About this title: Adam Hochschild's study of the Atlantic slave trade examines the breadth and depth of this institution in the British Empire, its role in the English economy, and the efforts of many who worked strenuously, over decades, to change it. Hochschild makes clear the devastations of slavery, underscoring how humans were considered to be disposable property--a work force easily and quickly replenished--and shows how its horrors were counterbalanced by the enormous efforts of Englishmen and Englishwomen to use the power of the law to end this indefensible practice.
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Description: Good. Purchasing this item supports Pierce County libraries. Thriftbooks and PCL have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. 2005-Hardcover----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Description: Good. 2006-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780618104697ISBN:0618104690
Description: Fine in fine dust jacket. An excellent copy. The pages are clean and unmarked. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 468 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780618104697ISBN:0618104690
Description: Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. 0618104690. An exceptionally nice near fine copy with clean and bright cover and interior pages. Mylar cover.; 8vo 8"-9" tall; 480 pages. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780618104697ISBN:0618104690
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Ex-library. ex lib book in very good condition. usual markings. Clean and well kept. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 468 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: First edition. Gilt lettering on spine.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780618104697ISBN:0618104690
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Ex-library. Minimal library markings. Binding strong & tight, pages bright & clean. Text unmarked. Dj protected by mylar. No dog ears. Appears to have never been checked out. Glued binding. Paper over boards. 468 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Date Published: 2005-01-07
ISBN-13:9780618104697ISBN:0618104690
Description: F Fine in NF Near Fine jacket. Hardback with Dustjacket. Book is like new with no creases to cover and all pages clean. Binding is tight and square. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Date Published: 1/7/2005
ISBN-13:9780618104697ISBN:0618104690
Description: New. 2005 FIRST EDITION with all the numbers. Hardback w/ DJ. You are buying a Book in NEW condition with very light shelf wear to include very light edge and corner wear. Buy it Now! ! ! As always, thank you for buying this book from International Book Source, YOUR ONE source FOR ALL your BOOK related NEEDS. Please remember to CHOOSE carefully how QUICKLY you would like to RECEIVE this material FAST, or standard (on next page). Thanks again! ! ! ! read more
Description: Like New. Houghton Mifflin, HC with DJ, 2004, 1st printing. Appears never read, clean, tight binding, no markings or highlighting, minimal shelf wear. read more
"Well written history about how a small group of men in England carried out the campaign that first banned the slave trade, then eventually emancipated slaves throughout the British Empire.
The author also traces out how these men basically developed many of the tools currently used (for better or worse) by community activists to effect social change in modern times. Tools like the boycott, petitions, publishing articles and books to convince others to support your goal, develop grassroots organizations of sympathizers and network with other organizations that agree with your goals, etc. (The author would be hardpressed to see any use of these tools by community activists as something "for the worse" - the author's academic liberal viewpoint permeates the book.)
The main characters (on both sides of the conflict), their characters, thoughts and actions are presented in great detail. The book also has voluminous footnotes, a very extensive bibliography, and an excellent index. So it would be useful to others interested in the same time period (and/or events) of British Empire history."
"Well this book was...intellectually stimulating. I wouldn't have picked it up on my own, but as a required book it was pretty good. It tells the often overlooked story of Britain's abolition movement, one that most American history students don't really know about. As dense as this book is, the author manages to keep the narrative in a lighter tone so that the writing isn't boring. He highlights the interesting stories of a few key people to get the point across, rather than giving a general overview, which not only keeps it from being boring but also makes the reader feel more immersed and involved by knowing more details. This nonfiction story brings up several important questions: what are human rights? is it our responsibility to help people thousands of miles away? how can just a few people make such a huge change possible? And the book really focuses on the determination, perserverance, and dedication of those few people that never give up in such a large undertaking as the abolition of the British slave trade and the abolition of slavery itself. And although the book is long as it tells a tale that spans over fifty years, when you think about it, it's kind of amazing that (*spoiler alert*) Britain abolished slavery in only fifty years. People had thought it an impossible goal and yet it was achieved. That's kind of cool.
