This collection of essays probes British efforts to abolish the slave trade internationally in the 19th century and how they impacted local discourses and practices relating to slavery and abolition in other continents and countries (Africa, the Americas, Asia). Coming in the wake of the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade by Britain in 1807, it insists on the ambiguous imperial ambitions of Britain, as well as on local initiatives to abolish slavery which did not simply draw their inspiration from Britain and the humanitarian rhetoric of the abolitionists.

The book also highlights local resistance and opposition to British influence exerted through diplomatic and economic pressure, in an age of nationalism and still profitable slave-based economies.  It portrays the 19th-century movement to abolish slavery as a truly international phenomenon, responding to local and national rationales and discourses as well as British influence.

ABOUT THE EDITORS
MYRIAM COTTIAS is senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. She is an historian of Slave societies in the Caribbean and a specialist of the question of memory of slavery. She is the author of La question noire. Une construction coloniale (Paris: Bayard, 2007) and with Hebe Mattos, Esclavage et subjectivités. Histoire des catégories racialisées dans l’Atlantique français et lus-brésilien (Rio, Paris: OpenEdition, 2016).

MARIE-JEANNE ROSSIGNOL is a Professor of American Studies at University Paris Diderot. A specialist of North American antislavery, she has recently published The Atlantic World of Anthony Benezet (1713-1784): From French Reformation to North American Antislavery Activism (Leiden: Brill, 2016). She is currently editing the French translation of Some Historical Account of Guinea, Benezet's 1771 antislavery pamphlet.

CATEGORY
History/AFRICA

PUBLICATION YEAR
2017

PAGE COUNT
442 Pages