The Cultural Contingency of Structure: Evidence from Entry to the Slave Trade In and Around the Abolition Movement

<p>In 1787, when the British abolition movement began, the Liverpool slave trade was the largest in the world. Contemporaries throughout Britain, but especially in the port, viewed the slave trade as the primary source of Liverpool’s growth and prosperity in the eighteenth century. Liverpudlians, therefore, reacted negatively to the abolition movement, which they viewed as a threat to both the local and national economy. By 1788, the immense popular support generated by the abolition campaign left Liverpool isolated in its defence of the slave trade. Liverpudlians, however, were not unanimous in their support of the slave trade’s continuance. In 1787 and 1788, a small group of rational dissenters, known as the Roscoe Circle, anonymously contributed to the abolition campaign from Liverpool. The group’s namesake, William Roscoe, went on to be elected Member of Parliament for Liverpool in 1806, and in March 1807 he voted in favour of abolishing the slave trade along with 282 other MPs, against just sixteen, including Liverpool’s other MP. This thesis examines reactions in Liverpool to the British abolition movement between the start of the campaign in 1787 and the passage of the Slave Trade Abolition Act in 1807. It highlights the periods 1787-1788 and 1796-1807 to challenge the view of Liverpool as a town almost uniformly averse to abolition throughout the twenty year campaign. Chapters One and Two examine the immediate pro- and anti-abolition responses in Liverpool in 1787 and 1788, respectively focusing on the contributions of Liverpool slaving merchants to the anti-abolition campaign and on the abolitionist activities of the Roscoe Circle. Drawing on Liverpool guidebooks and a series of letters in the Liverpool Chronicle, Chapter Three then traces the gradual change in popular feeling towards abolition that occurred in Liverpool in the last decade of the British slave trade’s existence. Ultimately, this thesis argues that rapidly dwindling Liverpudlian support for the slave trade from the mid-1790s onward has been under-valued. By 1807 Liverpudlians, wanting to re-affirm cultural ties with the rest of Britain, turned their backs on the slave trade, which had by then become a source of unease and embarrassment.</p>

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The Slaving Capital in the Era of Abolition: Liverpool's Silent Rejection of the Slave Trade, 1787-1807

10.26686/wgtn.17006224.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Florence Baggett

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Small Group ◽

National Economy ◽

Slave Trade ◽

Primary Source ◽

Gradual Change ◽

The World ◽

Member Of Parliament ◽

Circle Drawing ◽

Abolition Movement

<p>In 1787, when the British abolition movement began, the Liverpool slave trade was the largest in the world. Contemporaries throughout Britain, but especially in the port, viewed the slave trade as the primary source of Liverpool’s growth and prosperity in the eighteenth century. Liverpudlians, therefore, reacted negatively to the abolition movement, which they viewed as a threat to both the local and national economy. By 1788, the immense popular support generated by the abolition campaign left Liverpool isolated in its defence of the slave trade. Liverpudlians, however, were not unanimous in their support of the slave trade’s continuance. In 1787 and 1788, a small group of rational dissenters, known as the Roscoe Circle, anonymously contributed to the abolition campaign from Liverpool. The group’s namesake, William Roscoe, went on to be elected Member of Parliament for Liverpool in 1806, and in March 1807 he voted in favour of abolishing the slave trade along with 282 other MPs, against just sixteen, including Liverpool’s other MP. This thesis examines reactions in Liverpool to the British abolition movement between the start of the campaign in 1787 and the passage of the Slave Trade Abolition Act in 1807. It highlights the periods 1787-1788 and 1796-1807 to challenge the view of Liverpool as a town almost uniformly averse to abolition throughout the twenty year campaign. Chapters One and Two examine the immediate pro- and anti-abolition responses in Liverpool in 1787 and 1788, respectively focusing on the contributions of Liverpool slaving merchants to the anti-abolition campaign and on the abolitionist activities of the Roscoe Circle. Drawing on Liverpool guidebooks and a series of letters in the Liverpool Chronicle, Chapter Three then traces the gradual change in popular feeling towards abolition that occurred in Liverpool in the last decade of the British slave trade’s existence. Ultimately, this thesis argues that rapidly dwindling Liverpudlian support for the slave trade from the mid-1790s onward has been under-valued. By 1807 Liverpudlians, wanting to re-affirm cultural ties with the rest of Britain, turned their backs on the slave trade, which had by then become a source of unease and embarrassment.</p>

