The price of emancipation : slave-ownership, compensation and British society at the end of slavery
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The price of emancipation : slave-ownership, compensation and British society at the end of slavery
（Cambridge studies in economic history）
Cambridge University Press, 2010
- : hbk
Available at 14 libraries
Note
Bibliography: p. 370-388
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
When colonial slavery was abolished in 1833 the British government paid GBP20 million to slave-owners as compensation: the enslaved received nothing. Drawing on the records of the Commissioners of Slave Compensation, which represent a complete census of slave-ownership, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent and importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society. Moving away from the historiographical tradition of isolated case studies, it reveals the extent of slave-ownership among metropolitan elites, and identifies concentrations of both rentier and mercantile slave-holders, tracing their influence in local and national politics, in business and in institutions such as the Church. In analysing this permeation of British society by slave-owners and their success in securing compensation from the state, the book challenges conventional narratives of abolitionist Britain and provides a fresh perspective of British society and politics on the eve of the Victorian era.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. The absentee slave-owner: representations and identities
- 2. The debate over compensation
- 3. The distribution of slave compensation
- 4. The structure of slave ownership
- 5. The large-scale rentier owners
- 6. 'Widows and orphans': small-scale British slave-owners
- 7. Merchants, bankers and agents in the compensation process
- 8. Conclusion
- Appendix.
by "Nielsen BookData"