Slavery was once at the heart of the British empire. By 1770, sugar-producing plantations worked by enslaved labourers from Africa had transformed the Caribbean, revolutionised British habits of consumption and lay at the centre of Britain’s lucrative colonial enterprise.
Enslaved people had always resisted slavery, but from the late eighteenth century, the system also came under attack from some within British society. By the 1830s, following mass campaigns, the system was widely discredited in Britain and in the process of being dismantled. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, anti-slavery was one of the mainstays of the British colonizing mission.
However, the dismantling of British slavery does not mark the end of its history. Slavery persisted (and it still persists); disputes about the meaning of freedom raged across the British empire in the years after emancipation; and the economic, social, and cultural legacies of British-Atlantic slavery continue to shape lives in the Caribbean and Britain in the present day.
This two-part Special Subject explores themes and questions related to the complex histories of slavery, abolitionism and emancipation. We will be looking at the institution of slavery in the Caribbean and considering its place in the development of Britain. We will discuss why the abolition movement was popular and effective and think about the ways in which the interests, ideas and practices of abolitionists, enslaved people and slaveholders clashed and converged as these groups tried to influence and shape the profound changes that accompanied the transition to freedom.
This semester we will look at the period leading up to the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. We will learn about slaves, Caribbean plantation societies and the development of the British anti-slavery movement. We will examine resistance to slavery and abolitionist arguments against the slave trade. We will also be looking at the cultural and social lives of slaveholders, exploring their campaign in opposition to colonial reform, and at the wider imperial context of the slavery debates.
Central questions addressed include: What kinds of societies did British slaveholders create in the Caribbean? How did the abolitionist movement originate and why did it become so influential? Why did the abolition of the slave trade take place at the time and in the manner that it did? What can we learn about the cultures and world views of slaves from surviving evidence?