Bury the Chains
Subtitle: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
By: Adam Hochschild
Edition: First edition
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: December 8, 2004
Place of publication: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 468
ISBN-13: 9780618104697; 9780618619078
Copyright date: 2004
Subjects: Abolitionismus; Slavernij; Abolitionisme; Mouvements antiesclavagistes; Histoire; Antislavery movements; History
First sentence: Strangely, in a city where it seems that on almost every block a famous event or resident is commemorated by a blue andB white glazed plaque, none marks this spot.
Description: An account of the first great human rights crusade, which originated in England in the 1780s and resulted in the freeing of hundreds of thousands of slaves around the world. In 1787, twelve men gathered in a London printing shop to pursue a seemingly impossible goal: ending slavery in the largest empire on earth. Along the way, they would pioneer most of the tools citizen activists still rely on today, from wall posters and mass mailings to boycotts and lapel pins. Within five years, more than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat the chief slave-grown product, sugar; London's smart set was sporting antislavery badges created by Josiah Wedgwood; and the House of Commons had passed the first law banning the slave trade. The activists brought slavery in the British Empire to an end in the 1830s, long before it died in the United States.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 409-427) and index.
National Book Award Finalist, Nonfiction, 2005
$26.95
Printing statement: "MP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1"
Table of contents: title: World of bondage; title: From tinder to flame; title: A whole nation crying with one voice; title: War and revolution; title: Bury the chains.