Proslavery Britain

This is the first book to focus on the opponents of the campaigns for British slave-trade abolition and the emancipation of West Indian slaves during the well-known struggles of 1787–1833. It is a path-breaking study, which ably reveals the contours of, and surveys the turns in, pro-slavery politics and propaganda. There have been eminent studies of slave-owners’ lobbying, of particular West India merchants and their close relationship to the City of London and, most recently, a rich seam of work on the cultural, political and economic legacies of slave ownership within the British Isles. However, the politics of pro-slavery have, curiously, lacked a dedicated monograph—until now. The book, by Paula E. Dumas, is tightly constructed around thematic chapters examining, in turn, the types of arguments deployed; the print culture commissioned; the art and culture shaped; and parliamentary rhetoric employed by the pro-slavery faction. The last of these is split over two chapters, examining the differences between the controversy over the slave trade (abolished in 1807) and over West Indian emancipation (passed in 1833). Such a structure allows Dumas to contextualise the genres in which she finds late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century pro-slavery apologia. Hence, she situates the second chapter in the emerging world of reviews and reviewing and she is able to advise the reader on the wider context of the pro-slavery cartoons and comic prints used in her third chapter

Ancient history · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society