The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery

By Nicholas Draper

Book Overview

When colonial slavery was abolished in 1833 the British government paid 20 million to slave-owners as compensation: the enslaved received nothing. Drawing on the records of the Commissioners of Slave Compensation, which represent a complete census of slave-ownership, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent and importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society. Moving away from the historiographical tradition of isolated case studies, it reveals the extent of slave-ownership among metropolitan elites, and identifies concentrations of both rentier and mercantile slave-holders, tracing their influence in local and national politics, in business and in institutions such as the Church. In analysing this permeation of British society by slave-owners and their success in securing compensation from the state, the book challenges conventional narratives of abolitionist Britain and provides a fresh perspective of British society and politics on the eve of the Victorian era.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1107696569
• ISBN13: 9781107696563
• Release Date: July 2013
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"