Foundations Of British Abolitionism Research Articles

Remembering Dinah Nevil: Strategic Deceptions in Eighteenth-Century Antislavery

What is a founding moment? Who is a founder? Recent scholarship on British antislavery demonstrates why such questions are at once vexing and engaging. In scholarly trade books and popular film timed to coincide with Britain's bicentennial commemoration of the 1807 abolition of the slave trade, Britain's eighteenth-century abolitionists perform cultural work akin to that done by political founders in the United States. Much of this new literature recapitulates, for a transatlantic audience, the nationalistic arguments made by abolitionists themselves. Slavery served them, and apparently still serves us, as a testing ground for competing British and American claims to be beacons of liberty in an emerging global order. The best new scholarship on the foundations of British abolitionism, on the other hand, raises provocative questions about who and what transformed long-circulating antislavery sentiments into antislavery actions. Histories that document “how moral-political choices are framed for an effective popular response” in such “protean moments,” observes a tretransformations in , offer lessons “that may be of use in our own historical moment.”1

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (review)

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (review)

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism ‐ by Christopher Leslie Brown

<i>Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism</i> ‐ by Christopher Leslie Brown

Christopher Leslie Brown.Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism.:Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism

Review of: Brown, C.L., 2006. 'Moral capital: foundations of British abolitionism'. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. By Christopher Leslie Brown (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006) 480 pp. $55.00 cloth $22.50 paper

<i>Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism</i>. By Christopher Leslie Brown (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006) 480 pp. $55.00 cloth $22.50 paper

Christopher Leslie Brown, . Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, 2006. x+480 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $22.50 (paper).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewChristopher Leslie Brown, . Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA, 2006. x+480 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $22.50 (paper).Christopher P. Todd, Christopher P. ToddChicago, Illinois. Search for more articles by this author , Chicago, Illinois.PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 87, Number 3July 2007 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/519883 Views: 123Total views on this site Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism

Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History, and: Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (review)

Reviewed by: Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History, and: Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism John Saillant, professor in the departments of English and History Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History. By Ian Baucom. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Pp. x, 389. Illustrations. Cloth $84.95; Paper, $23.95.) Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. By Christopher Leslie Brown. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2006. Pp. xiv, 480. Illustrations. Cloth, $55.00; Paper, $22.50.) The two books under review treat responses to the British transatlantic slave trade of the late eighteenth century. The more general volume, Christopher Leslie Brown's Moral Capital, is a comprehensive study of the formative years of British abolitionism. Most prominently, it argues for the impact of the American War of Independence on Britons' feelings about the slave trade and slavery. Abolition came to be seen as a way to restore some of the glory of empire, to accumulate "moral capital," as well as a way to solve the very problem that had allowed the North American colonies to stray. This argument is persuasive and important. Republican rhetoric concerning enslavement and tyranny stirred the conscience of many on both sides of the Atlantic and suggested a way the empire could regain honor after the American defeat. Also, the independence of colonial slaveholders from imperial authority and restraint revealed the fundamental flaw in the empire. Those who first perceived the flaw—Brown focuses on James Ramsay's private manuscripts, yet he could well have added Ottobah Cugoano's public writings—prophesied [End Page 342] the manner in which the slave trade and slavery would be suppressed first in the Anglo-American sphere, then in the world. Strong central governments in England and the United States moved against slave traders and slaveholders, then supranational organizations like the United Nations pressured relatively smaller and weaker national governments to outlaw slavery. Brown's commentary on Ramsay, for instance, is so welcome because the Englishman who had sojourned in the West Indies saw the problem and the solution so clearly and because we ourselves sometimes miss the world movement against slavery (still incomplete) when we examine local rebellions and emancipations. Moral Capital also argues, again persuasively, against epiphenomenal approaches to British abolition—for instance, seeing it as derivative of economic interests or of religious beliefs. Abolitionist convictions confirmed other beliefs, values, and practices, and while abolitionism might not have been "pure" it was also not a mere cover or derivative of something else. Readers will appreciate the intelligence and reasonableness of these arguments along with one of the other achievements of Moral Capital—its attention to the early missteps of British abolitionism. Thus the losers of British abolitionism appear in clear relief in Brown's text. These losers shared something similar with their American contemporaries the Anti-Federalists and the adherents of the New Divinity. All these groups saw their goals accomplished in a general sense—the abolition of the British slave trade, the reformation of the American national government, and the growth of American Protestantism, respectively—but in ways that confounded their most deeply held ideas and values. An example is Granville Sharp, well treated in Moral Capital, who sought to terminate the slave trade and slavery while at the same time reinforcing a moderate Calvinism, strengthening social benevolence, establishing individual rights and political representation, and re-creating (in Sierra Leone) the medieval institution of frankpledge. Today we would probably say that Sharp won the war while losing the battles. Sharp himself would probably have seen it the other way around. The losers are crucial because they remind us that the slave trade and slavery could have ended in such a way (as Sharp wanted) that race relations in a postslavery world would have been quite different from what they actually came to be in the nineteenth century. (Baucom's book treats capably the possibility of different ideological starting points for a postslavery world.) Sharp and his ilk highlight my only disagreement with Brown. Brown [End Page 343] recognizes that Sharp and others...

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism

Christopher Leslie Brown. Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. 480. $55.00 (cloth).

Christopher Leslie Brown. Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. 480. $55.00 (cloth).

Bibliography

This bibliography lists items noted between July and September 2006. Adeyemo, Tokunboh, Africa Bible Commentary. (Nairobi: Word Alive and Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006). xviii + 1586 pp. £23.99. Banutu-gomez, Michael B. A., Africa: We owe it to our ancestors, our children and ourselves. (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2006). xiv + 204 pp. $34. Baskaran, Angathevar and Muchie, Mammo eds, Bridging the Digital Divide: Innovation systems for ICT in Brazil, China, India, Thailand and Southern Africa. (London: Adonis and Abbey, 2006). 253 pp. £22.50. Berthélémy, Jean Claude ed., Culture et développement en Afrique. (Paris: L’ Harmattan, 2006). 268 pp. €23.50. Brown, Christopher Leslie, Moral Capital: Foundations of British abolitionism. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). x + 480 pp. $55, pbk $22.50....

Moral capital: foundations of British abolitionism

Revisiting the origins of the British antislavery movement of the late eighteenth century, Christopher Leslie Brown challenges prevailing scholarly arguments that locate the roots of abolitionism in economic determinism or bourgeois humanitarianism. Brown instead connects the shift from sentiment to action to changing views of empire and nation in Britain at the time, particularly the anxieties and dislocations spurred by the American Revolution. The debate over the political rights of the North American colonies pushed slavery to the fore, Brown argues, giving antislavery organizing the moral legitimacy in Britain it had never had before. The first emancipation schemes were dependent on efforts to strengthen the role of the imperial state in an era of weakening overseas authority. Brown connects disparate strands of the British Atlantic world and brings into focus shifting developments in British identity, attitudes toward Africa, definitions of imperial mission, the rise of Anglican evangelicalism, and Quaker activism. He shows that the abolitionist movement derived its power from a profound yearning for moral worth in the aftermath of defeat and American independence. Thus abolitionism proved to be a cause for the abolitionists themselves as much as for enslaved Africans.