Bury the Chains

Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves

Adam Hochschild

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780547526959
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

From the author of King Leopold's Ghost, a narrative history of the social justice campaign formed in the fight to free the slaves of the British Empire.

In early 1787, twelve men—a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery—came together in a London printing shop and began the world's first grass-roots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens' movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft chronicle of this groundbreaking antislavery crusade and its powerful enemies,  Bury the Chains gives a little-celebrated human rights watershed its due.

A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller

A Book Sense Selection

"By far the most readable and rounded account we have of British antislavery, a campaign that, as the author rightly claims, helped to change the world and can be seen as a prototype of the modern social justice movement." —Robin Blackburn, Los Angeles Times Book Review  

"A thrilling, substantive, and oftentimes raw work of narrative history. In its own fashion, it furthers the abolitionists' crucial work of lifting our moral blindness." —Maureen Corrigan, National Public Radio's Fresh Air

Index

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T| U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Aberdeen (Scotland), 170

Abingdon, Earl of, 243

Abolitionists. See Antislavery movement (in Britain)

Abstract of the Evidence delivered before a select committee of the House of Commons . . . for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 196–98, 317, 318, 366, 391

Act Against Tumultuous Petitioning, 138

Adams, John, 101

Adams, John Quincy, 347

Adultery Prevention Bill, 187

Affirmative action, 202

Africa

Equiano’s early life in, 30, 173, 369–72

forced marches of captured slaves in, 16, 31

indigenous slave dealers in, 2, 16, 21–22, 30–31, 135, 188, 208, 271, 361

kidnapping in, 16, 31, 135, 158, 188, 208, 369

as part of triangle voyages, 20

payment for slaves in, 16, 21, 31, 62, 112, 120, 131, 135, 208, 360–61

question of whether Equiano was born in, 369–72

slave forts in, 24–28, 145, 176, 179, 208, 209, 212, 261, 361–62

slavery in, 2, 16, 30–31, 311, 349

tourists in, 361—62

wars in, 161, 271, 361

See also African(s); specific places and peoples in

Africa (ship), 115–16

African(s)

as allegedly having no objections to slave trade, 190

and Clapham Sect, 251

in debating societies, 136–37, 168

first British trade in, 14

former, as Sierra Leone settlers, 200–208

image of kneeling, 128–29, 133–34, 259, 326, 348, 353

kidnapping of, for slavery, 16, 31, 135, 158, 188, 208, 369

number of, among Demerara slaves, 329

number of, transported to New

World annually, 2, 3, 13–14, 32, 50, 300, 375

number of, transported to New World by Liverpool ships, 117

St. Domingue slaves as, 27...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Note
• Introduction: Twelve Men in a Printing Shop
• WORLD OF BONDAGE
• Many Golden Dreams
• Atlantic Wanderer
• Intoxicated with Liberty
• King Sugar
• A Tale of Two Ships
• FROM TINDER TO FLAME
• A Moral Steam Engine
• The First Emancipation
• “I Questioned Whether I Should Even Get Out of It Alive”
• Am I Not a Man and a Brother?
• A Place Beyond the Seas
• “Ramsay Is Dead—I Have Killed Him”
• “A WHOLE NATION CRYING WITH ONE VOICE”
• An Eighteenth-Century Book Tour
• Photos
• The Blood-Sweetened Beverage
• Promised Land
• The Sweets of Liberty
• High Noon in Parliament
• WAR AND REVOLUTION
• Bleak Decade
• At the Foot of Vesuvius
• Redcoats’ Graveyard
• “These Gilded Africans”
• BURY THE CHAINS
• A Side Wind
• Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?
• “Come, Shout o’er the Grave”
• Epilogue: “To Feel a Just Indignation”
• Appendix: Where Was Equiano Born?
• Source Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Illustration Credits
• Index
• About the Author
• Footnotes