“An esteemed and valuable work, and one of the earliest on the evils of the slave tra****de” (Sabin).
“Of all the books. written in the early days of the French anti-slavery movement, Frossard’s careful two-volume survey of the history of the trade and its iniquities was by far the best. The author, a Protestant minister, had been awarded an honorary degree by Oxford in 1784, and while he was in England had become acquainted with the philanthropists [ie Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson] there who were fighting slavery. La cause discussed the political and moral implications of slavery with eloquence” (Library Company of Philadelphia, p. 24).
While both calling for the abolition of the slave trade, and correctly predicting its decline, Frossard (1754-1830) contends that conditions in French colonies were more humane than in either Danish or (especially) English colonies. He also makes the argument that free labour is far more productive than enslaved. “Frossard explains the advantage of using free workers by their eagerness to work and their interest in the plantation’s success; while slaves do not derive any gain from an increase in output, and so are generally quite uninterested in the fate of the plantation” (Oudin-Bastide).
This handsome copy, with the engraved frontispiece, includes both the Approbation de la Société Royale d’Agriculture de Lyon, and the Privilége du Roi, printed on two leaves at the end of the first volume.
Goldsmiths, 14008; Library Company of Philadelphia, Negro History 1553-1903, 1969; Sabin, 26013; Oudin-Bastide, C., Calculation and Morality: the Costs of Slavery and the Value of Emancipation in the French Antilles (Oxford, 2019) p.47.
