Principles and Agents: The British Slave Trade and Its Abolition

by David Richardson

Overview

A new history of the abolition of the British slave trade
 
“Easily the most scholarly, clear and persuasive analysis yet published of the rise to dominance of the British in the Atlantic slave trade—as well as the implementation of abolition when that dominance was its peak.”—David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
 
Parliament’s decision in 1807 to outlaw British slaving was a key moment in modern world history. In this magisterial work, historian David Richardson challenges claims that this event was largely due to the actions of particular individuals and emphasizes instead that abolition of the British slave trade relied on the power of ordinary people to change the world. British slaving and opposition to it grew in parallel through the 1760s and then increasingly came into conflict both in the public imagination and in political discourse. Looking at the ideological tensions between Britons’ sense of themselves as free people and their willingness to enslave Africans abroad, Richardson shows that from the 1770s those simmering tensions became politicized even as British slaving activities reached unprecedented levels, mobilizing public opinion to coerce Parliament to confront and begin to resolve the issue between 1788 and 1807.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300250435
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	01/04/2022
Series:	The David Brion Davis Series
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

David Richardson is the former director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, and professor of economic history, University of Hull, England. He is the author of numerous books and articles.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction Interpreting British Slave Trade Abolition 1

Part 1 Trade

1 A "Diabolical Traffic" British Slave Trading, 2640-1807 23

2 Managing the "Train of Uncertainty" Liverpool and the Bight of Biafra 45

3 The "Wheel of Unfathomable Commerce" Credit, Incentives, and Sustainability 67

Part 2 Opinions

4 "vulgar Error" Questioning Transatlantic Slavery in the Age of Locke 97

5 Contrary to "the Laws of God; and the Rights of Man" The Intellectual Roots of the British Anti-Slave Trade Movement 118

6 "Tumults of Imagination" Literature and British Anti-Slave Trade Sentiment 136

7 Reaching "the Common People" Newspapers, African Voices, and Politicizing the Slave Trade 165

Part 3 Politics

8 "To Interest Men of Every Description in the Abolition of the Traffic" Mobilization and the "Take Off" of Abolitionism 189

9 Finding "a Pathway for the Humanities" The Politics of Slave Trade Abolition, 1791-1807 215

10 On the "Heroism of Principle" Reflecting on the British Slave Trade and Its Abolition 249

Notes 271

Index 367

Editorial Reviews

Easily the most scholarly, clear and persuasive analysis yet published of the rise to dominance of the British in the Atlantic slave trade—as well as the implementation of abolition when that dominance was at its peak.”—David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

“David Richardson’s meticulous exploration of the rise and fall of the British slave trade offers a brilliant synthesis of the history and historiography of a pivotal development in world history.”—Seymour Drescher, author of Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery

“The most important recent single volume study of the slave trade, this is a book that commands attention. Richardson confronts a topic of great historical importance. It is a study conceived and executed with an intellectual verve and confidence.”—James Walvin, University of York

“An important and timely book that will appeal to the general reader interested in the history of the British slave trade and the abolition movement.”—Bronwen Everill, University of Cambridge

From the Publisher