Abstract
The years 1787–88 mark the high tide of popular abolitionism. What had begun as a small-scale protest, with Quakers submitting their first public petition to Parliament in 1783, was soon to culminate in a sudden and widespread outburst of humanitarian revulsion against the ‘abominable’ and ‘indefensible’ trade. There have been many attempts to explain the speed and breadth of the national mobilization against the slave trade. In a recent contribution Seymour Drescher dismisses arguments that attribute the new popularity to ‘chastened anxiety or national humiliation’ at the loss of the North American colonies. Nor does Drescher see abolitionism’s coming of age as a response to heightened internal class conflict, or to an economic decline in the value of the British slave trade. Without offering much explanation himself, apart from the great expansion of print media in this period, what Drescher does note is that popular abolitionism emerged at one of the most shining moments in British history, when the nation revelled in its ‘prosperity, security and power’.1 This means that, while abolitionists might express strong sentiments of outrage, the underlying premise of their protest involved a degree of complacency. As Drescher puts it, ‘how could the world’s most secure, free, religious, just, prosperous and moral nation allow itself to remain the premier perpetrator of the world’s most deadly, brutal, unjust and immoral offences to humanity? How could its people, once fully informed of its inhumanity, hope to continue to be blessed with peace, prosperity and power?’2
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Seymour Drescher, ‘Public Opinion and Parliament in the Abolition of the British Slave Trade’, in The British Slave Trade: Abolition, Parliament and People, ed. by Stephen Farrell, Melanie Unwin, and James Walvin ( Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007 ), pp. 42–65.
Clare Midgley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 ( London and New York: Routledge, 1992 ).
Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 ( London: Verso, 1988 ), p. 153.
John Newton, quoted in Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History ( New York: Viking, 2007 ), p. 241.
Thomas Wilkinson, An Appeal to England, on behalf of the Abused Africans. A Poem ( London: James Phillips, 1789 ), pp. 27–9.
Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, 2 vols (London, Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1808), I, 188.
Deirdre Coleman, ‘Conspicuous Consumption: White Abolitionism and English Women’s Protest Writing in the 1790s’, English Literary History, 61 (1994), 341–62;
Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace, Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1997 ), pp. 37–51.
Phyllis Mack, ‘In a Female Voice: Preaching and Politics in Eighteenth-Century British Quakerism’, in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, ed. by Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker ( Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1998 ), pp. 248–63.
Roger Lonsdale, ed., The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse ( Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984 ), p. 523.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2010 Deirdre Coleman
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Coleman, D. (2010). Women Writers and Abolition. In: Labbe, J.M. (eds) The History of British Women’s Writing, 1750–1830. The History of British Women’s Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297012_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297012_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36198-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-29701-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)