Research Catalog

Title

Bury the chains : prophets and rebels in the fight to free an empire's slaves / Adam Hochschild.

Author

Hochschild, Adam.

Publication

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, [2005], ©2005.

Supplementary Content

Publisher description

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 468 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"From the author of the prizewinning King Leopold's Ghost comes an account of the first grassroots human rights campaign, which freed hundreds of thousands of slaves around the world." "In 1787, twelve men gathered in a London printing shop to pursue a seemingly impossible goal: ending slavery in the largest empire on earth. Along the way, they would pioneer most of the tools citizen activists still rely on today, from wall posters and mass mailings to boycotts and lapel pins. This talented group combined a hatred of injustice with uncanny skill in promoting their cause. Within five years, more than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat the chief slave-grown product, sugar; London's smart set was sporting antislavery badges created by Josiah Wedgwood; and the House of Commons had passed the first law banning the slave trade."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Antislavery movements > Great Britain > History > 19th century
• Antislavery movements > Great Britain > History > 18th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 409-427) and index.

Contents

Introduction : twelve men in a printing shop -- 1. Many golden dreams -- 2. Atlantic wanderer -- 3. Intoxicated with liberty -- 4. King sugar -- 5. A tale of two ships -- 6. A moral steam engine -- 7. The first emancipation -- 8. "I questioned whether I should even get out of it alive" -- 9. Am I not a man and a brother? -- 10. A place beyond the seas -- 11. "Ramsay is dead - I have killed him" -- 12. An eighteenth-century book tour -- 13. The blood-sweetened beverage -- 14. Promised land -- 15. The sweets of liberty -- 16. High noon in parliament -- 17. Bleak decade -- 18. At the foot of Vesuvius -- 19. Redcoats' graveyard -- 20. "These gilded Africans" -- 21. A side wind -- 22. Am I not a woman and a sister? -- 23. "Come, shout o'er the grave" -- Epilogue : "to feel a just indignation" -- App. Where was Equiano born?

ISBN

• 0618104690
• 9780618104697
• 0618104690 (pbk.)
• 9780618619078 (pbk.)

LCCN

• 2004054091
• V9-K52363

OCLC

• 56390513
• ocm56390513
• SCSB-5125258

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries