Mike Sutton
Dr Mike Sutton is the author of 'Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret'.
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Posted in Society
Theft in the Time of Slavery
Nov. 19, 2011 12:59 pm
Dealers in stolen goods have most probably existed for as long there have been laws against theft and a demand for stolen goods.
In the following extract that I took from Williams' (1963) translation into English of a letter written by the Archdeacon of Hispaniola to the Council of the Indies in 1542, we learn how fences for stolen goods protected numerous slaves from being detected and punished for theft and also from having to toil for European slave owners. Furthermore, we learn that slaves who were fences also bought their way out of exploitation:
‘The Negros are already doing business and trading among themselves to an extent involving great value and cunning, and as a result, big and notable robberies are committed on all the farms in the country… Some steal to pay for the day’s work which they have agreed to give their masters… Night and day they rob and steal anything in the country, including gold to be melted. These thefts are concealed with the assistance of two or three hundred Negros called “fences”, who go about the city seeking to make profits as I have said…and to pay the daily wage in exchange for each day or month or year, that they are at large and travel about the island. They take away stolen goods for sale and carry and conceal all that they are accustomed to conceal…’
Outside of slavery and acts covered by the legal defence of necessity, is there another circumstance, I wonder, when breaking the law to steal or deal in stolen goods is morally acceptable? Or perhaps such illegal acts can only ever come to be seen by the majority of people as morally acceptable in another age? Could it happen, given the huge wealth gapsthat exist in many industrialized societies today, that a few hundred years from now people will look back and see thefts committed by the less affluent as morally acceptable?
Notes:
The original Spanish manuscript translated by Williams used the word ganadoras, which as a direct translation means ‘winner’ rather than fence (Saco 1879).
Today Hispaniola is known as Santo Domingo - containing the sovereign states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
References
Saco, D.J.A. (1879) HISTORIA DE LA ESCLAVITUD DE U RAZA AFRICANA EN EL lEYO MUNDO lY BN ESPECIAL.Barcelona. James Printing. Available online at : WWW.Archive.org. http:
Williams, E. (1963) No 150. The Negro Dancer in Hispaniola: A Warning. Alvaro de Castro, Archdeacon of Hispaniola, to Council of the Indies. March 26, 1542 (p. 156). In Documents of West Indian History 1492-1655.: From the Spanish Discovery to the British Conquest of Jamaica. Port of Spain, Trinidad. PNM Publishing Ltd.
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