Few phenomena of modern history have cast so long a shadow as that of black slavery or branded themselves so deeply in the historical consciousness of both Africa and the Western world. Inevitably it has left a trail of controversy, not least among historians, who take violently opposed views of the internal effects of the slave trade upon Africa, who magnify or disparage its role in the Atlantic economy, and who assign widely differing explanations of British moves to secure its abolition. It is symptomatic of the paradox of much of our contemporary intellectual culture that under the influence of historical materialism it should instinctively deny an autonomous role to ideology while remaining itself so ideologically oriented. Yet the central statement of this viewpoint, Eric Williams' celebrated Capitalism and Slavery, undoubtedly threw a salutary douche of cold water over the smug complacency that had hitherto infected the received accounts of British abolition. The argument that British abolition, far from being an act of pure disinterested benevolence, fell into line with the country's economic interests and with the change from commercial to industrial capitalism has never been fully countered. The more exaggerated elements in his thesis have been duly assailed. That the profits of the slave trade should have been sufficiently large and well-directed to power the Industrial Revolution is a hypothesis as far-fetched as that which sees the wealth accumulated from the plunder of Bengal after the battle of Plassey as the main source of investment capital. Yet when purged of such exaggerated claims Williams' argument remains formidable. As D. B. Davis has acknowledged: "It is ... difficult ... to get around the simple fact that no country thought of abolishing the slave trade until its economic value had considerably declined." - Foreword.

In this classic analysis and refutation of Eric Williams's 1944 thesis, Seymour Drescher argues that Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807 resulted not from the diminishing value of slavery for Great Britain but instead from the British public's

A new history of the abolition of the British slave trade "Easily the most scholarly, clear and persuasive analysis yet published of the rise to dominance of the British in the Atlantic slave trade--as well as the implementation of abolition when that dominance was its peak."--David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Parliament's decision in 1807 to outlaw British slaving was a key moment in modern world history. In this magisterial work, historian David Richardson challenges claims that this event was largely due to the actions of particular individuals and emphasizes instead that abolition of the British slave trade relied on the power of ordinary people to change the world. British slaving and opposition to it grew in parallel through the 1760s and then increasingly came into conflict both in the public imagination and in political discourse. Looking at the ideological tensions between Britons' sense of themselves as free people and their willingness to enslave Africans abroad, Richardson shows that from the 1770s those simmering tensions became politicized even as British slaving activities reached unprecedented levels, mobilizing public opinion to coerce Parliament to confront and begin to resolve the issue between 1788 and 1807.

15 originale essays om den globale betydning af ophævelsen af den atlantiske slavehandel