‘The slave trade obstructs the civilisation and commerce of the natives’: The evolution of culturalist views in the British Abolitionist Movement 1780-1833

Abstract

Since the second half of the twentieth century, revisionist historiography on the British abolitionist movement has examined the campaigns against the slave trade and slavery from new perspectives. However, despite featuring so heavily in abolitionist discourse, the role of culturalist views¬¬¬ —views that purported the superiority of British Christian culture— in the movement has been largely overlooked, with only one existing study taking a culturalist lens on British abolitionism. This thesis attempts to fill this gap by examining how and why culturalist views evolved in the British abolitionist movement between 1780 and 1833. By applying discourse analysis and contextualist theory, it analyses how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideas around progress, civilisation, and the moral improvement of enslaved Africans were employed in essays, reports, and parliamentary debates to argue for the ending of the slave trade and slavery in the British colonies. The first chapter examines the campaign against the slave trade between 1780 and 1807, focusing on the shift from religious to economic arguments, and the rise of ideas around Britain’s civilising role in Africa post-abolition. The second chapter examines the campaign against slavery between 1807 and 1833. It explores the overlooked role of the African Institution, and its aims of civilising Africa and implementing Slave Trade laws, and the influence of Evangelicals and Wesleyan Methodists as the campaign shifted to emancipation. It also looks at discourse around the potential economic development of Britain’s colonies if they were emancipated. In highlighting the centrality of culturalist views in the abolitionist movement, this thesis continues the revisionist trend of challenging arguments that celebrate the virtue and selflessness of British abolitionists.