thank Judith Hawley, graduate program assistant in Social and Political Thought, who does so much with so little for SPTH students. Since my very first day at York, Judith has been extremely helpful and resourceful in helping me with administrative matters, especially in the last stretch of this dissertation. My years in Toronto would not have been the same without the friendship of the French Connection. Very warm thanks go to Thomas Chiasson-Lebel, Amélie Delage, Étienne Godard-Flamand, Frantz-Gheller, Priscila Guy, Claudia Hébert, Christine vi Henderson, Xavier Lafrance, Jonathan Martineau, Sébastien Rioux, Janick Roy, and Alexis Vaillancourt-Chartrand. In the past seven years and a half, each has, in distinctive ways, made me experienced life at its best and kept me from drifting into hopeless nerddom. But the French Connection means far more than the conventional bonds of friendship for me, as Alexis officiated my wedding and Amélie served as doula during the birth of my daughter, for which I will be forever grateful. I wish to express special thanks here to Sébastien who accompanied me throughout the writing of this dissertation, providing honest, insightful, sometimes ruthless, critiques that have influenced my thinking and helped me shaping my arguments, and to Xavier, whose encouragements and timely support in the last stages of writing proved critical for me to complete. I want to thank my parents for their encouragements and support during all those years. I thank my father, Jean-Guy, for keeping me grounded in real-life matters and for having indirectly taught me at an early age that a great deal of education can also happen at the université de la vie. I also want to express heartfelt gratitude to my mother, Nicole, who has always been there for me, proving it once again in the last weeks of writing this dissertation. She is a real model of perseverance, independence, and autonomy, which has shaped me until this very day. I am also thankful to the other members of my family and family-in-law who have shown interest in my work and who were always supportive during this long journey. Lastly, though it should have come first, I want to say with all my heart to my wife, best friend, and love of my life, Valérie Gingras, that I simply could not have written anything valuable about human solidarity without you by my side all this time during the writing of this dissertation. For nearly half my life now, you have been a true inspiration vii as a partner, and I cannot begin to express the admiration, love, and esteem that I have for you. As this long—very, very long—chapter of our life comes to an end, I look forward to embarking upon a new one with you and our little Juliette. I dedicate this dissertation to you. Now, for real: après ça, ça va bien aller… viii Table of Contents Abstract.............................................................................................................................. ii Dedication......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. v <a href="#12_0">Introduction</a><a href="#12_0">....................................................................................................................... 1 </a> <a href="#15_0">Learning from Garibaldi: Toward an Atlantic </a><a href="#15_0">Problématique </a><a href="#15_0">...................................... </a><a href="#15_0">4 </a><a href="#20_0">Recovering Atlantic Internationalism in the Capitalist </a><a href="#20_0">Longue Duré</a><a href="#20_0">e</a><a href="#20_0">.......................... 9 </a><a href="#27_0">Chapter Outlines........................................................................................................... 16 </a><a href="#0_0">1. Before the First International </a><a href="#0_0">but </a><a href="#0_0">beyond the Many-Headed Hydra: A Critical </a><a href="#0_0">Historiographical Reassessment of Working-Class Internationalism </a><a href="#0_0">....................... 23 </a><a href="#0_1">Working-Class Internationalism in the Classical Age ................................................. 26 </a> <a href="#0_2">Classical Marxism</a><a href="#0_2">................................................................................................. 27 </a><a href="#0_3">Congress-history (1900-1960) </a><a href="#0_3">.............................................................................. 34 </a><a href="#0_4">Social history (1960-1990)</a><a href="#0_4">.................................................................................... 38 </a><a href="#0_5">Transnational history (1990-</a><a href="#0_5">…) </a><a href="#0_5">........................................................................... 42 </a> <a href="#0_3">The Revolutionary Atlantic World............................................................................... 48 </a> <a href="#0_5">Atlantic proletariat</a><a href="#0_5">................................................................................................ 51 </a><a href="#0_6">The many-headed hydra analog</a><a href="#0_6">y</a><a href="#0_6">.......................................................................... 57 </a><a href="#0_4">Atlantic struggles and circulation of experience </a><a href="#0_4">.................................................. 