The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking

2. British Anti-Slavery and European International Society

C h a p t e r 2 British Anti-Slavery and European International Society The British Parliament’s 1807 decision to outlaw slave carrying by British subjects had profound international consequences. Having supported transatlantic slave trading for centuries as a central pillar of colonial projects in the Americas, British governments in the nineteenth century pursued a range of policies designed not only to end slavery in British territories, but also to restrict the slave systems of other political communities. This global campaign proved to be difficult, expensive, and divisive. In places untouched by organized anti-slavery, both slavery and enslavement continued to be regarded as politically legitimate and economically valuable, much as they had been in Britain in previous centuries. International contests over slavery and abolition not only aroused substantial vested interests, they also inflamed popular sentiments. Political elites throughout the globe were suspicious that antislavery masked other strategic goals, and were reluctant to embrace policies that were both politically unpopular and economically perilous. Many governments resisted external pressure for anti-slavery legislation for decades, but once they finally succumbed they quickly followed Britain’s example by celebrating their anti-slavery credentials and downplaying their earlier misdeeds . These individual decisions to first restrict and then eventually abolish slavery had important cumulative effects, leaving governments that continued to legally sanction slavery increasingly isolated from their international peers. This story can told in a number of different ways. In this chapter, I focus on the macrohistorical relationship between British anti-slavery, European “civilization,” and the global expansion of European political authority during Anti-Slavery and European International Society 55 the age of high imperialism. Drawing on a growing literature concerned with the history of European international society, I argue that the globalization of the Anti-Slavery Project usually involved one of three main paths; popular mobilization, armed conflict, and external pressure. In the vast majority of jurisdictions, the legal abolition of slavery was driven by external pressures, rather than domestic popular agitation. For most governments faced with international pressures, the main point at issue was not so much slavery per se, but instead what slavery came to symbolize about the “backward,” or “uncivilized ” status of their communities. In order to develop this line of argument , I have divided this chapter into four sections. The first section uses the concept of international society to analyze the key features of the Eurocentric international order within which global contests over slavery and abolition took place. The second section focuses on Britain’s campaign to build an antislavery consensus in Europe, and the attendant consequences of this campaign for evolving models of civilization. In the third section I extend this argument by arguing that the international history of anti-slavery advocacy can be primarily traced to evolving ideologies of European exceptionalism, rather than a commitment to human or racial equality. In the final section I use this argument to analyze the relationship between the legal abolition of slavery and the expansion of European political authority during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. European International Society in the Age of High Imperialism The concept of international society can be understood as both a set of theoretical claims and a historical category.1 The theoretical strand involves a distinctive image of international order, where common interests, institutions, and orientations (or the lack thereof) are held to play a central role in shaping relations between political communities. This image is commonly associated with the “Grotian Tradition,” which is held to occupy a middle ground between “Machiavellian” power politics and “Kantian” utopianism.2 From this vantage point, an international society is said to exist: “when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions .”3 This formula has both institutional and sociological dimensions. 56 Chapter 2 At an institutional level, scholars have emphasized the mediating role of a small number of core institutions, such as the balance of power, diplomacy, and international law, which help to maintain a fragile yet nonetheless identifiable international order. At a sociological level, scholars have emphasized the mediating influence of shared values, orientations, ideologies, and cultural identities in shaping relations between different political communities.4 Historical analysis of international society starts with the premise that there...