Freedom Burning

Freedom Burning
Author: Richard Huzzey
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2012-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801465370

After Britain abolished slavery throughout most of its empire in 1834, Victorians adopted a creed of "anti-slavery" as a vital part of their national identity and sense of moral superiority to other civilizations. The British government used diplomacy, pressure, and violence to suppress the slave trade, while the Royal Navy enforced abolition worldwide and an anxious public debated the true responsibilities of an anti-slavery nation. This crusade was far from altruistic or compassionate, but Richard Huzzey argues that it forged national debates and political culture long after the famous abolitionist campaigns of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson had faded into memory. These anti-slavery passions shaped racist and imperialist prejudices, new forms of coerced labor, and the expansion of colonial possessions.In a sweeping narrative that spans the globe, Freedom Burning explores the intersection of philanthropic, imperial, and economic interests that underlay Britain's anti-slavery zeal— from London to Liberia, the Sudan to South Africa, Canada to the Caribbean, and the British East India Company to the Confederate States of America. Through careful attention to popular culture, official records, and private papers, Huzzey rewrites the history of the British Empire and a century-long effort to end the global trade in human lives.

Building an Antislavery Wall

Building an Antislavery Wall
Author: Richard J. M. Blackett
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807127971

In Building an Antislavery Wall, R. J. M. Blackett examines the efforts of black Americans in England to advance the cause of their own freedom. Speaking to enthusiastic working-class crowds in the cities and lobbying in the salons of the wealthy and aristocratic, black Americans used England as a forum to tell the world of their cruel plight in the United States, to expose what they saw as an oppressive slave society masquerading as the seat of democracy and freedom. It was their goal to create a moral cordon around the United States so that, in the words of Frederick Douglass, “wherever a slaveholder went, he might hear nothing but denunciation of slavery, that he might be looked upon as a man-stealing, cradle-robbing, woman-stripping monster, and that he might see reproof and detestation on every hand.” The American blacks who visited England between 1830 and 1860 came there for various specific reasons—some to raise funds for projects at home, some to receive the education that they had been denied by American colleges, many for refuge from slave-catchers. But every black saw himself, at least to some extent, as an emissary from his enslaved brethren in America, and he was treated as such by British society. Some—Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delany, for example—were already famous; others, like Henry “Box” Brown and James Watkins, would gain fame through their lecturing while in England. Some of the blacks who came to England were ministers; others were doctors, journalists, and authors of slave narratives. Clearly gifted and articulate individuals, these black Americans stood as living proof of slavery’s unfairness, flesh-and-blood refutations of America’s boasted freedom. Tracing the impact of the black Americans, Blackett concludes that they were very effective spokesmen who significantly advanced the cause of the Atlantic abolitionist movement. British support had monetary as well as symbolic value, and the popularity of the blacks as lecturers gave them a special edge in both fund-raising and proselytizing. At the same time, while organized white abolitionist societies expended much of their energy on sectarian disputes, the blacks sought to bridge these differences in the hope of marshaling the full weight of British opinion in their favor. The blacks played an especially important role, Blackett finds, in discrediting the American Colonization Society—their adamant opposition made it difficult for colonizationists to convince the British that their plan was in the blacks’ best interest. Chronicling the efforts of black Americans to win international support for their struggles at home, Building an Antislavery Wall illuminates an important chapter in the history of American reform and in the emergence of an articulate black leadership in the United States.

Slave Empire

Slave Empire
Author: Padraic X. Scanlan
Publisher: Robinson
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2020-11-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472142322

'Engrossing and powerful . . . rich and thought-provoking' Fara Dabhoiwala, Guardian 'Path-breaking . . . a major rewriting of history' Mihir Bose, Irish Times 'Slave Empire is lucid, elegant and forensic. It deals with appalling horrors in cool and convincing prose.' The Economist The British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than its rivals. But this claim that the British empire was 'free' and that, for all its flaws, it promised liberty to all its subjects was never true. The British empire was built on slavery. Slave Empire puts enslaved people at the centre the British empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In intimate, human detail, Padraic Scanlon shows how British imperial power and industrial capitalism were inextricable from plantation slavery. With vivid original research and careful synthesis of innovative historical scholarship, Slave Empire shows that British freedom and British slavery were made together.

The African Slave Trade and Its Suppression

The African Slave Trade and Its Suppression
Author: Peter Hogg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 903
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317792343

A comprehensive bibliography dealing specifically with African slave trade. This volume has been sub-classified for easier consultation and the compiler has provided, where possible, descriptions and comments on the works listed.

African Slave Trade and Its Suppression

African Slave Trade and Its Suppression
Author: Peter C. Hogg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1011
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136602461

First Published in 2005. The task of compiling a bibliography of the African slave trade is a difficult one as the literature comprises books, pamphlets and periodical articles in a variety of languages from the sixteenth century to the present day. This title aspires to present a representative selection of the material available and serve as a guide to the main categories of printed material on the subject in western languages. Due to their pre-existing availability and overwhelming quantity, government publications have been kept to a minimum.

British Comment on the United States

British Comment on the United States
Author: Ada Nisbet
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 556
Release: 2001-06-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520915824

This bibliography of more than three thousand entries, often extensively annotated, lists books and pamphlets that illuminate evolving British views on the United States during a period of great change on both sides of the Atlantic. Subjects addressed in various decades include slavery and abolitionism, women's rights, the Civil War, organized labor, economic, cultural, and social behavior, political and religious movements, and the "American" character in general.

The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France, 1814-48

The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France, 1814-48
Author: P. Kielstra
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2000-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230288413

Britain's rarely-examined, nineteenth-century diplomatic efforts for abolition took contemporary pre-eminence over most questions and almost sparked war with France in 1845. Kielstra examines the issue in Anglo-French relations: how conflicting moral, economic, and nationalist pressures and lobby groups affected domestic politics and high diplomacy. To preserve peace and their positions, statesmen had little margin for error as they framed policies which attacked the trade and satisfied mutually incompatible domestic opinions, in a struggle which holds lessons for current efforts to include human rights concerns in foreign policy.

Vanguard

Vanguard
Author: Martha S. Jones
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1541618602

The epic history of African American women's pursuit of political power -- and how it transformed America. In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women's movement did not win the vote for most black women. Securing their rights required a movement of their own. In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women's political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women -- Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more -- who were the vanguard of women's rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.

Distant Freedom

Distant Freedom
Author: Andrew F. Pearson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 1781382832

"This book is an examination of the island of St Helena's involvement in slave trade abolition. After the establishment of a British Vice-Admiralty court there in 1840, this tiny and remote South Atlantic colony became the hub of naval activity in the region. It served as a base for the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, and as such became the principal receiving depot for intercepted slave ships and their human cargo. During the middle decades of the nineteenth century over 25,000 'recaptive' or 'liberated' Africans were landed at the island. Here, in embryonic refugee camps, these former slaves lived and died, genuine freedom still a distant prospect. This book provides an account and evaluation of this episode. It begins by charting the political contexts which drew St Helena into the fray of abolition, and considers how its involvement, at times, came to occupy those at the highest levels of British politics. In the main, however, it focuses on St Helena itself, and examines how matters played out on the ground. The study utilises documentary sources (many previously untouched) which tell the stories of those whose lives became bound up in the compass of anti-slavery, far from London and long after the Abolition Act of 1807. It puts the Black experience at the foreground, aiming to bring a voice to a forgotten people, many of whom died in limbo, in a place that was physically and conceptually between freedom and slavery."--Back cover.