Bury the chains : prophets and rebels in the fight to free an empire's slaves / Adam Hochschild.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hochschild, Adam.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Antislavery movements--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Antislavery movements.

Antislavery movements--Great Britain--History--19th century.

History.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

viii, 468 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, [2005]

Summary:

From the Author of the Prizewinning King Leopold's Ghost comes a taut, thrilling account of the first grassroots human rights campaign, which freed hundreds of thousands of slaves around the world.

In 1787, twelve men gathered in a London printing shop to pursue a seemingly impossible goal: ending slavery in the largest empire on earth. Along the way, they would pioneer most of the tools citizen activists still rely on today, from wall posters and mass mailings to boycotts and lapel pins. This talented group combined a hatred of injustice with uncanny skill in promoting their cause. Within five years, more than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat the chief slave-grown product, sugar; London's smart set was sporting antislavery badges created by Josiah Wedgwood; and the House of Commons had passed the first law banning the slave trade.

However, the House of Lords, where slavery backers were more powerful, voted down the bill. But the crusade refused to die, fueled by remarkable figures like Olaudah Equiano, a brilliant ex-slave who enthralled audiences throughout the British Isles; John Newton, the former slave ship captain who wrote "Amazing Grace"; Granville Sharp, an eccentric musician and self-taught lawyer; and Thomas Clarkson, a fiery organizer who repeatedly crisscrossed Britain on horseback, devoting his life to the cause. He and his fellow activists brought slavery in the British Empire to an end in the 1830s, long before it died in the United States. The only survivor of the printing shop meeting half a century earlier, Clarkson lived to see the day when a slave whip and chains were formally buried in a Jamaican churchyard.

Like Hochschild's classic King Leopold's Ghost, Bury the Chains abounds in atmosphere, high drama, and nuanced portraits of unsung heroes and colorful villains. Again Hochschild gives a little-celebrated historical watershed its due at last.

Contents:

Introduction: Twelve Men in a Printing Shop 1

Part I World of Bondage

1 Many Golden Dreams 11

2 Atlantic Wanderer 30

3 Intoxicated with Liberty 41

4 King Sugar 54

5 A Tale of Two Ships 69

Part II From Tinder to Flame

6 A Moral Steam Engine 85

7 The First Emancipation 98

8 "I Questioned Whether I Should Even Get Out of It Alive" 106

9 Am I Not a Man and a Brother? 122

10 A Place Beyond the Seas 143

11 "Ramsay Is Dead-I Have Killed Him" 152

Part III "A Whole Nation Crying With One Voice"

12 An Eighteenth-Century Book Tour 167

13 The Blood-Sweetened Beverage 181

14 Promised Land 199

15 The Sweets of Liberty 213

16 High Noon in Parliament 226

Part IV War and Revolution

17 Bleak Decade 241

18 At the Foot of Vesuvius 256

19 Redcoats' Graveyard 280

20 "These Gilded Africans" 288

Part V Bury the Chains

21 A Side Wind 299

22 Am I Not a Woman and a Sister? 309

23 "Come, Shout o'er the Grave" 333

Epilogue: "To Feel a Just Indignation" 355

Appendix Where was Equiano Born? 369.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 409-427) and index.

ISBN:

0618104690

OCLC:

56390513

Online:

Publisher description