Customer Reviews

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture)

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Moral Capital is a powerful and intricate exploration of the ideas and motives that underlay the British anti-slavery movement. Brown begins by positing that moral disapproval alone is not sufficient to end a practice like slavery-- the issue must acquire weight in the public mind and must attract individuals who are willing to devote time, energy, and creativity to creating a concrete plan to end it. He illuminates the tangled motives of the early abolitionists; some sought to help the British empire adjust to a new geopolitical reality in the wake of American independence, while the vigorous evangelical wing of the movement sought to save souls. Brown suggests that, had the American Revolution not occurred, emancipation might have been more difficult to achieve-- not because the moral will wasn't there, but because ending slavery would have been seen as a politically divisive move in a fragile empire.

As another reviewer noted, this is a long, dense book, laden with historiographical musings, and it can be slow going. It is more suitable for scholars than for popular readers. But if you persevere through all 462 pages, your patience will be rewarded with valuable insights not just into the history of British anti-slavery, but also into the structural dynamics of moral movements in general.

This is a great attempt to understand how the British turned against the enslavement of Africans. It is sad to note that it took a bloody Civil War, the worse conflict involving Americans, to end slavery on these shores.

I had to read this for a graduate seminar, and it was inetresting. Brown tries to argue that the abolishionist movement sprung from the American Revolution. Its an inetresting argument and one worth reading.

HOWEVER....my biggest problem of the book has to do with what it is trying to combat. The Clarkson Thesis states that abolition sprung out of religious philanthropy. Brown says this is ludacris and their were other reasons. There is absolutely no way to determine if someone trully in their heart wanted to free slaves because they felt that it was morally wrong. There is no way to show one way or another; therefore, it is futile to even try arguing for or against. It seems that the core of his book seems to refute the christian philanthropy stance.....I suppose the foundation to his argument is in limbo then.

However, the complaint aside, Brown makes an interesting observation concerning the relationship between the American Revolution and teh rise of the abolition movement.

Brown tries to delve into abolitionists' motives. The result is an overly long book full of equivocations. It's a hodge-podge, wherein on one page, he questions the abolitionists' sincerity because they objected to slavery on religious grounds and on another page he admits that they were dedicated to abolition as an end in itself. And so it goes on and on and on....very slowly and with no apparent end, or resolution, in sight.