The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery

When colonial slavery was abolished in 1833 the British government paid 20 million to slave-owners as compensation: the enslaved received nothing. Drawing on the records of the Commissioners of Slave Compensation, which represent a complete census of slave-ownership, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent and importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society. Moving away from the historiographical tradition of isolated case studies, it reveals the extent of slave-ownership among metropolitan elites, and identifies concentrations of both rentier and mercantile slave-holders, tracing their influence in local and national politics, in business and in institutions such as the Church. In analysing this permeation of British society by slave-owners and their success in securing compensation from the state, the book challenges conventional narratives of abolitionist Britain and provides a fresh perspective of British society and politics on the eve of the Victorian era.

Author: Nicholas Draper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 07/18/2013
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.22lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.85d
ISBN: 9781107696563

About the Author
Draper, Nicholas: - Nicholas Draper is Research Associate at the Department of History, University College London.

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