Orwell's Roses

by Rebecca Solnit

“Across Britain as a whole, the slave-compensation data suggest that in the 1830s 5 to 10 percent of all British country houses would be expected to have been occupied by slave owners and that in some localities and even some regions the figure would be much higher.” The profound confinement of slavery and the labor-intensive sugar plantations haunt places so superficially antithetical they serve almost as alibis: the landscapes of scenic beauty that seem to have nothing to do with manipulation, labor, production, and politics. In that sense, the apoliticalness of nature was itself a political production.

“Across Britain as a whole, the slave-compensation data suggest that in the 1830s 5 to 10 percent of all British country houses would be expected to have been occupied by slave owners and that in some localities and even some regions the figure would be much higher.” The profound confinement of slavery and the labor-intensive sugar plantations haunt places so superficially antithetical they serve almost as alibis: the landscapes of scenic beauty that seem to have nothing to do with manipulation, labor, production, and politics. In that sense, the apoliticalness of nature was itself a political production.