Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Yorkshire Industrialization
Jane Austen was blind to the new "industrial" slavery. The slavery
of the new "proletariat" in English textile mills, using coal driven
steam engines to make yarn and textiles. In case anyone objects to
the word "proletariat", even Russian governmental officials came to
France (c. 1850) to study this new class, because Russian industrialization
would have to deal with this new class of slaves. Jane Austen should
have cared about the Yorkshire slaves that were already in England, if
she cared about racial slaves in the New World. Where were Clarkson and
Cowper?
Jane Austen lived at the time when industrialization, financed by New
World slavery, was rapidly transforming the world. It wasn't only
Imperial Colonization that was taking place.