This collection of fifteen insightful essays examines the complexity and diversity of Quaker antislavery attitudes across three centuries, from 1658 to 1890. Contributors from a range of disciplines, nations, and faith backgrounds show Quaker's beliefs to be far from monolithic. They often disagreed with one another and the larger antislavery movement about the morality of slaveholding and the best approach to abolition. Not surprisingly, contributors explain, this complicated and evolving antislavery sensibility left behind an equally complicated legacy. While Quaker antislavery was a powerful contemporary influence in both the United States and Europe, present-day scholars pay little substantive attention to the subject. This volume faithfully seeks to correct that oversight, offering accessible yet provocative new insights on a key chapter of religious, political, and cultural history. Contributors include Dee E. Andrews, Kristen Block, Brycchan Carey, Christopher Densmore, Andrew Diemer, J. William Frost, Thomas D. Hamm, Nancy A. Hewitt, Maurice Jackson, Anna Vaughan Kett, Emma Jones Lapsansky-Werner, Gary B. Nash, Geoffrey Plank, Ellen M. Ross, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, James Emmett Ryan, and James Walvin.

One of the very few firsthand accounts written by a Liverpool slave ship captain to have survived, this unique and fascinating primary source navigates the reader through the remarkable story of James Irving, a Liverpool slave ship captain who was shipwrecked off the coast of Morocco and subsequently enslaved. Schwarz skillfully supplements Irving’s personal journal and letters with useful notes, making this an essential volume for anyone interested in the relationship between the slave trade and the British Empire. Slave Captain is a compelling narrative that will be welcomed by the general reader and scholars alike.

"The History of the Abolition of African Slave-Trade" contains a unique contemporary account of the abolition movement in the Great Britain from one of its major leaders, Thomas Clarkson. In his book, Clarkson describes thoroughly the Quaker background to the abolitionist movement and the parliamentary debates leading to the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

In the later eighteenth century, the West Indian sugar islands were a source of conspicuous wealth for some individuals and an important addition to the resources of Great Britain. This book examines Edmund Burke's long involvement with the West Indies, examining his conflicted attitudes to slavery and the maintenance of Britain's imperial reach.

Although much has been written about Scottish involvement in slavery, the contribution of Scots to the abolition of black slavery has not yet been sufficiently recognised. This book starts with a Virginian slave seeking his freedom in Scotland in 1756 and ends with the abolition of the apprenticeship scheme in the West Indian colonies in 1838. Contemporary documents and periodicals reveal a groundswell of revulsion to what was described as "e;the horrible traffik in humans"e;. Petitions to Parliament came from remote islands in Shetland as well as from large public meetings in cities. In a land steeped in religion, ministers and church leaders took the lead in giving theological support to the cause of abolition. The contributions of five London Scots who were pivotal to the campaign throughout Britain are set against opposition to abolition from many Scots with commercial interests in the slave trade and the sugar plantations. Missionaries and miners, trades guilds and lawyers all played their parts in challenging slavery. Many of their struggles and frustrations are detailed for the first time in an assessment of the unique contribution made by Scotland and the Scots to the destruction of an institution whose effects are still with us today.