Beyond Clarkson: Cambridge, Black Abolitionists, and the British anti-slave trade campaign

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ABSTRACT The early British campaign to abolish the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade received support from a number of constituencies including Afro-British abolitionists, Quakers in London, and working people in cities such as Manchester. Overlooked in the scholarship on early British antislavery is the significant support it received from a group of academics and students at the University of Cambridge. This article examines the rise and evolution of antislavery activism at Cambridge during the 1780s and considers its impact on the broader movement. It argues that antislavery at Cambridge was led and spurred by a college master who made arguments for racial equality that were fundamentally shaped by black abolitionist writers. This context of antislavery at Cambridge gave rise to Thomas Clarkson and continued after his time there. Ultimately the article distinguishes antislavery radicalism from university practice to show that Cambridge as an institution did not adopt the ideals abolitionists espoused. Abolitionist activism at Cambridge was a dissenting movement whose ideals were not then and have yet to be fully realized at universities and in society.