What was Thompson’s theory of the relationship between sanctions and slavery?
After reading the chapters assigned to me, I have gathered much information of Mr. Thompson and the time back then. This is an important book, as is all historical books, because of the history in- side of it. The book shows what living as a slave used to be like. We can learn how they eat, sleep, and what their jobs were during the day. This is important because we can learn not to make the same mistakes, or treat people in a similar way. This book has a lesson to me of the golden rule. Treat others the way you want to be treated. After reading the chapters, Thompson had developed a theory between Sanctions and Slavery.
Thompson’s Theory is that he believed that in the eyes of God, people would be punished. His theory was that when these people died who owned slaves, that God would punish them for how they treated them. His theory was that anyone who was okay with the idea of slavery would be punished by God. Of course there is no way of telling if his theory is correct, however, he was set on this idea. His main theory was that slaves did not respond well to punishment. The owners believed that if they whipped the slaves as punishment that it would increase work and productivity. They were wrong, as it had the opposite effect.
As stated previously, the slave owners thought that by whipping the slaves, that they would work harder and keep productivity high. The slaves did not respond well to the physical abuse. In fact, they hated it. Anybody would hate it. When they were beaten for no reason, the slaves became very defiant and would not follow any orders. This proved Thompson’s theory. Not all slave owners were like this, most tried to treat their slaves in a decent fashion. The owners bought the slave to work, not be damaged all the time. Treatment by slave owners varied from caring to murderous, and everything in between.
The slaves that were treated better, worked harder. People who are abused have no desire to work in this type of environment. People who are not abused, and respected are much more productive. Some owners were so bad, the slaves wanted to kill them. They didn’t fear being hanged for their potential crime, they only wanted to stop the physical abuse. They were willing to die to stop being beaten.
Thompson was unsure of how to discipline slaves. His theory was that slaves hated bad owners, and would not work for them. The converse was, some slaves would work for good owners. He does not approve of physical punishment, but doesn’t disapprove punishment in general., In my opinion, his stance is unclear, and offers little insight into other types of discipline. However, he still has written a great book with lots of good historical information. Although he is unclear on what punishment to use, he still does not support physical punishment. I wish he spent more time exploring options and ideas related to non abusive solutions.
JBSchool 