As writer and grassroots campaigner, Thomas Clarkson was a central figure in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century anti-slavery movement. In this first biography of Clarkson in over three decades, John Oldfield explores his career and afterlife, focussing, in particular, on his commitment to rational critiques of the 'inefficiency' and 'impolicy' of the slave trade and his creation of an anti-slavery public. As his monumental History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade amply demonstrates, like many white activists Clarkson took it as axiomatic that emancipation was in the gift of people like himself, studiously avoiding any mention of African struggle or self-determination. Though controversial, his History would play a key role in the shaping of British identity post-1807 and a version of the abolitionist past that we are still contending with today, which viewed the legacy of transatlantic slavery through the moral triumph of Abolition.

‘John Oldfield has brought his unparalleled knowledge of abolitionism to bear in this portrait of Thomas Clarkson. An uncompromising and indefatigable man, he took the struggle against the slave trade and slavery across the country from the 1780s to the 1820s, mobilising an antislavery public. Convinced of his capacity to speak for others, and of the need for white men to civilize Africans, an internationalist committed to work with governments, he fashioned himself anew in the changing times of the 1840s and remains a key figure in any attempt to grasp the complex history of Atlantic slavery and abolition.'

Catherine Hall - author of Lucky Valley: Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism

‘A deeply researched and brilliantly written account of the life and work of Britain's 'other' great abolitionist. By exploring his subject's religious and literary influences as well as his political world, Oldfield has gifted us not only a first-rate study of the man, but a major contribution to our knowledge of the movement. Without doubt, this is the definitive biography of Thomas Clarkson.'

Ryan Hanley - author of Robert Wedderburn: British Insurrectionary, Jamaican Abolitionist

‘An incisive and illuminating study of the man dubbed a ‘moral steam engine', this book will be a new landmark in understandings of those who sought to end Britain's leading role in the slavery business.'

Richard Huzzey - author of Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain

‘As one of the key early architects of Britain's public memory of abolition, Clarkson has remained curiously undervalued within its history. Through nuanced and considered analysis, Oldfield reveals Clarkson's complex legacy as a pioneer of a new form of popular antislavery who was rarely a popular figure himself.'

Jessica Moody - author of The Persistence of Memory: Remembering Slavery in Liverpool, 'Slaving Capital of the World'

‘John Oldfield has given us a long overdue modern biography of Thomas Clarkson, a pioneer in the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. Oldfield's judicious yet compelling portrait of Clarkson is also a comprehensive view of the broader British antislavery movement in a transnational context.'

Manisha Sinha - author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition and The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, 1860–1920