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Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism
Revisiting the origins of the British antislavery movement of the late eighteenth century, Christopher Leslie Brown challenges prevailing scholarly arguments that locate the roots of abolitionism in economic determinism or bourgeois humanitarianism. Brown instead connects the shift from sentiment to action to changing views of empire and nation in Britain at the time, particularly the anxieties and dislocations spurred by the American Revolution.
The debate over the political rights of the North American colonies pushed slavery to the fore, Brown argues, giving antislavery organizing the moral legitimacy in Britain it had never had before. The first emancipation schemes were dependent on efforts to strengthen the role of the imperial state in an era of weakening overseas authority. By looking at the initial public contest over slavery, Brown connects disparate strands of the British Atlantic world and brings into focus shifting developments in British identity, attitudes toward Africa, definitions of imperial mission, the rise of Anglican evangelicalism, and Quaker activism.
Demonstrating how challenges to the slave system could serve as a mark of virtue rather than evidence of eccentricity, Brown shows that the abolitionist movement derived its power from a profound yearning for moral worth in the aftermath of defeat and American independence. Thus abolitionism proved to be a cause for the abolitionists themselves as much as for enslaved Africans.
The debate over the political rights of the North American colonies pushed slavery to the fore, Brown argues, giving antislavery organizing the moral legitimacy in Britain it had never had before. The first emancipation schemes were dependent on efforts to strengthen the role of the imperial state in an era of weakening overseas authority. By looking at the initial public contest over slavery, Brown connects disparate strands of the British Atlantic world and brings into focus shifting developments in British identity, attitudes toward Africa, definitions of imperial mission, the rise of Anglican evangelicalism, and Quaker activism.
Demonstrating how challenges to the slave system could serve as a mark of virtue rather than evidence of eccentricity, Brown shows that the abolitionist movement derived its power from a profound yearning for moral worth in the aftermath of defeat and American independence. Thus abolitionism proved to be a cause for the abolitionists themselves as much as for enslaved Africans.
496 pages, Paperback
First published March 27, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 14, 2024
“Students of Anglo-American anti-slavery movements have become familiar with the dark side of charitable causes, with the ways that high ideals could degenerate into self-serving behavior or serve as a mask for self-interest. But they have tended to miss the ironic ways that self-aggrandizing impulses, in some instances, can facilitate the emergence of idealistic behavior.” Such was the career of British abolitionism.
Revisiting Eric Williams’ now infamous denunciation of the “Saints,” Brown argues that British abolitionism was not the product of latent humanitarianism. Indeed, that abolition should have happened at all is anomalous. For Brown, the decisive juncture was the American Revolution, particularly Britain’s defeat. A combination of self-scrutiny born of failed imperial ambitions, concerns about the nature, bounds, and means of government overseas, revitalized religious movements, the necessity of handling Black loyalists for whom the British were now responsible, and a competition of virtue between American rebels and the the metropolis coalesced to incentivize action. Genuine sympathy bolstered by self-interest drove a variety of actors to put into practice what had long been theoretically uncontroversial: ideological antislavery.
Moral Capital deserves a spot among the classics of modern scholarship. Brown’s study is no less learned persuasive, important, or necessary than Orientalism, to give just one example. The book is fastidious and thorough yet remarkably readable. Published by UNC, it pays homage to Williams’ seminal work and builds on the tradition it created. There is little pertinent to the history of 18th-century slavery and abolition that Brown does not address. A prerequisite for any serious student of the Atlantic world.
Revisiting Eric Williams’ now infamous denunciation of the “Saints,” Brown argues that British abolitionism was not the product of latent humanitarianism. Indeed, that abolition should have happened at all is anomalous. For Brown, the decisive juncture was the American Revolution, particularly Britain’s defeat. A combination of self-scrutiny born of failed imperial ambitions, concerns about the nature, bounds, and means of government overseas, revitalized religious movements, the necessity of handling Black loyalists for whom the British were now responsible, and a competition of virtue between American rebels and the the metropolis coalesced to incentivize action. Genuine sympathy bolstered by self-interest drove a variety of actors to put into practice what had long been theoretically uncontroversial: ideological antislavery.
