Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
As we have seen in the cases of North America, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Continental Europe, the boundaries between slavery and antislavery in most of the Atlantic world appeared to shift as a result of unforeseen and unintended outcomes of violent struggles fought for other purposes. Within one nation, however, the boundaries shifted in a deliberative process matched only in one corner of the northern United States. Britain also experienced enormous vicissitudes in dealing with its overseas slave systems during the two generations after 1775. In the first decade of that period (1775–1783), the imperial power with the world's largest and most productive slave system lost control of half of it. In the middle decades of that period (1794–1814), the Caribbean remainder of that slave system was first threatened and then enlarged. On the eve of the post-war peace settlement with Europe, the British Empire again ruled over more slaves than it had at the outset of the American Revolution.
In 1814, Patrick Colquhoun estimated Britain's imperial slave population at 1.15 million, consisting of 634,000 in the British West Indies, 372,000 in conquered Caribbean colonies and 108,000 in conquered Asian colonies and dependencies. Even setting aside India, the British institution encompassed a slave population equal to those of the United States and more than those in Brazil. The trajectory of Britain's policy toward slavery was not primarily dictated either by the loss of its North American slave sector or the later dramatic threats to some Caribbean islands in the mid-1790s.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.