Workers, Wives and Radicals: Women and Abolitionism in the North-East of England, 1792–1865

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article provides a systematic and localized analysis of how female anti-slavery activity in the North-East of England influenced and impacted the transatlantic campaign to abolish slavery in the West Indies and then the United States. Female anti-slavery societies in Newcastle and Darlington organized local meetings with prominent African American anti-slavery campaigners, leading regional and national conversations about abolition and wider discussions about race and slavery. This article argues that regional conceptions of race and identity were shaped by local religious dissenting cultures and the unique professional relationships formed between African American abolitionists and North-East women’s societies. This study is nonetheless critical of the way white female anti-slavery activism often envisioned emancipation as a fulfilment of maternal and imperialistic duties, arguing that the notion of a ‘transatlantic sisterhood’ espoused by British and American female abolitionists only served to further subjugate those who had previously been enslaved, delaying any unified political response from women on both sides of the Atlantic.