Moral Capital deserves a spot among the classics of modern scholarship. Brown’s study is no less learned persuasive, important, or necessary than Orientalism, to give just one example. The book is fastidious and thorough yet remarkably readable. Published by UNC, it pays homage to Williams’ seminal work and builds on the tradition it created. There is little pertinent to the history of 18th-century slavery and abolition that Brown does not address. A prerequisite for any serious student of the Atlantic world.
October 25, 2020
The first I've read of Brown, but not the last I hope. He gets at the kinds of questions that draw me the most to history. How and why do certain practices or beliefs change from being acceptable to being seen as completely immoral? What triggers that kind of moral evolution? Brown also explores in depth the gap between belief and action, and uses the British abolitionist movement as a way to show how, even when many people believe something is wrong, most of the time they won't do anything to address it. Similarly, the abolition of slavery in Britain didn't come about as a natural, inevitable result of Enlightenment thought or Christian zeal. Brown shows that moral repugnance for slavery had existed for decades before any semblance of a movement against it was formed, and that the moral capital the movement's success brought Britain helped them justify their imperialist agenda through the nineteenth century.
May 12, 2011
A really thought-provoking argument into the cause of British abolitionism. Perhaps it's not all about what's right and what's wrong but how to gain political power. This book is well-argued, certainly, but I find myself thinking that even if Brown is right, doing the right thing should still be a good thing.
January 22, 2025
This history of the start of abolitionist thought in Britain impressed me with how much had to come into place before a real abolitionist movement could start. Most politically-active people had come to define Englishness around liberty, and come to see their empire as having some role in doing good in the world. This wasn't impressed on them thanks to any organized movement, unless you count the Glorious Revolution or Anglican Church as a movement. Into this fertile background, then, slavery came as a political issue during the leadup to the American Revolution: being used as an analogy that everyone could agree was bad.
So, after this - when Quakers and Methodists decided the abolition of slavery was a cause worth fighting for, they were fighting on good ground for an offensive. They hadn't brought this about; it had been done for them. Brown doesn't venture this, but it's clear to me the way had been prepared by God.
Without this - perhaps there would have been other causes for them to fight in. There had been earlier would-be abolitionists whose tracts sank unread or even unpublished. Most of them spent their time on other causes instead, many of them good causes. God's Spirit directs as He wills. But I wouldn't have criticized anyone who fought against slavery anyway. Some did fight to evangelize the slaves, and they did good work - if not among the slaves, then in providing case-studies for later abolitionists in how bad slavery could be.
So, after this - when Quakers and Methodists decided the abolition of slavery was a cause worth fighting for, they were fighting on good ground for an offensive. They hadn't brought this about; it had been done for them. Brown doesn't venture this, but it's clear to me the way had been prepared by God.
Without this - perhaps there would have been other causes for them to fight in. There had been earlier would-be abolitionists whose tracts sank unread or even unpublished. Most of them spent their time on other causes instead, many of them good causes. God's Spirit directs as He wills. But I wouldn't have criticized anyone who fought against slavery anyway. Some did fight to evangelize the slaves, and they did good work - if not among the slaves, then in providing case-studies for later abolitionists in how bad slavery could be.
January 8, 2021
A deep dive into the foundations of the abolition of slavery as state-sanctioned trade policy, brilliantly supporting the author's own thesis that the emancipation of African slaves, far from being the inevitable result of cultural progress (e.g. growing public and media literacy, bourgeois humanitarianism, Christian revival movements) and economic progress (growing wealth, growth of free market trading and international competition, technology), the emancipation of slaves was actually the most radical form of abolition to have even been proposed by opponents of the slave trade prior to the American War of Independence and was the unlikely result of the institutional reforms driven by highly zealous elites (in addition to broader cultural and economic changes)
This relatively impartial and comprehensively researched historiography explains how early transatlantic critiques of institutional slavery by a zealous global literary elite, buoyed by growing public awareness of severe human rights abuses, culminated in institutional reforms of politically-influential societies in America and Britain and, later, to volte-faces in American state and British trade policy - all catalysed by the moral paroxysms which brought on and resulted from the American war of independence of 1775-1783.
