Rush Judgments: Conflicting Ideas of Race in Benjamin Rush's Abolitionist Pamphlets.
Benjamin Rush's 1773 antislavery pamphlets are often cited as quintessential examples of "environmentalist" understandings of human difference because Rush proclaimed in them that all people were the same outside of accidents of local climate and custom, seemingly rejecting the notion of innate raci...
| Publicado en: | Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 22; no. 3; pp. 387 - 417 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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University of Pennsylvania Press
Summer2024
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=179145907&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 179145907 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 15434273 00N jtl: Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal issn: 15434273 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Summer2024 vid: 22 iid: 3 pid: 4636 pub: University of Pennsylvania Press artinfo: ui: 179145907 10.1353/eam.2024.a934702 ppf: 387 ppct: 30 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 450KB tig: atl: Rush Judgments: Conflicting Ideas of Race in Benjamin Rush's Abolitionist Pamphlets. aug: au: Smith, Sean Morey affil: Rice University su: Rush, Benjamin, 1746-1813 Race Scientific racism Racial differences Environmentalism Slavery Antislavery movements sug: subj: Rush, Benjamin, 1746-1813 Race Scientific racism Racial differences Environmentalism Slavery Antislavery movements keyword: abolition antislavery Benjamin Rush Caribbean climate environment environmentalist essentialism medicine Pennsylvania Philadelphia race racialism slavery West Indies ab: Benjamin Rush's 1773 antislavery pamphlets are often cited as quintessential examples of "environmentalist" understandings of human difference because Rush proclaimed in them that all people were the same outside of accidents of local climate and custom, seemingly rejecting the notion of innate racial differences. However, closely examining the use of climate's relationship to health in Rush's tracts reveals that he mixed environmentalism with more essentialist ideas of race that supposed fixed differences between people of European and African descent. Rush expressed essentialist ideas about differing rates of reproduction and the ability to survive hot climates without theorizing about their cause, and he leveraged these ideas to blame enslavers for the mortality of enslaved people and for the failure to create a self-sustaining enslaved population. Crucially, Rush's statements implying fixed racial differences would be regularly repeated by later abolitionists, making antislavery speeches and publications a conduit for reinforcing and spreading racial comparisons. Rush's pamphlets illustrate that abolitionist writers, not just proslavery ones, contributed to the emergence of medical and scientific racism and indicates that the incompleteness of emancipation had its roots in the language of the freedom struggle itself. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal is the property of University of Pennsylvania Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal holder: University of Pennsylvania Press dt: @attributes: year: 2024 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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