God’s Work: Antislavery and Religious Mobilization

Structural Transformation and Value Change: The British Abolitionist Movement

“…However, the mechanism for its effect is more aligned with the theory of Davis (1966): consistent with that account, rising industrial wealth enabled the rise to power of groups with distinct values, which were aligned with abolition and other progressive causes. Finally, and consistent with the account in Drescher (1986), our model provides an explanation for why the participation of industrialists in the abolitionist movement enabled the mass mobilization of broader segments of the middle classes, who shared progressive values, but lacked the political power to effect reform.…”

“…Accounts differ on whose ideas propelled the movement. Drescher (1986) established that anti-slavery was primarily a middle class phenomenon, driven by social strata such as artisans and miners who were threatened by the emerging system of capitalist labor relations. These groups, excluded from the political system, channeled their demands via extra-institutional means, like public petitions to Parliament.…”

“…Some have focused on economic factors, emphasizing the declining importance of the colonial sugar trade for the British economy as the industrial sector rapidly expanded (Williams 1944). Others have placed more emphasis on cultural explanations (Ashworth et al 1992), observing that abolitionism was a social movement with mass participation from the middle classes, which mobilized not only against slavery, but also in favor of several other reformist causes (Drescher 1986). But while most supporters of abolition belonged to the middling strata of craftsmen, artisans and professionals, some views hold that anti-slavery primarily reflected the ideology and interests of a rising industrial elite, whose attacks on the institution of slavery served to legitimize a new capitalist order reliant on free labor (Davis 1975).…”

“…The aggregate connection between industrialization and petitioning for abolition could be driven by middling social strata or even by the working class (Drescher 1986). To better understand whether industrial elites played a distinct role in petitioning campaigns, we exploit one of the few surviving anti-slavery petitions, which was produced in 1806 in the industrial city of Manchester.…”

A Nation of Petitioners

“…The estimated number of signatures on anti-slave trade and anti-slavery petitions increased from 60-75,000 (1788), 350-450,000 (1792), 750,000 (1814), to the 1.3 million signatures recorded in 1833. 53 The 37 petitions for parliamentary reform in 1779-1780 contained as many as 60,000 signatures, but the radical campaign of 1817 yielded 700 petitions with an estimated 1 million signatures, representing perhaps a quarter of the adult male population. 54 These figures illustrate the massive growth of petitioning, but it is important to remember that many late eighteenth century campaigns, such as the 1779-1780 reform movement, sought to mobilise counties and major towns rather than maximise the number of petitions and signatures more generally.…”