So overall, this book was pretty good. Not my favorite book of the summer nor very fun to read, but it was interesting (in retrospect) and I'm sure it'll prompt some interesting classwork."
"This is a book for liberals. It wants you to believe that good people can make social change happen after a long period of dedicated agitation. It also wants to give you some tips about how a successful movement in the past made it happen. It's a good read, although it goes off in two many different directions, acquiring a lot of characters who enter and then disappear without much apparent reason. I ran into a college student recently who said that he read it for a class and found it inspirational."
"Adam Hochschild is an exceptionally talented researcher and writer. This book is about the British antislavery movement in the late 18th century. Although most of the activists favored emancipation, the movement's explicit goal was more modest--abolition of the British slave trade. This was still an extremely ambitious, almost outlandish, aim at the time. The slave trade and slave-produced goods were a huge part of the British economy. Hochschild compares the importance of sugar then to oil today. The British Carribean colonies, such as Jamaica, Barbados, and St. Domingo (now Haiti), had climates ideal for sugar cane cultivation. And the labor was brutal--so much so that while the slave population of the American South grew over time, that of the Carribean islands declined, and constantly needed to be replenished by the slave trade. (It was called the "triangle trade" because sailors would sail from Britain to the coast of Africa, where they would trade goods for slaves, then transport the slaves (in horrific conditions) to the Carribean (this part of the journey was called the "middle passage"), where they would trade the slaves for sugar and rum.)
To convey how absurd the idea of abolishing slavery seemed at the time, Hochschild invokes another analogy: it would be as though a small group today convened and decided that, for environmental reasons, we needed to abolish cars. I don't know if that's an exaggeration or not. His main thesis is that the abolitionist campaign pioneered most of the tools of activism that would come to be commonplace: media campaigns (activists enlisted sympathetic poets the way we would solicit op-eds today); boycotts (there was a widespread sugar boycott); petitions (the only way most citizens could make their voices heard in a time when few could vote); testimony before Parliament; and letters to supporters laying out the facts. The commercial interests also pioneered some tactics still in use, such as appropriating the language of their critics, and claiming, for example, not that slaves were unworthy of concern, but that slavery was good for them.
Hochschild explores why the movement took hold in Britain long before it would elsewhere. He theorizes that it had to do with a contradiction in British life: people in some ways had more liberties than in other countries, and prided themselves on a robust free press and freedom of speech generally. But at the same time, there was a tradition of the "press gang," in which the Royal Navy would essentially kidnap young men and press them into service for all the wars they were engaged in. So the people had a taste of freedom, which made them want to share it with others, but they also had the experience of basically a form of slavery, which made them more empathetic with the African slaves.
Another factor Hochschild points to is geography: the movement's most tireless activist, Thomas Clarkson, spent years riding horseback all over the country organizing. He would not have been able to do that in a bigger or less developed country.
Reading this book made me think anew about activism. In recent years, I have shied away from activism and tend not to particularly like the activist personality. Temperamentally, I'm more comfortable with observing, making nuanced, pragmatic, moderate conclusions. Activists often seem self-righteous, unrealistic, and annoying to me. In reading this book, I realized that I might have felt the same way about these characters, even though now we see them as indisputably heroic. To us, slavery seems like such a clear-cut wrong. But it wasn't so clear-cut at the time; it had been a reality for all of recorded history. Today, things that can appear nuanced will someday, perhaps, be seen as just wrong. Indeed, one other point that emerges from the book is that what replaced slavery wasn't always so different from slavery itself. Ex-slaves in the Carribean had to pay rent and taxes. So they usually ended up continuing to work for the plantation owners and paying their meager wages in rent--to the plantation owners. Or, sometimes, the owners would strike a deal: the freed slaves could live rent-free if they would forgo their wages. Given the lack of real alternatives, this seems hard to distinguish from slavery.
You may be wondering (if you've read this far) why I didn't give the book five stars. I was extremely impressed by Hochschild's skill, and I'd be overjoyed if I could write a book like this. But I didn't feel really gripped by the characters, really invested in them personally. Still, I'd recommend this book to anyone."
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