British Antislavery Research Articles

On the Verge of War: Black Insurgency, the ‘Christie Affair’, and British Antislavery in Brazil

ABSTRACT This article examines Black subversive renderings of British antislavery during the Anglo-Brazilian crisis of the 1860s. It focuses on insurgent perspectives of the so-called ‘Christie Affair’, a diplomatic and military imbroglio that pushed Britain and Brazil to the brink of a war over the future of slavery in 1862–63. Although usually seen as a benchmark in the consolidation of the Brazilian national state, the incident brings into view an insurgent form of abolitionism that developed alongside the cessation of the transatlantic slave trade. Borrowing from a belief in international alliances that had long rallied self-liberating communities all over the Americas, afro-descendants read British gunboat diplomacy as a sign of solidarity with Black liberation in Brazil. In 1863, enslaved, freedpeoples, and quilombolas rose up in the provinces of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Pará, among others. In so doing, they redirected the theme of ‘foreign influence’ into a tradition of diasporic warfare against enslavement, radicalizing British antislavery to mean a decisive alliance for the end of bondage in Brazil.

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

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.

Recent Scholarship in Quaker Studies

Recent Scholarship in Quaker Studies Jordan Landes Abolition, Manumission, Enslavement Crowder, Michael A. "Human Capital: The Moral and Political Economy of Northeastern Abolitionism, 1763–1833." Ph.D. diss. New York: City University of New York, 2019. Gerbner, Katharine. Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Huzzey, Richard. "A Microhistory of British Antislavery Petitioning." Social Science History 43 (Fall 2019): 599–623. Makovi, Kinga. "The Signatures of Social Structure: Petitioning for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Manchester." Social Science History 43 (Fall 2019): 625–52. Parks, Jacob. "The Price of Bondage: Slavery, Slave Valuation, and Economics in the Albemarle." M.A. thesis. Greenville, North Carolina: East Carolina University, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10342/6737/. Richmond, Stephanie J. "Race, Class, and Antislavery: African American Women in the Transatlantic Antislavery Movement." Journal of Women's History 31 (Fall 2019): 57–77. The Arts Eubanks, Emily Rebecca. "Managing Modernist Musicians: Quaker Stewardship in the Work of Blanche Wetherill Walton." M.M. thesis. Tallahassee, Florida: The Florida State University, 2019. http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/2019_Spring_Eubanks_fsu_0071N_15204/. Ecclesiology Birch, Jonathan C. P "Revolutionary Contexts for the Quest Jesus in the Rhetoric and Methods of Early Modern Intellectual History." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 17 (May 2019): 35–80. [End Page 63] Coutts, Peter J. F Evolution of Tithes as a Source of Ecclesiastical and Economic Information. Morrisville, NC: LuLu Press, 2018. Dandelion, Pink. The Creation of Quaker Theory: Insider Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2019. Giri, Ananta Kumar, ed. Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Transformations in Religions and Societies. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Grant, Rhiannon. Quaker Quicks–Telling the Truth About God: Quaker Approaches to Theology. Ridgefield, CT: Christian Alternative, 2019. Holt, Helen. "The Enigma of Humanism in the Transformational Mysticism of Rufus Jones." Quaker Studies 24 (June 2019): 49-68. Kershner, Jon R., ed. Quakers and Mysticism: Comparative and Syncretic Approaches to Spirituality. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. King, Sallie B. "The Small Engage the Powerful: An American Buddhist–Liberation Theology–Quaker Trialogue." Buddhist-Christian Studies 39 (2019): 103–14. Langford, Michael. Becoming Fully Human: Writings on Quakers and Christian Thought. Morrisville, NC.: LuLu Press, 2019. Ritter, Ann S. "Spiritual Consciousness and Direct Experiences of the Divine within the Quaker Lineage." Ph.D. diss. Santa Barbara, California: Fielding Graduate University, 2018. Ward, Madeleine. "Robert Barclay's Christology." Quaker Religious Thought, no. 131 (September 2018): 25–32. Economics, Business, Management Burton, Nicholas, and Richard Turnbull, eds. Quakers, Business and Corporate Responsibility Lessons and Cases for Responsible Management. Switzerland: Springer, 2019. Fox, Elizabeth. "Like Clockwork: The Mechanical Ingenuity and Craftsmanship of Isaiah Lukens (1779–1846)." M.A. thesis. District of Columbia: The George Washington University, 2018. [End Page 64] Logan, David. Corporate Citizenship: The Role of Companies as Citizens of the Modern World. St Albans, Herts, UK: Panoma Press, 2018. Peltola, Jarmo. "The British Contribution to the Birth of the Finnish Cotton Industry (1820–1870)." Continuity and Change 34 (May 2019): 63–89. Read, Mark J. "'Doing Belief': British Quakers in the Twenty-First-Century Workplace." Quaker Studies 24 (June 2019): 141-159. Walker, Robert G. "Quakers, Shoemakers, and Thomas Cumming." ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles Notes and Reviews (July 2019), https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2019.1637708/. Education Grant, Rhiannon. "Faith and Experience in Education: Essays from Quaker Perspectives." Journal of Beliefs & Values Studies in Religion & Education 40 (2019): 490-503. Jones-Branch, Cherisse. "'To Raise Standards among the Negroes': Jeanes Supervising Industrial Teachers in Rural Jim Crow Arkansas, 1909–1950." Agricultural History 93 (Summer 2019): 412–36. Environment and Ecology Bock, Cherice, Stephen Potthoff, Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser, Mike Heller, Douglas J. Burks, Jean Mulhern, Cathy Pitzer, Christy Randazzo, and Jon R. Kershner. Quakers, Creation Care, and Sustainability: Quakers and the Disciplines: Volume 6. Edited by Paul Anderson. Longmeadow, Massachusetts: Full Media Services, 2019. Tittler, Robert. Two Weather Diaries from Northern England, 1779-1807: The Journals of John Chipchase and Elihu Robinson. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Surtees Society, 2019. Walsham, Alexandra. "Nature and Nurture in the Early Quaker Movement: Creating the Next Generation of Friends." Studies in Church History 55 (June 2019): 161–76. [End Page 65] Friends during Times of...