65 </a><a href="#0_0">Conclusion.................................................................................................................... 73 </a><a href="#0_0">2. Processes of Transboundary Proletarian Solidarity in the Capitalist </a><a href="#0_0">Longue </a><a href="#0_0">Durée</a><a href="#0_0">: Toward a Renovated Approach </a><a href="#0_0">........................................................................ 76 </a><a href="#0_4">Epistemological reset: Marx’s Multilinear Conception of History</a><a href="#0_4">.............................. 79 </a><a href="#0_7">Capitalism as mode of production </a><a href="#0_7">........................................................................ 80 </a><a href="#0_0">Formal subsumption of labour</a><a href="#0_0">.............................................................................. 85 </a><a href="#0_8">Primitive accumulation and period of manufacture </a><a href="#0_8">............................................. 92 </a><a href="#0_9">The modern wor</a><a href="#0_9">king class ‘in general’ </a><a href="#0_9">................................................................ 97 </a><a href="#0_10">Proletarian world-revolutio</a><a href="#0_10">n</a><a href="#0_10">.............................................................................. 102 </a> <a href="#0_11">Theorizing Processes of Transboundary Proletarian Solidarity................................. 106 </a> <a href="#0_12">Atlantic proletariat (bis) </a><a href="#0_12">..................................................................................... 108 </a><a href="#0_0">Experience and cultures of solidarity </a><a href="#0_0">................................................................. 111 </a><a href="#0_13">Of (crossing) boundaries </a><a href="#0_13">.................................................................................... 115 </a><a href="#0_14">Proces</a><a href="#0_14">s</a><a href="#0_14">................................................................................................................ 124 </a> <a href="#0_15">Toward a Dark Atlantic.............................................................................................. 125 </a><a href="#0_9">Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 134 </a><a href="#0_0">3. Atlantic Traditions of Radicalism in Motion: A Prologu</a><a href="#0_0">e</a><a href="#0_0">.................................... 136 </a><a href="#0_16">‘Cut off my head, I can’t be killed’: The African Stream of R</a><a href="#0_16">adicalism................... 141 </a><a href="#0_17">Hinterland and barracoon </a><a href="#0_17">.................................................................................. 142 </a><a href="#0_18">Slave ship </a><a href="#0_18">............................................................................................................ 147 </a><a href="#0_5">Plantation</a><a href="#0_5">............................................................................................................ 153 </a><a href="#0_7">Maroon community </a><a href="#0_7">............................................................................................. 162 </a>ix <a href="#0_19">‘All the world must suffer a big jolt’: </a><a href="#0_19">The European Stream of Radicalism ............. 171 </a> <a href="#0_14">Germany, 1524-49</a><a href="#0_14">............................................................................................... 175 </a><a href="#0_8">France, 1593-163</a><a href="#0_8">7</a><a href="#0_8">.............................................................................................. 180 </a><a href="#0_20">England, 1642-50</a><a href="#0_20">................................................................................................ 184 </a><a href="#0_0">Taking the revolt to the Atlantic</a><a href="#0_0">.......................................................................... 194 </a> <a href="#0_21">Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 207 </a><a href="#0_22">4. </a><a href="#0_22">A ‘Floating Factory’, or, the Deep</a><a href="#0_22">-Sea Merchant Ship as a Capitalist Enterprise: </a><a href="#0_22">Theoretical Interlude One</a><a href="#0_22">............................................................................................ 210 </a> <a href="#0_23">Marx at Sea: Some Prefatory Remarks ...................................................................... 212 </a><a href="#0_24">The Deep-Sea Merchant Ship as Capitalist Enterprise .............................................. 214 </a><a href="#0_25">Concentration of capital in shipowning and victualin</a><a href="#0_25">g</a><a href="#0_25">...................................... 217 </a><a href="#0_26">Shipboard co-operation and division of labou</a><a href="#0_26">r</a><a href="#0_26">.................................................. 219 </a><a href="#0_27">Proletarianization </a><a href="#0_27">............................................................................................... 221 </a><a href="#0_28">The imposition of the money-wage</a><a href="#0_28">...................................................................... 