The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1838–1956: A History, by James Heartfield

Abstract

James Heartfield has followed up his 2011 book on the Aborigines’ Protection Society with another study of a British humanitarian organisation, this time the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS). Anti-slavery is now firmly back in vogue among historians of modern Britain, and the BFASS is far from untilled ground. Howard Temperley, David Turley, Catherine Hall and Richard Huzzey, to name but a few, have all written on aspects of the Society’s activities, and its name crops up frequently in the expansive literatures on radicalism, nonconformity and pressure group politics. Yet no full, self-standing study of the BFASS exists. Presumably this is the gap the present volume means to fill—though, as it omits seriously to discuss its relation to existing work, we are left to infer this for ourselves. The BFASS was founded in 1839, after Britain had abolished slavery in most of its colonies. It sought to guard against backsliding, and to work for the dismantling of slavery and the slave trade elsewhere in the world. In origin, it was a nonconformist enterprise, one of a raft of middle-class organisations demanding changes in domestic and foreign policy which emerged in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s. Over eighteen chapters, organised in rough chronological sequence, Heartfield takes us through more than a century of the Society’s campaigns. The first part of the book deals with its mid-nineteenth-century pronouncements on apprenticeship in the West Indies, on the armed suppression of the slave trade and on slavery in the Americas. The second part, covering c.1870–1910, explores the Society’s emerging preoccupation with the Middle East and Africa, and its attitudes towards Britain’s (and other European countries’) imperial projects. The last part, much the shortest, looks at the final phase of the Society’s career in the twentieth century, focusing on questions of land and labour organisation, its campaigns on the Congo and South Africa, and its work with new international organisations. This is an imposing range of different sites and problems, but enough background is always provided for readers to be able to follow the issues at hand. Many chapters include interesting information about the Society’s activities and perspectives.