This relatively impartial and comprehensively researched historiography explains how early transatlantic critiques of institutional slavery by a zealous global literary elite, buoyed by growing public awareness of severe human rights abuses, culminated in institutional reforms of politically-influential societies in America and Britain and, later, to volte-faces in American state and British trade policy - all catalysed by the moral paroxysms which brought on and resulted from the American war of independence of 1775-1783.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 14, 2024
As with any Omohundro Institute monograph, this is a dense read, but only because it’s a dense topic! Leslie Brown could not hope to make his language any more understandable, nor his argument more elegant.
This is a fantastic and seamlessly well put-together history of the intellectual origins of abolition to the slave trade in Britain, from the moral quibbles of Anglican moralists right through to its eventual growth into an organised, dissenting movement. The real contribution of this work is its taking into account of the connections between moralist actors and their relation to Britain’s institutions (most fascinatingly the institutional Church of England) and how it was dissenters such as the Quakers who proved more able to develop a coherent abolitionist movement.
This is an unmissable book for anyone wishing to understand slavery as an institution and abolitionism as a development from several ideologies contemporary to the Early British Empire.
This is a fantastic and seamlessly well put-together history of the intellectual origins of abolition to the slave trade in Britain, from the moral quibbles of Anglican moralists right through to its eventual growth into an organised, dissenting movement. The real contribution of this work is its taking into account of the connections between moralist actors and their relation to Britain’s institutions (most fascinatingly the institutional Church of England) and how it was dissenters such as the Quakers who proved more able to develop a coherent abolitionist movement.
This is an unmissable book for anyone wishing to understand slavery as an institution and abolitionism as a development from several ideologies contemporary to the Early British Empire.
November 5, 2023
Very proud I finished this in less than a week! The monograph is most definitely dense, but as are most works from the Omohundro Institute. Brown does a marvelous job at situating the role the American Revolution played in cultivating the environment necessary for the British abolition movement to transpire.
March 21, 2020
Incredibly written but also so, so dense. Not sure if I would've made it without the annotations I wrote when I read this for a class.
September 30, 2024
My advisor's book...but it is genuinely a tremendous achievement! A richly textured study of the conditions of British abolitionism.
June 21, 2011
Examinations of the early abolitionist movement have been split by the question of agency and the role of white, predominantly devout Christian, abolitionists. Traditionally, as Christopher L. Brown points out in both the introduction and conclusion to "Moral Capital", histories of British abolitionism have either focused their attention on the role of anti-slavery leaders like Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson in making anti-slavery into the abolitionist movement or they have entirely neglected their importance claiming that it was social or economic factors that necessitated the creation of the abolitionist movement. What has transpired then is an entirely fragmented understanding of the early abolitionists and their time as one dominated by a few outstanding individuals or one during which individuals became submerged by the rising tide of capitalism and globalization.
Fortunately, Brown's "Moral Capitalism" is successful at breaking from outmoded, Manichean examinations of fledgling abolitionism by examining the generation before anti-slavery became abolition and the role the American Revolution had in reshaping the anti-slavery debate from one cast in economic and religious terms to one of humanist ethics. Brown examines both abolitionist luminaries like Wilberforce and the Clarksons, but also equivocal figures like Lord Dartmouth, who opposed slavery on moral grounds but did not believe it was politically expedient to attempt to legislate against it, and failed adventurer Henry Smeathman, who sought to obviate the slave trade by expanding plantation agriculture in Africa. For Brown, figures like Smeathman and early Quaker abolitionists (like American John Woolman) failed to find an audience among English political power-brokers before the American Revolution because of the united political power of American and Caribbean planters and the belief that the English global economy was dependent on African slave labor. However, after the American Revolution, the debate over abolition took a new turn: contrasting English subject-hood to American citizenship. Abolitionists like Clarkson presented the contradictions of American freedom and slavery, while espousing the possibility of a consistent English subject-hood with universal rights granted to all subjects under the purveyance of the King. This new argument found favor in an English Parliament shaken by the loss of the American colonies and attempting to recast the English Empire as benevolent trustees.
