Reaching “the Common People”

Evidence of content analysis shows that newspaper reporting of the slave trade grew substantially over the eighteenth century, widening and deepening the reading public’s knowledge of it and Africa decades before abolitionists looked to use the press to promote their campaign from the late 1780s. The chapter explores the press’s role as mirror and shaper of public opinion in tandem with other publications. It also focuses on the reporting of conditions on board slave ships, paying particular attention to shipboard insurrections, which seemingly increased after 1750, and the nature of the reporting of them, including contemporary and historical interpretations of their causes. The discussion is reinforced by a review of narratives of former slaves published in Britain after 1770 as part of a process in which the issue of British slaving became entangled with public debates over Britain’s alleged attempts to suppress colonial liberty in 1763–1776, informing electoral politics and encouraging the politicizing of the nation’s role in promoting slavery before the War of American Independence broke out.

Art · Colonialism · Independence (probability theory) · Literature · Narrative · Newspaper · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Reading (process) · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law