Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Jane Austen and Colonization

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Jane Austen c. 1810, by Cassandra Austen
Jane Austen c. 1810, by Cassandra Austen
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Was Jane Austen interested in her contemporary political environment? If she was interested in her contemporary political environment, does this interest emerge directly or indirectly in her writing? What are the issues of Jane Austen's contemporary political environment? If political issues were not discussed by Jane Austen, why were they not discussed? What were some of the major political issues of this turbulent time? Three questions will emerge by this quick study.
  1. We will find that Jane Austen was quite familiar with the issue of the Abolition of chattel slavery.
  2. We will have excessive work looking for any concern by Jane Austen about the violence of British Colonialism.
  3. We will have excessive work looking for any concern by Jane Austen about Women and children exploited in Coal Mines, textile mill slavery, or other forms of industrial slavery in nearby Yorkshire. Was Yorshire and Manchester textile mills to far for Jane Austen to take a "peek"?

    Recall that while there was a scandal about naked women working in Coal Mine pits in 1842, women and children were working in the Coal Mine pits in the mid 17th century, and centuries before.
  4. Jane Austen wrote in a beautiful version of English of the educated, but could she understand the English dialects such as cockney Flash (slang)? Could Jane Austen identify with the English poor (had she ever visited places such as "Tom and Jerry 'Masquerading it'", depicted by George Cruikshank)?
Jane Austen loved her muslins and the Balls she attended. Is it possible that Jane Austen couldn't see issues of poverty because she really wasn't very concerned? Click to see.

Maybe Jane Austen wasn't wealthy enough to take a look at the new factories in Yorkshire (click to see)?
  1. Continual warfare: England vs Dutch, England vs French, England vs Denmark/Norway, etc.
  2. Incipient "French Rebellion" in England: Gordon Riots
  3. French Revolution
  4. Pitt's Terror: Spies
  5. Abolitionism and Imperialism
  6. Bluestockings (Women's Rights)
  7. Haitain Slave Rebellion (British)
  8. Haitain Slave Revolution (French)
  9. Slaves in English New World Colonies: Antigua (Absenteeism and Pluralism)
  10. Regency Fashion

Bibliography

  1. Behn, Aphra; "Oroonoko"
  2. Dashkova, Princess (Мемуары Княжны Екатерины Романовны Воронцовой-Дашковой);
    "The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova"
  3. Davidson, Hilary; "Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion"
  4. Downing, Sarah Jane; "Fashion in the Time of Jane Austen"
  5. Eger, Elizabeth; Peltz, Lucy; "Brilliant Women: 18th-Century Bluestockings"
  6. Eger, Elizabeth, Ed.; "Bluestockings" Displayed: Portraiture, Performance and Patronage, 1730-1830"
  7. Fleishman, Avrom; "A Reading of Mansfield Park: An Essay in Critical Synthesis"
  8. Freyre, Gilberto; "Casa-grande e senzala" ("The Masters and the Slaves", English)
  9. Girard, Philippe; "The Slaves Who Defeated Napoléon: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian War of Independence, 1801-1804"
  10. Gibbon, Edward; "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
  11. Gillray, James; "1757-1815: Meisterwerke der Karikatur"
  12. Hayes, John; "The Art of Thomas Rowlandson"
  13. Payne, Matthew;, Payne, James; "Regarding Thomas Rowlandson, 1757-1827: His Life, Art & Acquaintance"
  14. Roberts, Warren; "Jane Austen and the French Revolution"
  15. Said, Edward W.; "Culture and Imperialism"
  16. Stedman, John; "Narrative of a five years expedition against the revolted Negroes of Surinam",
    engravings by William Blake
  17. Stevenson, Ana; "The Woman as Slave in Nineteenth-Century American Social Movements"
  18. Tobin, Beth Fowkes (Ed.); "History, Gender & Eighteenth-Century Literature"
  19. Wardroper, John; "The Caricatures of George Cruikshank"
  20. White, Gabrielle D. V.; "Jane Austen in the Context of Abolition: 'a fling at the slave trade'"
  21. Williams, Eric; "Capitalism and Slavery"
  22. Wright, Thomas; Evans, R.H.; "Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray: Comprising A Political and Humerous History of the Later Part of the Reign of George the Third"

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