The Other Slavery - Maury A. Bromsen Memorial Lecture

In the final decades of the eighteenth century, misgivings about the British Atlantic slave system coalesced into an organized antislavery movement. As part of their campaign to convince the public of the need for reform, abolitionists portrayed West Indian planters as possessing lower moral and cultural standards than their metropolitan counter-parts. Using sources from the JCB, this talk shows how depictions of slave owners formed a major axis of dispute in the debate over the future of slavery in the British Atlantic. In so doing, it highlights how slaveholding generated anxieties about British identity and the resiliency of the British character on the frontiers of empire.

Matthew Wyman-McCarthy (Columbia University), Barbara S. Mosbacher Fellow