robinson crusoe and revisionist history

We recently started to read our children the classic novel Robinson Crusoe Published in 1719 it is considered by some to be the first English Novel.

The plot so far is this;
The owner of a sugar plantation owner is shipwrecked while on a mission to buy slaves.

Incidently, a bit of research shows that abolitionists in Europe frequently were succesful in limiting the numbers of slavers allowed to operate in the british colonies. Crusoe alludes to laws that have made slaves unavailable locally which prompts him to make his own voyage to africa to get his own slaves.

The Disney version of the story omits this detail.

presentism is the term that describes modern people judging the past by current standards. revisionist history is the practice of changing parts of history that do not agree with what we wish our history to be.

I do not want to white wash history, though I do want to cut it up into child appropriate bites of truth. We must honor our ancestors but not hesitate to acknowledge their sins. We must learn history if we are to halt is repetition, and to learn history we need to take a long hard look at it unencumbered by any rose colored glass.

Slavery is wrong, in all of its forms. It is bad for the enslaved as well as for the owners. The power is corrupting. I know this because it has been told again and again in abolitionist and antislavery literature. The case has to be made against slavery to answer proslavery sentiments pervasive in the society at the time. Today we celebrate our abolitionist literature and forget that it was once considered radical by our own venerated american ancestry.

I want to represent this sentiment to my children. Robinson Crusoe is a great book, the fact that the protagonist is a slaver is incidental to the plot. I am attempting to tell my kids that people do bad things for lots of reasons and that he was simply following the actions of others of his time. It is easy to sin by following others and that is why we must constantly check ourselves, 'examine our lives' as Socrates demands. Do what is right according to the dictates of your own conscience; especially when it is unpopular, unusual or difficult.