Religion, Urbanisation and Anti-Slavery Mobilisation in Britain, 1787–1833

Quirk, Joel; Richardson, David

doi:10.1080/13825577.2010.517298

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The 1788 petitioning campaign was an important reference in the first debate in Parliament in May 1789, which considered total abolition. This debut lay the foundations of a new domestic and, later on, worldwide policy (Quirk and Richardson 2010). The Manchester petition, emblematic of this campaign, bore 11,000 signatures, a fifth of the city's population.…”

Section: The Chronology Of British Abolitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Signatures of Social Structure: Petitioning for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Manchester

Makovi¹

2019

Soc. sci. hist.

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This article considers the problem of popular, collectively organized political action in the context of the abolition movement of the slave trade (1788-1807). Various primary sources, a petition, a trade directory, church records, and a self-built historic GIS are used to locate petitioners for abolition in the social fabric of Manchester. Through matching and computational experiments the article highlights which social structural forces led individuals to support the abolition movement by signing a petition. Specifically, gathering places that were historically involved in the movement, as well as those that housed traveling merchants from communities with successful abolitionist petitions from preceding campaigns shaped abolitionist petitioning-and the impact of these institutions remained important over and above family ties, active religious congregations, and the occupational groups. The article gives a new understanding of the role that early industrialization played in the abolition movement, building it from the bottom up, forging cohesion within and across communities through local institutions, rather than creating new boundaries and divides through processes of class formation.

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Section: The Chronology Of British Abolitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Signatures of Social Structure: Petitioning for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Manchester

Makovi¹

2019

Soc. sci. hist.

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“…33 The number of Quaker meeting houses is the only constituency-level variable that consistently predicts MPs' anti-slavery positions. This is unsurprising, as religious dissent and anti-slavery sentiment were closely connected at the local level (Quirk and Richardson 2010). Industrial interests remain a strong and significant predictor.…”

Section: Votes For Abolitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mobilization can happen through petitioning, campaigning, lobbying representatives or, if group members ideas spread to the rest of the population and foment a mass movement. For instance, Quirk and Richardson (2010) highlight the role of rapid urbanization in permitting the creation of networks and organizations that could spread new ideas fast. Other theories have also been articulated on the connection of capitalism and abolition, for instance a link between exposure to market activity and internalization of the welfare of distant others (Haskell 1985).…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural Transformation and Value Change: The British Abolitionist Movement

Figueroa,

Fouka

2023

SSRN Journal

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“…Attention to popular abolitionism led a recent generation of historians to emphasize sociocultural explanations for British legislation abolishing the slave trade in 1807 and colonial slavery in 1833, rather than the logic of new economic interests in the next phase of capitalist development (Bender 1992;Brown 2006: 12-23;Drescher 2011). However, while we may understand the origins of antislavery sentiment better than ever before (Brown 2006;Carey 2012), we still lack explanations for the novel popular expression of that sentiment as a national campaign in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Andrews 2007(Andrews : 1232Palmer 2009;Quirk and Richardson 2010). A microhistory of one petitioning community cannot determine the relative power of economic concerns, slave resistance, and moral anxieties in deciding the votes of parliamentarians, but it can help to explain the mobilization of political pressure upon those legislators.…”

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confidence: 99%

A Microhistory of British Antislavery Petitioning

Huzzey¹

2019

Soc. sci. hist.

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This article refines our understanding of abolitionism as “the first modern social movement” through a microhistory of abolitionism in an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British town. Examining requisitions, which collected signatures calling on a mayor to convene public meetings to launch parliamentary petitions or other associational activities, the article shows how antislavery mobilization in Plymouth grew amongst a multiplying variety of religious, political, cultural, and economic institutions. Through a prosopography of those initiating antislavery petitions, an analysis of the other requisitions they supported, and qualitative evidence from leading abolitionists’ personal papers, the article details the ways local leaders raised petitions for a national campaign. Civic and religious dynamism at this local level facilitated new forms of contentious mobilization on national and imperial issues. The article therefore directs causal attention to those socioeconomic changes that underpinned the associational cultures of abolitionism.

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Religion, Urbanisation and Anti-Slavery Mobilisation in Britain, 1787–1833

Cited by 8 publications

References 20 publications

The Signatures of Social Structure: Petitioning for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Manchester

The Signatures of Social Structure: Petitioning for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Manchester

Structural Transformation and Value Change: The British Abolitionist Movement

A Microhistory of British Antislavery Petitioning

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