Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves

The New Yorker

Hochschild’s history of British abolitionism notes that ending slavery would have seemed as unlikely in eighteenth-century England as banning automobiles does today. Despite the “latent feeling” among intellectuals that slavery was barbarous, Caribbean sugar plantations were seen as a necessary part of the economy. Prefiguring many social movements to come, the anti-slavery crusade was driven by the partnership between a committed activist, Thomas Clarkson, and a connected politician, William Wilberforce. It was Clarkson and his Quaker associates who pioneered the use of petitions, eyewitness accounts, and even an early, innocent form of direct-mail solicitation. Hochschild argues that the violent techniques of naval press gangs primed England’s populace to consider the plight of the slaves. His capacious narrative is both disturbing and fascinating, and not without its ironies: when Parliament finally did abolish slavery, in 1833, plantation owners were generously compensated for their loss of “property.”

Steven Mufson

Adam Hochschild's wonderful, vivid new Bury the Chains argues, in part, that the British abolition movement of the late 1700s pioneered the strategies that every activist group now takes for granted: direct mailings, legal test cases, campaign pins, grassroots lobbying. … Fascinating as this is, what makes Hochschild's book so readable is the rich cast of characters who created the movement, and the appalling nature of slavery itself. This isn't just any social movement, and the reader can't help but share the mingled sense of outrage and disbelief that the abolitionists themselves must have felt as they witnessed or heard about the incredible inhumanity of this practice.
— The Washington Post

Marilynne Robinson

… Hochschild interprets the success of the British abolitionist movement as a triumph of empathy, a humane response to horrors of which the public only gradually became conscious.
— The New York Times

Library Journal

Hochschild (King Leopold's Ghost) enlightens general readers on the main men (and at least one woman), methods, and motivations behind the cause officially launched in 1787 that culminated by 1838 in the formal end of forced labor in the British Empire. Hochschild successfully anchors his work of synthesis around the personalities of Olaudah Equiano, an ex-slave author of a famous memoir; John Newton, the former slave ship captain who later authored "Amazing Grace"; Thomas Clarkson, an investigative journalist; William Wilberforce, the essential inside agitator and conscience-driven evangelical Member of Parliament; and Elizabeth Heyrick, a radical Quaker essayist. The author's intent is to show how this drive in Britain both transformed a world in which it was the norm for "the vast majority of people [to be] prisoners" and set a precedent for using committees, petitions, lapel buttons, and other forms of agitation to mobilize public opinion. In gruesome detail, the reader learns that profits from the slave trade ironically provided the funds for university libraries, hospitals, poorhouses, and elegant residences. Although scholars of this period should already be well acquainted with these empathetic reform figures, the nonprofessional history buff will benefit from this concise and readable summary of their accomplishments. Recommended for general history collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/04.]-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A late-18th-century band of abolitionists in England begins the movement that will eventually free nearly one million slaves across the British Empire-and show the world that idealism and a passion for human rights can fill the sails of the ship of state. Hochschild (King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, 1998, etc.) has crafted a powerfully inspiring tale of how a few-a persistent few-can eventually convince the many to question their most fundamental beliefs. In May 1787, a dozen men, mostly Quakers, met in London to discuss ways they might bring about the end of England's involvement in the slave trade. Among them was Thomas Clarkson (the only one to live long enough to see the deferred dream realized), an indefatigable, creative advocate for human rights. The author says Clarkson has been neglected by history, but he emerges here as a moral warrior of the highest rank. Hochschild demonstrates persuasively that Clarkson and his followers (who eventually numbered in the hundreds of thousands) created and employed techniques for public persuasion still common today: boycotting, petitioning, direct-mail fund-raising. These men, though impelled by moral motives, argued the economic case for abolition, as well, this back in a time when slavery was a pervasive feature of life on every continent, and people questioned the practice no more than we question our use of automobiles. One of Hochschild's great strengths, indeed, is his ability to get inside the 18th-century mind and show how our ancestors' assumptions parallel our own. Personal histories of the principals (William Wilberforce, James Stephen, John Newton) have their place, and Hochschildexplains how geopolitical forces, especially England's bitter rivalry with France, affected the movement. Some of the details about conditions on slave ships, including the brutalities of repression and retribution, are painful to read. A chronicle of a rare and radiant victory by our better angels. (16 pp. b&w photos, not seen)Author tour. Agent: Georges Borchardt