Although he put an immense personal effort in the cause of abolishing the British triangle trade, Thomas Clarkson tends to be overshadowed by his better known fellow-abolitionist William Wilberforce. Unjustly so - while Wilberforce acted as the abolitionist movement’s spokesperson in parliament, Clarkson travelled enormous distances through all of England in search of public support for the abolitionist movement. His various essays and pamphlets made Clarkson the ideological mastermind of the British antislavery movement.Until the present day, Both Clarkson and Wilberforce rank among the saints of antislavery hagiography. Many scholars, however, have set out to discuss British antislavery in a critical way. This book examines in depth three of Clarkson’s essays (An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species - 1786; An Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade - 1788; Thoughts on the Necessity of Improving the Condition of the Slaves in the British Colonies - 1823) and shows changes in style and ideas. Helmut Meier tries to exemplify the links of abolitionist discourse and ideology to such phenomena as the rising of a new capitalist order in the late 18th and early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution, the emerging Imperialism of the period and the connected proliferation of abolitionist ideas around the world.

A comprehensive history of the Georgians, comparing past views of these exciting, turbulent, and controversial times with our attitudes today The Georgian era is often seen as a time of innovations. It saw the end of monarchical absolutism, global exploration and settlements overseas, the world’s first industrial revolution, deep transformations in religious and cultural life, and Britain’s role in the international trade in enslaved Africans. But how were these changes perceived by people at the time? And how do their viewpoints compare with attitudes today? In this wide-ranging history, Penelope J. Corfield explores every aspect of Georgian life—politics and empire, culture and society, love and violence, religion and science, industry and towns. People’s responses at the time were often divided. Pessimists saw loss and decline, while optimists saw improvements and light. Out of such tensions came the Georgian culture of both experiment and resistance. Corfield emphasizes those elements of deep continuity that persisted even within major changes, and shows how new developments were challenged if their human consequences proved dire.

A look at the origins of British abolitionism as a problem of eighteenth-century science, as well as one of economics and humanitarian sensibilities How did late eighteenth-century British abolitionists come to view the slave trade and British colonial slavery as unnatural, a "dread perversion" of nature? Focusing on slavery in the Americas, and the Caribbean in particular, alongside travelers' accounts of West Africa, Brycchan Carey shows that before the mid-eighteenth century, natural histories were a primary source of information about slavery for British and colonial readers. These natural histories were often ambivalent toward slavery, but they increasingly adopted a proslavery stance to accommodate the needs of planters by representing slavery as a "natural" phenomenon. From the mid-eighteenth century, abolitionists adapted the natural history form to their own writings, and many naturalists became associated with the antislavery movement. Carey draws on descriptions of slavery and the slave trade created by naturalists and other travelers with an interest in natural history, including Richard Ligon, Hans Sloane, Griffith Hughes, Samuel Martin, and James Grainger. These environmental writings were used by abolitionists such as Anthony Benezet, James Ramsay, Thomas Clarkson, and Olaudah Equiano to build a compelling case that slavery was unnatural, a case that was popularized by abolitionist poets such as Thomas Day, Edward Rushton, Hannah More, and William Cowper.

This book condemns slavery, by appealed to whites' rational self-interest, rather than any altruism towards blacks. Helper claimed that slavery hurt the Southern economy by preventing economic development and industrialization, and that it was the main reason why the South had progressed so much less than the North since the late 18th century.

Frederick Douglass recounts early years of abuse, his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves. It is also the only of Douglass's autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American presidents such as Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield.

Examines the economy and it's impact of slavery on the coast land slave states pre-Civil War.