The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series) - Hardcover

Draper, Nicholas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521115256 ISBN 13: 9780521115254

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Book Description:

Challenging conventional narratives of abolitionist Britain, this book, provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent and importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society by drawing on the records of the Commissioners of Slave Compensation, who were responsible for distributing compensation to slave-owners when slavery was abolished.

About the Author:

Nicholas Draper is Research Associate at the Department of History, University College London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0521115256
• ISBN 13: 9780521115254
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416