Popular Politics And British Anti Slavery

This work explains how the expression of support for black people in 1792, when 400,000 people called for the abolition of the slave trade, was organized and orchestrated, and how it contributed to the growth of popular politics in Britain.

In 1792, 400,000 people put their signature to petitions calling for the abolition of the slaves trade. This work explains how this remarkable expression of support for black people was organized and orchestrated, and how it contributed to the growth of popular politics in Britain.

The abolition of slavery across large parts of the world was one of the most significant transformations in the nineteenth century, shaping economies, societies, and political institutions. This book shows how the international context was essential in shaping the abolition of slavery.

After Britain abolished slavery throughout most of its empire in 1834, Victorians adopted a creed of "anti-slavery" as a vital part of their national identity and sense of moral superiority to other civilizations. The British government used diplomacy, pressure, and violence to suppress the slave trade, while the Royal Navy enforced abolition worldwide and an anxious public debated the true responsibilities of an anti-slavery nation. This crusade was far from altruistic or compassionate, but Richard Huzzey argues that it forged national debates and political culture long after the famous abolitionist campaigns of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson had faded into memory. These anti-slavery passions shaped racist and imperialist prejudices, new forms of coerced labor, and the expansion of colonial possessions. In a sweeping narrative that spans the globe, Freedom Burning explores the intersection of philanthropic, imperial, and economic interests that underlay Britain's anti-slavery zeal- from London to Liberia, the Sudan to South Africa, Canada to the Caribbean, and the British East India Company to the Confederate States of America. Through careful attention to popular culture, official records, and private papers, Huzzey rewrites the history of the British Empire and a century-long effort to end the global trade in human lives.

This book was first published in 1933 and incorporates material used for a course of lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute at Boston in March 1933. Sir Reginald Coupland, author of Wilberforce, describes how Britain led anti-slavery movement, starting from the late eighteenth century, marked by the emergency of mass anti-slavery movements organized on the basis of a national network. A fascinating read. “A SLAVE, said Aristotle, is “a living tool,” and Slavery may be defined as the ownership and use of human property. The master inherits, buys, sells or bequeaths his slave as he does his pick or his spade. His treatment of him or her may be controlled, like the usage of other possessions, by the custom or law of the society to which he belongs; but in general the slave’s life and labour are as much at the master’s disposal as those of his horse or his ass. As with a beast of burden, the slave’s health and happiness depend on chance—on the character of his master and on the nature of his work. He may be well cared for; he may even sometimes seem better off than if he had never been enslaved; or he may be cruelly treated, underfed, overworked, done to death. But Slavery stands condemned more on moral than on material grounds. It displays in their extreme form the evils which attend the subjection of the weak to the strong. The slave’s soul is almost as much in bondage as his body. His choice of conduct is narrowly prescribed. He cannot lead his own life. He can do little to make or mar his fate: it lies in another man’s hands. Though Slavery was regarded by the founders of Western civilization as a natural and permanent element in human society, it was recognized that enslavement inflicted a moral injury.”—Chapter I

The Ties that Bind explores in depth the close affinities that bound together anti-slavery activists in Britain and the USA during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, years that witnessed the overthrow of slavery in both the British Caribbean and the American South. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, the book sheds important new light on the dynamics of abolitionist opinion building during the Age of Reform, from books and artefacts to anti-slavery songs, lectures and placards. Building an anti-slavery public required patience and perseverance. It also involved an engagement with politics, even if anti-slavery activists disagreed about what form that engagement should take. This is a book about the importance of transatlantic co-operation and the transmission of ideas and practices. Yet, at the same time, it is also alert to the tensions that underlay these ‘Atlantic affinities’, particularly when it came to what was sometimes perceived as the increasing Americanization of anti-slavery protest culture. Above all, The Ties that Bind stresses the importance of personality, perhaps best exemplified in the enduring transatlantic friendship between George Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison.