Even as Enlightenment writers penned odes to liberty and equality, many eighteenth-century economies relied on forced labor. Enslaved Africans and their descendants toiled in New World colonies. Russian peasants, who were the property of nobles such as Dashkova, labored under a system known as serfdom.
Franklin’s ideas about slavery evolved over his lifetime. He sometimes acted as a middleman in the slave trade and owned slaves himself for many years. Late in life, however, he joined the abolitionist cause. Dashkova, like most Russian nobles, believed peasants were not yet enlightened enough to be free. She also argued that serfs needed to be protected from the whims of the Crown and that it was the duty of an enlightened nobility to provide their security.
Reconciling the ideals of liberty and equality with the entrenched practices of slavery and serfdom proved difficult in both America and Russia. Neither was banned until the mid-nineteenth century.
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