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”If any man should buy another man … and compel him to his service and slavery without any agreement of that man to serve him, the enslaver is a robber, and a defrauder of that man every day. Wherefore it is as much the duty of a man who is robbed in that manner to get out of the hands of his enslaver, as it is for any honest community of men to get out of the hands of rogues and villains.” (Ottobah Cugoano, Thought and Sentiments on the evil and wicked traffic of the slavery and commerce of the human species (1787))
The British campaign for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery is often considered one of the most successful movements of social reform in the 18th and 19th centuries. The name most readily associated with it is that of its leader, William Wilberforce, whose efforts have been widely commemorated. However, the abolition campaign was the concerted effort of various groups of people, and the reasons that led to the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the abolition of slavery in 1833 are complex. Historians have criticized the focus on Wilberforce as an example of the whitewashing of this part of British history, since the contributions of Black British people, as well as the role of slave rebellions, have often been neglected (see, for example, Peter Fryer’s Staying Power – the History of Back People in Britain (1984), and David Olusoga’s Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016)).
Texts:
In this course, we are going to take both a historical and a contemporary perspective and analyse 18th/19th -century texts (campaign material, excerpts from slave narratives, speeches and poems), as well as two contemporary British films that deal with abolition, Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace (2006) and Amma Asante’s Belle (2013). The readings will be made available to you at the beginning of the semester. Please be advised that all readings and screenings in the course are required and that some texts contain graphic violence (including sexual violence). |
