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Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "WHEN PEOPLE DREAM of riches, their imaginations follow the shape of the economy..." (more)
Key Phrases: triangle voyage, sugar boycott, abolition committee, West Indies, Sierra Leone, West Indian (more...)

4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Men from England bought and sold me,/ Paid my price in paltry gold;/ But, though theirs they have enroll'd me,/ Minds are never to be sold." So went "The Negro's Complaint" by noted 18th-century poet William Cowper—written, says Hochschild, as an op-ed piece would be today, to spread the message of England's fledgling movement to abolish the slave trade. Hochschild, whose last book, King Leopold's Ghost, was a stunning account of the ravages perpetrated by Belgium on the Congo, turns to a more edifying but no less amazing tale: the rich, complex history of a movement that began with just 12 angry men meeting in a printer's shop in London in 1787 and, within a century, had led to the virtual disappearance of slavery.The men who met in James Phillips's print shop included Quakers, Evangelical Anglicans and a young Cambridge graduate who had had an epiphany about the evils of slavery while on the road to London. The last, Thomas Clarkson, became an indefatigable organizer, carrying out the first modern-style investigation into human rights abuses. Granville Sharp was an eccentric but socially respected man of progressive ideas who dreamed of founding a colony of free blacks in Africa. Within a short time these men and their colleagues had created a mass movement that included the first boycott, in which hundreds of thousands of Britons, chiefly women, refused to buy slave-made sugar from the Caribbean; petitions from all over the country flooded into Parliament; and a mass-produced drawing of a slaver's lower deck, showing where the slaves were densely crowded for the middle passage, became the first iconic image of human oppression.Hochschild tells of this campaign with verve, style and humor, but without preaching or moralizing, letting the horrific facts of slavery in the Caribbean (far more brutal than in the American South) speak for themselves. And he refuses to make saints out of the activists; while highlighting bravery in the face of death threats and physical violence by promoters of slavery, the author equally points out their foibles and failings, and the often ironic unintended consequences of their actions. Along the way, Hochschild illuminates how Britain's economy was dependent upon the slave trade, why England's civil society was particularly hospitable to a movement to abolish that trade, and the impact on the movement of the French Revolution and the particularly bloody slave uprising in French St. Domingue (today's Haiti). It's a brilliantly told tale, at once horrifying and pleasurable to read. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

Hochschild's history of British abolitionism notes that ending slavery would have seemed as unlikely in eighteenth-century England as banning automobiles does today. Despite the "latent feeling" among intellectuals that slavery was barbarous, Caribbean sugar plantations were seen as a necessary part of the economy. Prefiguring many social movements to come, the anti-slavery crusade was driven by the partnership between a committed activist, Thomas Clarkson, and a connected politician, William Wilberforce. It was Clarkson and his Quaker associates who pioneered the use of petitions, eyewitness accounts, and even an early, innocent form of direct-mail solicitation. Hochschild argues that the violent techniques of naval press gangs primed England's populace to consider the plight of the slaves. His capacious narrative is both disturbing and fascinating, and not without its ironies: when Parliament finally did abolish slavery, in 1833, plantation owners were generously compensated for their loss of "property."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (January 7, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0618104690
ISBN-13: 978-0618104697
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #507,255 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
WHEN PEOPLE DREAM of riches, their imaginations follow the shape of the economy. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
triangle voyage, sugar boycott, abolition committee, slave voyages, abolition petitions, abolition bill, slave vessels, black settlers, boiling house, proslavery forces

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
West Indies, Sierra Leone, West Indian, Granville Sharp, Royal Navy, House of Commons, Bance Island, John Newton, United States, James Stephen, South Carolina, Nova Scotia, Thomas Clarkson, House of Lords, James Phillips, New York, Church of England, Banastre Tarleton, French Revolution, American South, British Empire, John Clarkson, Prince of Wales, Privy Council, American Revolution

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Customer Reviews

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26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The struggle for abolition in the British Empire, March 30, 2005

By	Maureen Ogorman "leneker" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Bury the Chains recounts the story of the struggle for abolition in the British Empire. Author Adam Hochschild, concentrates on the fifty-year period leading up to the eventual emancipation throughout the British possessions in 1838. Hochschild's recent work King Leopold's Ghost also covered the topic of indigenous peoples oppressed by imperialist Europeans.

Starting in 1787 the work covers the efforts of a group of 12 men and those they inspired to work towards the abolition of the Slave Trade. During this time, Parliament was always a step behind popular opinion, which grew increasingly more anti-slavery with each passing year. It was not until Parliament itself was reformed in the 1830s that the necessary legislation could be passed to reflect the sentiment of the nation.

The book highlights many of the activists whose names have become footnotes to History. Olaudah Equiano was a freed slave who worked all his life to better the plight of Africans. His autobiography was a bestseller in its day and helped to spread the idea that Blacks could succeed as freemen. Granville Sharp, a musician, used his vast family connections to keep the issue in the public eye for decades. James Somerset sought his freedom in a landmark trial in 1772, which declared that all slaves were free once they came to England. An Anglican minister, Thomas Clarkson, worked for decades with politician William Wilberforce to show the evils of the slave trade.

Anti-Slavery activists created a public relations campaign that would seem right at home to the modern reader. Buttons, pins, posters, book tour, and other PR techniques were employed to win over the minds of the population. Clarkson developed a display of the shackles used by owners and toured through England and Scotland. The `Middle Passage' route, which carried slaves to their new homes in the West Indies, was made infamous by diagrams showing the crowded holds and high death rates.

