Letters

November/December 2007 · Historically Speaking 43 Letters To the Editors: EricArnesen Responds: Asaregularreaderof HistoricallySpeaking,Iwaspleased to see the articlebyEricArneseninyourlastissue. Askingwhom onewrites history for, andwhat academics and those who write for the general public can learn from each other are just the sort of important questions that don't get addressed often enough. I'm also grateful for the compliments he paid my last book, Bury the Chains: Prophets andRebels in the Fightto Free an Empire'sSlaves. However, there is one respect in which I feel Arnesen made me into a bit of a straw man, for the purpose of contending that between "popularizers" and "academic scholars" there is a gap that is seldom bridged. I am so focused on the key leaders of the Britishantislaverymovement,he says,thatIignorethe intellectual currents and social forces thatallowed dieir movementto succeed. "BurytheChainsis decidedlynot an exploration of ideas and ideologies ... or of the broadersocial,economic,andpolitical forces shaping [the abolitionists'] protests." It is true that I tried to tell the story of this movement through concentrating on some of its leaders (andopponents). Butitisnottrue thatI ignored the social and intellectual context thatprovided such fertile ground for them. The book has an entire chapter devoted solely to this question: Why was abolition such a powerful, vocalpopular movement in Britain when nothingremotelysimilareverappearedin the othersix European countries with slave colonies in the Americas ? I point to various factors that played a role in laying the groundwork for this, including, among other things,Britons' immenseprideinthe civilliberties they enjoyed; the widespread sense of national outrage— aboutwhich LindaColleyhaswritten—atthe surprisingly numerous occasions when Britons themselves were taken captive overseas; and the vigorous public debate over whether those thirteen pesky colonies in North America should have the right to freedom, somethingwhoseconnectionto abolitionChristopher Leslie Brown has described. And finally I suggest anothercrucial factorthatother historians have ignored in relationto abolition: theheated, decades-longfeuding , in print, in Parliament, and in repeated street violence , over another form of servitude very close to home—naval impressment. To me all of this constitutes a serious lookatboth social forces and "ideas and ideologies" that form part of the world of abolition, even though diese maynot be the ones thathistorians of slavery havetraditionallypaidthemostattentionto: the rise of evangelicalism and the now-stale debate over Eric Williams. Arnesenisright,though,thatinwritingnarrative, character-based history there is a danger that one can pay too scant attention to die larger forces that allow those individuals to have impact. Interestingly, one rarelyencounters thatobjection to books aboutpolitical leaders who are widely acknowledged to have William Wilberforce, from Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce (London, 1838). shaped the course of events, such as Hider or Napoleon. ButIwouldarguethatthereareothertimes when lesser-known collections of individuals have considerable impact. The early British abolitionists were one such group, although they could only have ignited the movement they did because the social and intellectualtinderwas extremelypropitious. Some sort of antislaverymovementwouldhave beforelongbeen born even if Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and their colleagues had not existed and had not, in 1 787, begun the immensely imaginative, determined, well-planned campaign that resulted in the House of Commons vote to ban the British slave trade in 1792. (The House of Lords refused to follow suit,butitwas still a landmark.) Even a short delay before the right combinationof people camealongto ignitethatsocial tinder for abolition would have seen history unfold very differendy, because in 1793 Britain and France began two decades of war—always an unpromising time forthe birth of anyprogressive socialmovement. Another set of individuals who had an immense impactwere the 20,000Jamaican slaveswho rose upin rebellion in 1831-32. Followingthat, high militaryand civilian officials cameback to Britainto testifybefore Parliament that further revolts were likely and that at some point the army might not be able to contain them. The nextyear, 1833, Parliamentvotedto emancipate the British Empire's slaves. Are 20,000 rebel slaves a collection of individuals or a social force? It is not always easy to distinguish the two. History is alwaysacombinationofpeoplewhoselives andactions weknowsomethingabout, andthelargersocial,intellectual , and economic currents inwhich we all swim. I believe there is ahappy middle groundwhere one can usethe skills of both a scholar of those currents and of a narrative storyteller. Adam Hochschild San Francisco, California I...