Session Abstract

Roundtable Proposal

Places in the Transnational History of Abolition

            This roundtable explores the different sites of abolitionist activism in the Atlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Historians increasingly understand abolition as a transnational movement that developed distinctly in discrete national and colonial settings. Recent scholarship, represented by some members of this roundtable, has stressed the interplay between metropolitan politics in European nations and colonial slave regimes in the Americas in the history of abolitionism.  Employing this perspective has allowed historians of abolition to expand on the traditional boundaries of the movement and argue for the centrality of slave resistance in the movement for abolition. For example, the French and Haitian Revolutions are now increasingly understood as a pivotal moment in the history of western abolition. This panel will also highlight connections in not only the Anglo-American abolition movements, as has been well-established, but also between the movement to abolish slavery in the United States in the nineteenth century and the Brazilian and Cuban abolition of slavery that soon followed.

            The work of the historians in the panel speaks to each other and also represents expertise in distinct areas of abolition. Robin Blackburn, who will chair and comment, has always employed a hemisphere-wide approach in the study of slavery and abolition. His recent work has highlighted the significance of the Haitian Revolution in the global history of abolition. Seymour Drescher, one of the foremost authorities on British abolition, will discuss the abolition movement in Britain and emancipation in the West Indies. Drescher contests the importance of Haiti in the coming of abolition. David Geggus, who has published widely on the Haitian Revolution and French abolition, has also emphasized the contradictory effects of the revolution in Haiti in the Americas. Christopher Schmidt-Nowara’s work on Spanish abolition and Cuba has helped pioneer the notion of a “second slavery” in the nineteenth century in the United States, Cuba and Brazil. His work on abolition underscores the relationship between political liberalism in metropolitan Spain with the politics of slavery and colonial administration in the Americas. Finally, Manisha Sinha, who is completing a book on the abolition movement in the United States from the American Revolution to the Civil War, will argue for an “internationalist” perspective in understanding the history of American abolition. She will look at the impact of the Haitian revolution and slave rebellion on American immediatists and situate the abolition movement in the larger Atlantic context of revolution and reform.

            This roundtable will bring cutting edge scholarship on abolition to the conference and should provide a fruitful conversation on connections and disruptions in the transnational history of abolition in different geographical places. Its broad purview is well-suited to the AHA and it should attract historians from different areas interested in the history of slavery and abolition.

Submitted by Manisha Sinha