The foundations of proslavery thought in the Age of Enlightenment

The issue of profitability is crucial when talking about the Atlantic slave trade (16th–19th centuries), and indeed, it has been at the center of historiographical debate since the mid-20th century. The aim of this chapter is to study whether and how the question of profitability was addressed by proslavery thinkers in Europe during the age of Enlightenment, the century when the Atlantic slave trade underwent its greatest expansion. In particular, this chapter analyzes the proslavery literature published in France in the second half of the 18th century, a time when this literature came “out of the closet” even as the Enlightenment consolidated, gradually taking on antislavery connotations and becoming a key target of contestation by proslavery thinkers. The analysis places the issue of profitability in the framework of the broader proslavery ideological apparatus created in response to the emergence of the Enlightenment’s coeval abolitionist culture and nourished by not only economic but also political, religious, and moral forms of legitimization.