Padraic X. Scanlan. Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution.

Padraic X. Scanlan. Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution.

The Abolition of the British Slave Trade Seen from Sierra Leone: Padraic Scanlan’s Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution

This essay discusses the important contributions of Padraic Scanlan’s book Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution, to the history of the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire. Scanlan’s innovative work emphasizes material concerns rather than altruism in explaining how policing the slave trade in West Africa and attempting to control the formerly enslaved, not least in redeploying them as soldiers, worked to the advantage of colonial administrators and British elites. The essay examines Scanlan’s work in relation to the economic history of abolition, the history of humanitarianism, the entanglement of abolition and imperialism in West Africa, and the military history of empire, which Scanlan vitally puts back into conversation with the history of abolition. It also asks how to include religion as a motivating force, and suggests that the book may undervalue the role of religious belief, not least among Africans. As Scanlan’s evidence shows, the line between freedom and unfreedom was by no means sharp. Debates about the post-abolition economy were accordingly informed by anxieties about the meaning of “freedom”, as ideological beliefs informed economic conceptions. Freedom’s Debtors demonstrates how events in Sierra Leone anticipated the fusion of humanitarianism and colonialism that was crucial to justifying empire in West Africa and underscores the vital importance of understanding abolition in terms of how it worked on the ground rather than solely how it was thought about in Britain.

Grounded Histories of British Antislavery in Sierra Leone

Padriac Scanlan’s Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (2017) provides an opportunity to examine the early decades of antislavery from the vantage point of the western coast of Africa and to challenge triumphalist narratives of abolition. The history of Sierra Leone demonstrates that intertwined with the rhetoric of liberty and uplift in the abolition of slavery was a unflinching determination to generate profit and commercial opportunity. Metropolitan and colonial elites continued to profit from slavery long after its abolition. A grounded history of ideas, both of humanitarian and legal ideas, is a valuable methodology to explore the history of antislavery. The inchoate, fluid and disordered attempts to put antislavery into practice at a very local level point to the fits and starts, continuities and discontinuities, and haphazard interventions in the making of a vernacular ideology of the antislavery and the civilizing mission.

Comment on Padraic X. Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution

Padraic Scanlan’s Freedom’s Debtors makes an important intervention in the debate on the abolition of slavery by looking at what actually happened in Sierra Leone as it moved from company project to crown colony. Scanlan shows that anti-slavery advocates were not in practice equity advocates: slaves had to earn their freedom. In so doing he forces us to reconsider the manifold forms of bonded labour that characterised the Atlantic world and the imperatives of a globalizing market that demanded the continuing production of tropical staples by captive workforces, before and after slavery. Scanlan arguably blends abolition and emancipation in the opening phase of the British campaign to end the slave trade, but he shows, despite the humanitarian motives of some activists, that the full emancipation for slaves was conditional on their integration into global political economies.