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RELIGION AND POLITICS IN MODERN BRITAIN Popular politics and British anti-slavery: the mobilisation of public opinion against the slave trade 1787–1807. By J. R. Oldfield. London: Frank Cass, 1998. Pp. ix+216. ISBN 0–7146–4462–5. £17.50. Friends of religious equality: nonconformist politics in mid-Victorian England. By Timothy Larsen. The Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 1999. Pp. ix+300. ISBN 0–8511–5726–2. £40. Female lives, moral states: women, religion and public life in Britain, 1800–1930. By Anne Summers. Newbury: Threshold, 2000. Pp. ix+182. ISBN 1–903152–03–8. £17.50. Congregational missions and the making of an imperial culture in nineteenth-century England. By Susan Thorne. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Pp. ix+247. ISBN 0–8047–3053–9. £45.50. Divine feminine: theosophy and feminism in England. By Joy Dixon. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Pp. xix+293. ISBN 0–8018–6499–2. $54.95.

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x03003029 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 46 (2) ◽

pp. 463-470 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

CATHERINE HALL

Keyword(s):

Public Opinion ◽

Middle Class ◽

Consumer Choice ◽

Slave Trade ◽

Religion And Politics ◽

Critical Issue ◽

Popular Politics ◽

Thick Description ◽

Imperial Culture ◽

Abolition Movement

The appearance of J. R. Oldfield's study, Popular politics and British anti-slavery, first published by Manchester University Press in 1995, now in paperback and therefore available for a student market, is much to be welcomed. The book is already well established in its field. As James Walvin writes in his preface, ‘Oldfield's research serves to clinch a simple but critical issue, namely that in the attack on the slave trade, popular revulsion was crucial’ (p. vi). Building on the work of earlier scholars, notably Seymour Drescher, Hugh Honour and Clare Midgley, Oldfield has demonstrated the ways in which the abolition movement turned to mobilizing public opinion after 1787 against the slave trade. At the centre of his investigation are the petition campaigns of 1788 and 1792. In analysing anti-slavery sentiment he successfully brings together approaches which focus on the eighteenth century as a period of expansion in commercial society and popular forms of politics with the agenda of historians of the slave trade and slavery. The abolition movement, he argues, provided the prototype for modern reforming organizations. It was peopled by practical middle-class men who understood the importance of the expansion of the market and consumer choice. It succeeded in capturing the imagination of those, predominantly middle-class men and women, who were increasingly interested in engaging in forms of public debate and who had the resources, both in terms of time and money, to do so. His book, he argues, is a piece of ‘thick description’ which offers ‘fresh insights into the increasingly powerful role of the middle classes in influencing Parliamentary politics from outside the confines of Westminster’ (p. 5).

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The Signatures of Social Structure: Petitioning for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Manchester

Social Science History ◽

10.1017/ssh.2019.25 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 43 (3) ◽

pp. 625-652 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Kinga Makovi

Keyword(s):

Political Action ◽

Slave Trade ◽

Primary Sources ◽

Religious Congregations ◽

Social Fabric ◽

Family Ties ◽

The Social ◽

Social Structural ◽

The Impact ◽

Abolition Movement

This article considers the problem of popular, collectively organized political action in the context of the abolition movement of the slave trade (1788–1807). Various primary sources, a petition, a trade directory, church records, and a self-built historic GIS are used to locate petitioners for abolition in the social fabric of Manchester. Through matching and computational experiments the article highlights which social structural forces led individuals to support the abolition movement by signing a petition. Specifically, gathering places that were historically involved in the movement, as well as those that housed traveling merchants from communities with successful abolitionist petitions from preceding campaigns shaped abolitionist petitioning—and the impact of these institutions remained important over and above family ties, active religious congregations, and the occupational groups. The article gives a new understanding of the role that early industrialization played in the abolition movement, building it from the bottom up, forging cohesion within and across communities through local institutions, rather than creating new boundaries and divides through processes of class formation.

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