Reginald Coupland: Difference between revisions

In 1944 Coupland became a [[Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George]]. He retired from the Beit Chair in 1948, which went to [[Vincent Harlow]]. He became a Fellow of [[All Souls' College, Oxford]] in 1952, dying later that year in [[Southampton]], bound for South Africa. He did not marry.<ref name="ODNB"/>

 

Coupland wrote about [[abolitionism]] in his books ''Wilberforce'' and ''The British Anti-slavery Movement''. Trinidadian historian and politician [[Eric Williams]] objected to Coupland's account of the [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833]], which Williams perceived as being covertly supportive of continued British colonial rule in the West Indies.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Solow |first1=Barbara Lewis |last2=Engerman |first2=Stanley L. |title=British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams |date=2004 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-53320-1 |page=26 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=38XY-cvqh30C&pg=PA26 |language=en}}</ref> Coupland was one of the examiners of the 1938 Oxford D.Phil. dissertation by Williams written under Victor Harlow, on a topic suggested by [[C. L. R. James]]. It was "deferential" in comparison with the 1944 published version, the book ''[[Capitalism and Slavery]]'', which relied on economic reasoning going back to [[Lowell Joseph Ragatz]], to whom it was dedicated.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pierre |first1=Maurice St |title=Eric Williams and the Anticolonial Tradition: The Making of a Diasporan Intellectual |date=2015 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=978-0-8139-3685-7 |page=47 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-PiqBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT47 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Høgsbjerg |first1=Christian |title=C. L. R. James in Imperial Britain |date=2014 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-7696-5 |page=278 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LbdiAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT278 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=David Brion |title=Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World |date=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-533944-4 |page=391 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oGpnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA391 |language=en}}</ref> Williams made a number of points directly criticising Coupland in ''Capitalism and Slavery'', including:

 

 

The ''Oxford History of the British Empire'' considers that Coupland had a "distinguished career", but that the attack by Williams "clouded" its later part.<ref name="OHBE"/>

 

==Works==