Bury the Chains - Rambling Readers

496 pages

English language

Published Feb. 10, 2006 by Mariner Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-618-61907-8

(1 review)

An account of the first great human rights crusade, which originated in England in the 1780s and resulted in the freeing of hundreds of thousands of slaves around the world. In 1787, twelve men gathered in a London printing shop to pursue a seemingly impossible goal: ending slavery in the largest empire on earth. Along the way, they would pioneer most of the tools citizen activists still rely on today, from wall posters and mass mailings to boycotts and lapel pins. Within five years, more than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat the chief slave-grown product, sugar; London's smart set was sporting antislavery badges created by Josiah Wedgwood; and the House of Commons had passed the first law banning the slave trade. The activists brought slavery in the British Empire to an end in the 1830s, long before it died in the United States.

4 editions

Dancing Treefrog reviewed Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild

Review of 'Bury the Chains' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Well written history about how a small group of men in England carried out the campaign that first banned the slave trade, then eventually emancipated slaves throughout the British Empire.

The author also traces out how these men basically developed many of the tools currently used (for better or worse) by community activists to effect social change in modern times. Tools like the boycott, petitions, publishing articles and books to convince others to support your goal, develop grassroots organizations of sympathizers and network with other organizations that agree with your goals, etc. (The author would be hardpressed to see any use of these tools by community activists as something "for the worse" - the author's academic liberal viewpoint permeates the book.)

The main characters (on both sides of the conflict), their characters, thoughts and actions are presented in great detail. The book also has voluminous footnotes, a very extensive bibliography, …

Well written history about how a small group of men in England carried out the campaign that first banned the slave trade, then eventually emancipated slaves throughout the British Empire.

The author also traces out how these men basically developed many of the tools currently used (for better or worse) by community activists to effect social change in modern times. Tools like the boycott, petitions, publishing articles and books to convince others to support your goal, develop grassroots organizations of sympathizers and network with other organizations that agree with your goals, etc. (The author would be hardpressed to see any use of these tools by community activists as something "for the worse" - the author's academic liberal viewpoint permeates the book.)

The main characters (on both sides of the conflict), their characters, thoughts and actions are presented in great detail. The book also has voluminous footnotes, a very extensive bibliography, and an excellent index. So it would be useful to others interested in the same time period (and/or events) of British Empire history.