"Moral Capital" is a brilliantly argued and well-written examination of the English transformation from anti-slavery to abolitionism. Though the writing is analytical, it is well executed and supported by copious amounts of evidence. The finest book on this topic I have read and one that will hopefully recast a tired debate about the role of abolitionists like Wilberforce in the history of British anti-slavery.
Fortunately, Brown's "Moral Capitalism" is successful at breaking from outmoded, Manichean examinations of fledgling abolitionism by examining the generation before anti-slavery became abolition and the role the American Revolution had in reshaping the anti-slavery debate from one cast in economic and religious terms to one of humanist ethics. Brown examines both abolitionist luminaries like Wilberforce and the Clarksons, but also equivocal figures like Lord Dartmouth, who opposed slavery on moral grounds but did not believe it was politically expedient to attempt to legislate against it, and failed adventurer Henry Smeathman, who sought to obviate the slave trade by expanding plantation agriculture in Africa. For Brown, figures like Smeathman and early Quaker abolitionists (like American John Woolman) failed to find an audience among English political power-brokers before the American Revolution because of the united political power of American and Caribbean planters and the belief that the English global economy was dependent on African slave labor. However, after the American Revolution, the debate over abolition took a new turn: contrasting English subject-hood to American citizenship. Abolitionists like Clarkson presented the contradictions of American freedom and slavery, while espousing the possibility of a consistent English subject-hood with universal rights granted to all subjects under the purveyance of the King. This new argument found favor in an English Parliament shaken by the loss of the American colonies and attempting to recast the English Empire as benevolent trustees.
"Moral Capital" is a brilliantly argued and well-written examination of the English transformation from anti-slavery to abolitionism. Though the writing is analytical, it is well executed and supported by copious amounts of evidence. The finest book on this topic I have read and one that will hopefully recast a tired debate about the role of abolitionists like Wilberforce in the history of British anti-slavery.
October 7, 2014
This work is a consideration of the roots of British abolitionism, as opposed to a history of the whole antislavery movement. One important point that the author draws out is that the religious principles of the abolitionists need to be given much greater attention than they have been given by most antislavery historians. Despite being nearly 500 pages long, the book does not feel bloated and it is a joy to read.
October 10, 2010
I would have preferred a book about the abolition movement instead of its foundations.
April 5, 2017
This was a re-read. I first 'read' this book as part of a PhD field, but that is a different kind of reading to what most people do.
Brown has a target in his sights -- what one might call the 'Standard Interpretation' of British anti-slave-trade studies. The book was released on the eve of the bi-centenary commemorations of the ending of the slave trade in the 'Atlantic World' of Britain and the United States, and as such took an 'Anglospheric' attitude, studying the roots of British abolitionism in the pre-Independence trans-Atlantic Community. Brown's objectives are clear. On the one hand, he wishes to puncture a self-congratulatory balloon as Britons praise their initiative to bring the slave trade to an end; on the other, he wishes to reassemble the mentality of those who were opposed to the slave trade, by examining their own self-justifications for their attitudes.
Brown makes several findings. First, he presents evidence that British abolitionism is rooted in a dialogue with its American colonies. Without the initial impetus from Quakers in America, abolitionism in Britain might not have become a factor in the propaganda war against the 'Patriots'. Without independence, Britons might not have embraced a yardstick that allowed them to measure their concepts of liberty against American ones, and find the latter wanting. Second, he argues that British abolitionism is rooted in a Christian understanding of moral improvement of the community, rather than a Modernist notion of human rights as Americans ostensibly espoused in the Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence. Finally, he breaks down the interest groups involved in British abolitionism, highlighting how rudimentary a force it was before 1788, and thus unlikely in itself to have their intellectual strength to mount a challenge against a vital part of the Imperial economy.
