Ex-slaves distinguished coercive but legal labor from chattel slavery

Evidence

Stephen was familiar with Louverture’s labor codes and understood that the freedom of the ex-slaves had been extremely limited. Nevertheless, he argued, there was still a fundamental difference between past and present. In the new regime, industry was “considered a duty to be inculcated by persuasion, or enforced by the sanctions of municipal law aided by a military police, and not a mere physical effect to be excited by the application of the lash.” Punishment was meted out by agents of the state, and work was not exacted only by the threats of whip-wielding drivers working for their masters. Though Stephen underestimated the troubling continuities between the old and new regimes, he was right to insist that the former slaves in the colonies knew the difference between what they had and what they would be returned to if they were enslaved once again. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 914

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the crucial distinction between Louverture’s regulated plantation labor system and the chattel slavery the French threatened to restore.
• XREF: connects to: Datafied labor regimes resemble slavery only in surveillance continuity, not in status — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 715