Answer:
Both passages use evidence to show that knowledge of the extreme brutality of the sugar trade changed viewpoints about enslavement.
Explanation:
The passages you were given are the following:
Slave owners fought back, arguing that owners should be able to list their slaves as property when they arrived in France and take them with them when they left. Though most parts of France agreed to this, lawmakers in Paris hesitated. Pierre Lemerre the Younger made the case for the slaves. "All men are equal," he insisted in 1716—exactly sixty years before the Declaration of Independence. To say that "all men are equal" in 1716, when slavery was flourishing in every corner of the world and most eastern Europeans themselves were farmers who could be sold along with the land they worked, was like announcing that there was a new sun in the sky. In the Age of Sugar, when slavery was more brutal than ever before, the idea that all humans are equal began to spread—toppling kings, overturning governments, transforming the entire world. Sugar was the connection, the tie, between slavery and freedom.
Clarkson and others who believed as he did, who in the coming decades would be called abolitionists, realized that while that link gave the English a stake in slavery, it also gave the antislavery forces an opportunity. If they could reverse the flow—make the horrors of slavery visible to those who benefited from it—they might be able to end the vile practice forever. The abolitionists were brilliant. They created the most effective public relations campaign in history, inventing techniques that we use to this day. When he spoke, Clarkson brandished whips and handcuffs used on slaves; he published testimonials from sailors and ship doctors who described the atrocities and punishments on slave ships. When Olaudah Equiano published his memoir, he educated his readers about the horrors of the slave trade. And then, when the English began to understand what slavery really was, Clarkson and others organized what we would call a boycott of "the blood-sweetened beverage."
The given passages are from the book <em>Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science </em>written by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos. The book tells about the history of sugar from its discovery in New Guinea around 7000 B.C. to the 21st century. The sugar industry was based on slavery for a long time, which is what the book focuses on.
These two passages tell us about how the knowledge of the extreme brutality of the sugar trade changed viewpoints about slavery. People were beginning to notice how poorly the slaves were being treated and began fighting for their rights.