223 </a> <a href="#0_29">Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 226 </a><a href="#0_22">5. </a><a href="#0_22">‘A Declaration of War against the whole World’: Maritime Insurgency, </a><a href="#0_22">Shipboard Democracy, and Multicrew Solidarity during the Golden Age of Piracy, </a><a href="#0_22">1714-26 </a><a href="#0_22">........................................................................................................................... 228 </a> <a href="#0_30">Some Preliminary Remarks on Piracy and Source</a><a href="#0_30">s</a><a href="#0_30">.</a><a href="#0_30">.................................................. 229 </a><a href="#0_31">To R</a><a href="#0_31">ecover ‘the choice in themselves’ </a><a href="#0_31">...................................................................... 236 </a><a href="#0_32">‘for … doing justice to one another</a><a href="#0_32">’</a><a href="#0_32">.......................................................................... 252 </a><a href="#0_24">‘no Man ha[ve] Power over the liberty of another’</a><a href="#0_24">.................................................... 264 </a><a href="#0_33">A ‘Junction of Confederates and Brethren in Iniquity’</a><a href="#0_33">.............................................. 280 </a><a href="#0_34">Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 299 </a><a href="#0_22">6. </a><a href="#0_22">‘A Well</a><a href="#0_22">-</a><a href="#0_22">Constructed Machine’, or, the Slave</a><a href="#0_22">-Plantation as a Capitalist </a><a href="#0_22">Enterprise: Theoretical Interlude Two</a><a href="#0_22">....................................................................... 301 </a> <a href="#0_29">Marx, Slavery, and Capitalism: Some Prefatory Remarks ........................................ 302 </a><a href="#0_24">The Barbadian Case ................................................................................................... 308 </a> <a href="#0_34">Integrated system of sugar production</a><a href="#0_34">................................................................ 309 </a><a href="#0_22">Concentration of capital in landholdin</a><a href="#0_22">g</a><a href="#0_22">............................................................. 313 </a><a href="#0_35">Black racial slavery as value-producing unfree labour</a><a href="#0_35">...................................... 314 </a><a href="#0_36">Gang-labour system </a><a href="#0_36">............................................................................................ 333 </a><a href="#0_37">Race-managemen</a><a href="#0_37">t</a><a href="#0_37">............................................................................................... 350 </a> <a href="#0_22">Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 358 </a><a href="#0_22">7. </a><a href="#0_22">A ‘Revolutionary Storm … Sweeping the Globe’: The Saint</a><a href="#0_22">-Domingue Revolution </a><a href="#0_22">beyond Borders, 1791-182</a><a href="#0_22">2</a><a href="#0_22">.......................................................................................... 360 </a> <a href="#0_32">‘Seizing the Way Forward to Earn a Profit’</a><a href="#0_32">............................................................... 364 </a><a href="#0_38">‘We Are Sitting on a Powder Keg’ </a><a href="#0_38">............................................................................ 376 </a><a href="#0_39">‘The Tree of Liberty of the Blacks’ </a><a href="#0_39">........................................................................... 394 </a><a href="#0_34">‘The Contagion of Liberty’ </a><a href="#0_34">........................................................................................ 426 </a><a href="#0_23">Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 446 </a>x<a href="#0_22">Conclusion: ‘The Siege Continues’</a><a href="#0_22">.............................................................................. 449 </a>Bibliography.................................................................................................................. 460 xi Introduction All history must be studied afresh…1 In the fall of 1871, a few weeks after the defeat of the Paris Commune, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the famous Italian revolutionary patriot, who played a prominent role in the Risorgimento movement in Italy, wrote a series of letters in which he expressed his sympathy for the International Working Men’s Association, later known as the First International, which had been founded in London seven years earlier. In the last letter he sent out to a friend who deplored this new act of faith incurring the wrath of the Mazzinians in Italy, Garibaldi reminded him: ‘I belonged to the International when I was serving the Republic of the Rio Grande and Montevideo, therefore long before such a society was constituted in Europe ... if the International, as I understand it, is a continuation of the moral and material improvement of the industrious and honest working class, ... then I am with the International’.2 Garibaldi was referring to his thirteen years of exile (1835-1848) in Brazil and Uruguay, where he took active part in the revolutionary wars of independence that had swept across the South American continent during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Such transatlantic connection between the popular movements in early postcolonial South America and the creation of the First International in Europe was

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