A Microhistory of British Antislavery Petitioning

This article refines our understanding of abolitionism as “the first modern social movement” through a microhistory of abolitionism in an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British town. Examining requisitions, which collected signatures calling on a mayor to convene public meetings to launch parliamentary petitions or other associational activities, the article shows how antislavery mobilization in Plymouth grew amongst a multiplying variety of religious, political, cultural, and economic institutions. Through a prosopography of those initiating antislavery petitions, an analysis of the other requisitions they supported, and qualitative evidence from leading abolitionists’ personal papers, the article details the ways local leaders raised petitions for a national campaign. Civic and religious dynamism at this local level facilitated new forms of contentious mobilization on national and imperial issues. The article therefore directs causal attention to those socioeconomic changes that underpinned the associational cultures of abolitionism.

Padraic X. Scanlan. Freedom's Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution. Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Pp. 299. $40.00 (cloth).

Padraic X. Scanlan. Freedom's Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution. Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Pp. 299. $40.00 (cloth).

The Colonial Rebirth of British Anti-Slavery: The Liberated African Villages of Sierra Leone, 1815–1824

This article reconstructs and interprets the early history of the Liberated African villages of Sierra Leone, a group of settlements built to settle former captives rescued from the Middle Passage by British ships following the 1807 Slave Trade Act. The Act, which abolished the British slave trade, was designed to be most effective in wartime, making slave ships into prizes eligible for capture. In Sierra Leone, a colony with a longstanding association with British anti-slavery, the end of the Napoleonic Wars caused an economic shock. The colonial Governor, Charles MacCarthy, established the Liberated African villages to organize the labor of former captives and to manage and distribute colonial resources. The “village system” was organized from the colonial capital, Freetown, but was managed in the hinterland villages by missionaries, recruited by the Church Missionary Society. What began as a plan to shore up the postwar colonial economy became, in practice, a potent engine for social engineering, cultural transformation, and labor control. In the Liberated African Villages, British antislavery was remade as a new and expansive colonialism.

흑인 노예 출신 작가들과 영국 노예무역 폐지 운동의 발전 : 산초, 쿠고아노, 에퀴아노를 중심으로

흑인 노예 출신 작가들과 영국 노예무역 폐지 운동의 발전 : 산초, 쿠고아노, 에퀴아노를 중심으로

British Romanticism and Italian Literature: Translating, Reviewing, Rewriting, ed. Laura Bandiera & Diego Sagila; Deirdre Coleman, Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery

Article British Romanticism and Italian Literature: Translating, Reviewing, Rewriting, ed. Laura Bandiera & Diego Sagila; Deirdre Coleman, Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery was published on September 1, 2007 in the journal Anglia (volume 125, issue 2).

A Convergence of Ethics: Saints and Whigs in British Antislavery

There is a paradox in the legislative success of British antislavery that invites further inquiry. While one can hardly diminish the role of evangelical Christianity in the abolition of the slave trade and, decades later, of slavery in the empire, each bill was passed by an aristocratic government predominantly Whig in composition. The first measure, the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, was passed by the Ministry of All the Talents, a coalition of Foxite Whigs and Grenvillites, in a parliament that remained almost exclusively a body of the landed interest. While the first reformed parliament of 1833 may not have been quite so preponderantly landed in its composition, it abolished slavery in the empire under the leadership of Lord Grey's government, the most aristocratic of the century. Like the Talents Ministry, the government of Lord Grey was a coalition, at least in its inception. But its moving spirits were Whigs. Yet, with some few exceptions, the role of the Whigs in British antislavery has not received the attention it deserves. In particular, one must inquire how and why a group of worldly aristocrats, especially the older generation of Fox, Grey, and Holland, should have associated themselves with an evangelical crusade. Whig aristocrats, after all, subscribed to an ethic that Evangelicals disdained, particularly in its emphasis on worldly honor; and evangelical humility, in turn, often appeared to at least some Whigs as righteous humbug.

Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation , and: British Antislavery, 1833-1870 (review)

60CIVIL WAR HISTORY The book is marred by frequent typographical errors and bad writing . One example of the latter will have to suffice. Early in the volume, (p. 15), Schultz writes that the Act of 1789 "provided that girls were to go to school with boys and to study the same subjects." From this, I assumed that a coeducational system was established. In a later chapter (p. 117) one reads that girls "had to leave the schools in the middle of October to make room for boys returning from agricultural and industrial pursuits." Evidently, girls were taught separately. A word of caution should also be offered about an outline map of the city which is reprinted several times to illustrate various data. During the period covered by this book, Boston did not have the contours which it has now. It was practically an island attached to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, the present-day Washington Street. Back Bay was built to the west of the isthmus. On this map, Back Bay is located on either side of Washington Street. The outline of Back Bay appears as if it actually existed in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s. For that matter, Beacon Hill is misplaced to the north of its actual location. These may not be important points in themselves, but they are symptomatic of the carelessness that characterizes the work. Harold Schwartz Kent State University Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation. By Betty Fladeland. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Pp. xiv, 478. $11.50.) British Antislavery, 1833-1870. By Howard Temperley. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972. Pp. xvii, 284. $12.95. ) "The transatlantic philanthropists," Edward Abdy, the British traveler to America, called the Anglo-American foes of slavery. From the American Revolution through Reconstruction a theme of Anglo-American cooperation runs through the history of the struggles against the Atlantic slave trade, Negro slavery, and for the uplift of blacks. Only sketchily told before, this important Anglo-American theme is now systematically related in Betty Fladeland's Men and Brothers. The English historian Howard Temperley, concerned with British antislavery, supplements the theme, both by offering a study of a parallel movement and by treating aspects of the Anglo-American connection. The British and American antislavery movements had much in common and interacted upon one another. But first it should be recognized that the problem of emancipation in the United States was far different from that in the United Kingdom. In the English instance the slaves were living at great distance from the mother country, were of waning importance as an economic factor in the imperial economy, and small in number compared to the American figure (800,000 in 1833 vs. 2,000,000 in 1830 and 4,000,000 in 1860). Moreover, Parliament faced BOOK REVIEWS61 no impediment of states rights in freeing slaves in the West Indies and Mauritius; the Empire feared no danger of disruption in the event of emancipation; and the institution did not divide political parties. Distance lent enchantment to British antislavery activities. Freedmen in the islands presented no danger to metropolitan England of insurrection , of exodus to "this other Eden," and of racial amalgamation. Sugar grown by black slave labor had lost its eminence in an industrializing economy. Parliament in 1833 in abolishing slavery omitted British India and Ceylon where there were difficulties of vast magnitude. It enjoyed popular sanction for compensation to slaveholders and for apprenticeship . As matters worked out, apprenticeship rather promptly broke down, sugar production declined, and in the year the American Civil War ended Jamaica Negroes, following an old tradition, rose in revolt, only to be brutally dealt with by measures that included the burning of villages and the slaughter of about four hundred blacks. If British and American abolitionists encountered different obstacles, they drew inspiration from a common background and often labored through reciprocating means. They were impelled by religion, humanitarianism , the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. As Anne T. Gary pointed out years ago the Quakers were an important AngloAmerican antislavery force. From the middle of the eighteenth century, the American Anthony Benezet was a one-man coordinator of an Atlantic -wide antislavery crusade. Though...

British Antislavery 1833-1870, by Howard Temperley

<i>British Antislavery 1833-1870</i>, by Howard Temperley

Howard Temperley. &lt;italic&gt;British Antislavery, 1833–1833&lt;/italic&gt;. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1972. Pp. xvii, 298. $12.95

Journal Article Howard Temperley. British Antislavery, 1833–1833. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1972. Pp. xvii, 298. $12.95 Get access Temperley Howard. British Antislavery, 1833–1833. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1972. Pp. xvii, 298. $12.95. William A. Green William A. Green Holy Cross College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 78, Issue 3, June 1973, Pages 690–691, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/78.3.690 Published: 01 June 1973

Guinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the XVIIIth Century.

Guinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the XVIIIth Century.

Guinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature OF the XVIIIth Century. By Wylie Sypher. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1942. 340 pp. $3.00

Journal Article Guinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature OF the XVIIIth Century. By Wylie Sypher. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1942. 340 pp. $3.00 Get access Guion Griffis Johnson Guion Griffis Johnson Chapel Hill, North Carolina Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 21, Issue 2, December 1942, Pages 260–261, https://doi.org/10.2307/2570594 Published: 01 December 1942

Guinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the Xviiith Century

Guinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the Xviiith Century

Guinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the XVIIIth Century.Wylie Sypher

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsGuinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the XVIIIth Century. Wylie Sypher Samuel M. StrongSamuel M. Strong Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 48, Number 2Sep., 1942 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/219161 Views: 1Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.