Bury the Chains
Adam Hochschild, Derek Perkins, José Luis Gil Aristu · 2004 · 466 pages
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some book links are affiliate links; you pay the same price and we may earn a small commission.
About this book
An account of the first great human rights crusade, which originated in England in the 1780s and resulted in the freeing of 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. 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. The activists brought slavery in the British Empire to an end in the 1830s, long before it died in the United States.
Appears in these reading paths
The Atlantic slave trade: essential books on bondage and abolition
Related reading guides
Reader reviews
Ratings and notes from readers — tagged with how deep into the subject they were.
Loading reviews…