Women's Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery in the Era of Emancipation. Ed. by Kathryn Kish Sklar and James Brewer Stewart. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. xxiv, 385 pp. Paper, $35.00, ISBN 978-0-300-11593-2.)

Abstract

Women's Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery in the Era of Emancipation charts new ground by situating women's rights and the antislavery movement in a transnational context. The book is a collection of essays that explore the concepts of feminism, slavery, and freedom in a comparative framework. Each essay examines how the writings and organizational efforts of abolitionist women on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean defined those terms and how they linked them together in the struggle for women's rights. The result is a work that encourages scholars of feminism, slavery, and antislavery to take account of national political cultures and systems when analyzing the scope, strategies, and goals of women's rights activism and its relationship to antislavery. Doing so allows historians greater insight into why, for example, British feminists could ally themselves more closely to the U.S. antislavery cause and to the community of black and white abolitionists than French or German women could.