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

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the extent and importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society.

Nicholas Draper (Author)

9780521115254, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 December 2009

416 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.79 kg

'… a valuable contribution to emancipation studies, and most appropriate for upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level courses.' Scott Hancock, The New West Indian Guide

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.

Introduction
1. The absentee slave-owner: representations and identities
2. The debate over compensation
3. The distribution of slave compensation
4. The structure of slave ownership
5. The large-scale rentier owners
6. 'Widows and orphans': small-scale British slave-owners
7. Merchants, bankers and agents in the compensation process
8. Conclusion
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1]