From the middle of the eighteenth century until the late 1830s, the idea of enslaved people as “peasants” was a commonplace among both antislavery and proslavery writers and activists in Britain. Slaveholders, faced with antislavery attacks, argued that the people they claimed to own were not an exploited labor force but a contented peasantry. Abolitionists expressed the hope that after emancipation, freedpeople would become peasants. Yet the “peasants” invoked in these debates were not smallholders or tenant farmers but plantation laborers, either held in bondage or paid low wages. British abolitionists promoted institutions and ideas invented by slaveholders to defend the plantation system. The idea of a servile and grateful “peasant” plantation labor force became, for British abolitionists, a justification for the “civilization” and subordination of freedpeople.

中文翻译：

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解放时代的奴隶和农民

从 18 世纪中叶到 1830 年代后期，将被奴役的人称为“农民”的想法在英国反奴隶制和反奴隶制的作家和活动家中是司空见惯的。面对反奴隶制攻击的奴隶主争辩说，他们声称拥有的人不是被剥削的劳动力，而是心满意足的农民。废奴主义者表示希望解放后，自由人将成为农民。然而，这些辩论中提到的“农民”不是小农或佃农，而是种植园工人，他们要么被奴役，要么支付低工资。英国废奴主义者提倡由奴隶主发明的制度和思想来捍卫种植园制度。对于英国废奴主义者来说，奴性和感恩的“农民”种植园劳动力的想法变成了