Brown assembles the evidence for all this through extensive reading of abolitionist literature mostly published during the period after the Seven Years' War and before the French Revolution. Is he successful in making his case?
The answer has to be that this is indeed an interpretation of the evidence that must be addressed by subsequent researchers, but the case itself goes to far and in the end (see pp. 419-20) he has to resort to speculation. Nonetheless, his approach to the evidence is much more in line with my ideas about how to write history, especially when he describes how he tackles the Evangelicals (see p. 335). The problem remains, however, that he starts his inquiry from an end result -- the full-blown British campaign for abolition of the slave trade -- which prevents him from a more open-ended reading of the evidence. We see this in the final chapter, an epilogue of sorts that reviews a counterfactual interpretation of an abolition campaign without American Independence. In this, I think his counterfactuals cover far too narrow a range. The departure from the Real Time-Line would be much more dramatic (and earlier) than Brown allows.
The book itself is daunting going for a non-academic reader. The review of the evidence is quite detailed, and the footnotes (yay, real footnotes!) are an indispensable part of his argument. He is rarely interested in personal details, but only in the life of the mind. It is, however, a valuable contribution to the complex history of the intersection of slavery, imperialism and race, as well as the history of the Anglosphere.
Brown has a target in his sights -- what one might call the 'Standard Interpretation' of British anti-slave-trade studies. The book was released on the eve of the bi-centenary commemorations of the ending of the slave trade in the 'Atlantic World' of Britain and the United States, and as such took an 'Anglospheric' attitude, studying the roots of British abolitionism in the pre-Independence trans-Atlantic Community. Brown's objectives are clear. On the one hand, he wishes to puncture a self-congratulatory balloon as Britons praise their initiative to bring the slave trade to an end; on the other, he wishes to reassemble the mentality of those who were opposed to the slave trade, by examining their own self-justifications for their attitudes.
Brown makes several findings. First, he presents evidence that British abolitionism is rooted in a dialogue with its American colonies. Without the initial impetus from Quakers in America, abolitionism in Britain might not have become a factor in the propaganda war against the 'Patriots'. Without independence, Britons might not have embraced a yardstick that allowed them to measure their concepts of liberty against American ones, and find the latter wanting. Second, he argues that British abolitionism is rooted in a Christian understanding of moral improvement of the community, rather than a Modernist notion of human rights as Americans ostensibly espoused in the Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence. Finally, he breaks down the interest groups involved in British abolitionism, highlighting how rudimentary a force it was before 1788, and thus unlikely in itself to have their intellectual strength to mount a challenge against a vital part of the Imperial economy.
Brown assembles the evidence for all this through extensive reading of abolitionist literature mostly published during the period after the Seven Years' War and before the French Revolution. Is he successful in making his case?
The answer has to be that this is indeed an interpretation of the evidence that must be addressed by subsequent researchers, but the case itself goes to far and in the end (see pp. 419-20) he has to resort to speculation. Nonetheless, his approach to the evidence is much more in line with my ideas about how to write history, especially when he describes how he tackles the Evangelicals (see p. 335). The problem remains, however, that he starts his inquiry from an end result -- the full-blown British campaign for abolition of the slave trade -- which prevents him from a more open-ended reading of the evidence. We see this in the final chapter, an epilogue of sorts that reviews a counterfactual interpretation of an abolition campaign without American Independence. In this, I think his counterfactuals cover far too narrow a range. The departure from the Real Time-Line would be much more dramatic (and earlier) than Brown allows.
The book itself is daunting going for a non-academic reader. The review of the evidence is quite detailed, and the footnotes (yay, real footnotes!) are an indispensable part of his argument. He is rarely interested in personal details, but only in the life of the mind. It is, however, a valuable contribution to the complex history of the intersection of slavery, imperialism and race, as well as the history of the Anglosphere.
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