Reviews for Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves

The average rating for Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-06-26 00:00:00 Christopher Ishii Five stars might be a hair too much, but it was pretty close. I do not read much history but was intrigued by Thomas Clarkson and a friend recommended this book because he features prominently in it. Hochschild's writing is lively, interesting, and informative through the whole book. He doesn't sugar coat the major players who helped end the British slave trade, which I appreciated, and which often happens in the Christian world concerning Clarkson and especially Wilberforce. Still, he lauds them plenty and I thought, appropriately. Some parts of the book brought me to tears (as well as gritting my teeth at the mindset of those who supported slavery) with the descriptions of slave treatment as well as the fervor with which the abolitionists canvased the country, petitioned their government, and in general, fought for the cause of people thousands of miles and an ocean apart from them. Considering how prevalent human trafficking continues to be in our present day, I am inspired and hopeful that Clarksons and Wilberforces, who are driven by their faith, can still bring freedom to those in chains. I only hope I can be one of them.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-10 00:00:00 Phil Halliwell A very interesting and, despite its grim subject matter, a very enjoyable book. Actually, insofar as the subject matter is the abolition, first of the British trans-Atlantic slave trade, and subsequently, of slavery in the British Empire, it is not grim, but uplifting. The author paints the movement as the prototype of contemporary activist causes. Petitions, graphic images, local committees, boycotts, speaking tours all were used - perhaps for the first time, or for the first time on such a scale - as part of this campaign. There are two particular points of interest I'd like to mention. First, the author asks why in Britain, rather than anywhere else, such a strong momentum should have taken hold for abolition. There may, of course, be many different factors at work: the compactness of the country, coupled with a relatively good road/communication system, made it easy for people in one place to get their message to people in other places, and so on. But the author identifies one highly idiosyncratic factor at work: the pressgang. For at least a century or so, the people of Britain had been terrorized by the prospect of being snatched off the streets and pressed into naval service. The pressgangs were, unsurprisingly, widely feared and hated. The author conjectures that this personal taste of slavery created a level of empathy in the country for the plight of slaves everywhere. A second point is this. One is forcefully struck by the role played here by figures who are either eccentric or morally equivocal. Of the first, the most notable is Granville Sharp. He was obsessed with the anglo-saxon political system of frankpledge. He assiduously tried to foist it on the colony of repatriated slaves in Sierra Leone. He also produced a steady stream of publications on such diverse topics as the election of Bishops, the use of the English alphabet, riparian culture, classical grammar, land-carriages and roads, how closely the description of Babylon in the Bible corresponds to Rome, etc. etc. etc. As I said, your average 18th century English eccentric. Yet among this scatter-shot range of interests, the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery loomed extremely large. One can imagine working with him, perhaps becoming irritated beyond endurance by his oddity. Perhaps even now, in our own varieties of activism, we know similar people. But history will certainly remember him kindly. Among the morally equivocal I number William Wilberforce. To him often goes the lion's share of the credit for abolition of the slave trade. He was undoubtedly a stalwart in this regard (though the author clearly takes the main mover to be the much more sympathetic-to-modern-sensibilities Thomas Clarkson), and evidently he was a man of great heart and charity at a personal level. But he was vigorously opposed to all attempts to improve the lot of workers in England at this time, supporting draconian oppression of Luddites and other industrial freedom fighters; and he expected everyone (emancipated slaves included) to assume their pre-ordained (usually inferior) places in society with gratitude and resignation. It is hard (for me at least) not to feel a measure of anger at and repulsion for the man. And yet, in some way, he was a great hero. This phenomenon - of those we greatly admire turning out, when taken in the round, to be much more equivocal than our admiration easily allows - is, of course, ubiquitous. But the story told in this book makes it especially evident, perhaps because it is both modern enough to allow such comparisons, but old enough to ensure that positions and sensibilities will not always align in a way that modern progressives will be happy about. It was inspiring to learn about the role of women in the anti-slavery movement in Britain at this time. They were often much more radical than their male counterparts. In particular, Elizabeth Heyrick sounds like she really kicked ass. It's a shame that so little of her is preserved. Of course, when emancipation came for the slaves of the British Empire, their lot did not greatly improve. They owned nothing; the means of production were still in the hands of the former slave owners (who were also generously compensated by the government for their loss) and real slavery was simply replaced by debt-slavery and wage-slavery. Still, the emancipation was a first, necessary step in a much longer fight for justice. So I close with a beautiful quotation from William Morris that the author gives, not made originally a propos of this case, but perfectly suited to it: "Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name."