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Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
Houghton Mifflin
January 2005
480 pages
ISBN: 0618104690
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Historical
From the author of the prize-winning King Leopold's Ghost
comes a taut, thrilling account of the first grass-roots
human rights campaign, which freed 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. This talented group combined a hatred of injustice
with uncanny skill in promoting their cause. 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. However, the House of Lords, where slavery backers were
more powerful, voted down the bill. But the crusade refused
to die, fueled by remarkable figures like Olaudah Equiano,
a brilliant ex-slave who enthralled audiences throughout
the British Isles; John Newton, the former slave ship
captain who wrote "Amazing Grace"; Granville Sharp, an
eccentric musician and self-taught lawyer; and Thomas
Clarkson, a fiery organizer who repeatedly crisscrossed
Britain on horseback, devoting his life to the cause. He
and his fellow activists brought slavery in the British
Empire to an end in the 1830s, long before it died in the
United States. The only survivor of the printing shop
meeting half a century earlier, Clarkson lived to see the
day when a slave whip and chains were formally buried in a
Jamaican churchyard. Like Hochschild's classic King Leopold's Ghost, Bury the
Chains abounds in atmosphere, high drama, and nuanced
portraits of unsung heroes and colorful villains. Again
Hochschild gives a little-celebrated historical watershed
its due at last.
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