The struggle had many success and as many, or more, failures. A model colony was set up in Africa to demonstrate the economic advantages to be gained by exploitation of the land and not the people. The climate and soil proved inhospitable to the European crops and the local tribes were hostile to efforts that would damage their trade with the Europeans. In the end, many of the colonists were reduced to working for the slave traders to avoid starvation.

The French Revolution seemed to offer the promise of freedom to those in bondage in French colonies. Many of the early supporters of the French Revolution felt it to be a decisive turning point in the Abolition movement. Within a few years, however, French Slave ships sailed again with ironic names like "Fraternite", "Egalite", and "Liberte". Napoleon's forces put down a slave revolt lead by Toussaint L'Ouverture but were forced eventually to withdraw his troops from the Island of St. Domingue. The loss of the island was a factor influencing Napoleon to sell the Louisiana Territory to Thomas Jefferson.

It was not until 1807 that the slave trade itself was banned by Parliament. It took another thirty years of work by the abolitionist movement, as well as reform of the electorate, before slaves in the West Indies were freed. By the time of emancipation, only one of the original twelve who started the movement was alive.

Created as a popular history, Bury the Chains is well written and fascinating. The general reader will find it to contain a good narrative filled with interesting events and memorable characters. The academic user will find the lack of footnotes in the text dismaying but all quotes and sources are well documented at the end of the book. The author uses both primary and secondary sources especially recent works such as journal articles and collections of primary documents. This book tells a remarkable story and it tells it remarkably well.

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51 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not great, January 28, 2005

By	Walter B. Stahr (Vienna, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a well-written, readable account of the British movement to end the trade in slaves. Hochschild argues, with justification, that this movement was in some ways the template for all future political movements, complete with newsletters, buttons, and boycotts. The main weakness of the book, in my view, is its failure to appreciate the transatlantic nature of the anti-slavery movement in the late 18th and early 19th century. Hochschild mentions only a few American antislavery advocates (curiously including Jefferson in his list); he fails to mention John Jay (who served as first president of the New York Manumussion Society from 1784 onwards) and Alexander Hamilton (another member of the NY Manumussion Society and proponent during the Revolution of a scheme to enlist blacks in the army and "give them their freedom with their muskets.") Anthony Benezet, whose antislavery pamphlets preceded and indeed guided the British, is given a brief mention. Those interested in the US side of the story could consult Ron Chernow's book on Alexander Hamilton or my new biography of John Jay, set to appear in March, as well as more specialized works such as Zilversmit, First Emancipation.

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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful writing, with some obvious bias, February 17, 2007

By	David Arndt (Grand Rapids, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (Paperback)

Hochschild has written a compelling, provocative book that I heartily enjoyed. In addition to good narratives and compelling anecdotes, he shines as he tries to make the social conventions and economic realities of the time period comprehensible today.
Mr. Hochschild is of the opinion that Wilberforce has received way too much credit for what was in reality a broad-based, complex movement of many decades. I have no problem with this and I respect his research and credentials. But he does seem to have an ax to grind with Christianity. No, I am not someone naive enough to hold that Christians can do/ have not done any wrong. But while Hochschild sometimes go to great lengths to make the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries comprehensible, he does not make this same effort for the Christians of that era.
Most notably, he singles out John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, for withering commentary. While I am not here to defend John Newton or assert he had no blind spots (like so many people of his day), I do think Mr. Hochschild trashes him unfairly. Christianity is not an instantaneous transformation but a lifelong process. The fact that John Newton left the slave trade, became a pastor but did not become a leader in the abolition movement somehow is incomprehensible to the author who infers that Newton's religion was a blind and hypocritical sham. This is most glaring sore point in an otherwise wonderful book that I am very glad to have read.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Bury the Chains
I'm only on chapter 7, but I can already tell that this is a great book! It is full of history, but it is so easy to read. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Albert B. Ames IV

4.0 out of 5 stars Very engaging history about the abolition of the slave trade
This is a very engaging history about the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. As author Adam Hochschild retells it, the realization about the evil of slavery came... Read more

Published 13 months ago by Andres C. Salama

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous Book about the First Activists
Wow. What a book. Well written, focused and full of the kind of historical details that are pertinent to the big picture. Read more

Published 18 months ago by H. Campbell

5.0 out of 5 stars the history not taught in British schools
Hochschild's vivid and compelling narrative on the the abolition of the slave trade in 18th century Britain provides insight beyond the period it describes to illuminate events in... Read more

Published 19 months ago by Count Zero

5.0 out of 5 stars "That lump of deformity, the Slave Trade"
"In 1787, approximately three quarters of the people on Earth lived under some form of enslavement, serfdom, debt bondage or indentured servitude. Read more

Published 20 months ago by Philip W. Henry

5.0 out of 5 stars change is possible
Beginning in 1555 and lasting for 350 years, the British empire bought, sold, and enslaved about 11 million African people. Read more

Published on June 21, 2007 by Daniel B. Clendenin

4.0 out of 5 stars How a group of activists changed the world
Hochschild tells the story of how a small group of Quakers, Anglicans and Methodists brought about the end of the slave trade. Read more

Published on May 7, 2007 by Simon Clark

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful but one-sided study of the abolition of slavery
The British Empire, so praised by our current rulers, was at root a slave empire, held together by slave-trading between slave colonies. Read more

Published on April 12, 2007 by William Podmore

4.0 out of 5 stars A Familiar Tale Told With Verve
"Bury the Chains" has little new data, but it is still a superbly written synthesis of a wide range of material on British antislavery. Read more

Published on March 2, 2007 by Chimonsho

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great and Flawless Book
I first read Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost and was very impressed with its depth of research and Mr. Read more

Published on June 5, 2006 by Bruce F. Knotts

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