The seven essays in this collection began life as a series of lectures organized by the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade. Part of the intention, clearly, was to rethink the boundaries of abolitionism by placing it in a wider geographic context. As Derek Peterson suggests, from the first abolitionism cultivated “a symbiotic relationship with empire, as empire was the sphere within which benevolent government could most readily act” (10). In short, center and periphery (Africa, the Caribbean) were inextricably intertwined. Perhaps just as important, those at the margins appropriated abolitionist rhetoric and adapted it to their own purposes. Indeed, one of the strengths of this collection is its attention to the afterlife of British abolitionism, a story that on the evidence presented here extends far into the twentieth century.

As Boyd Hilton reminds us, explaining abolition has generated heated controversy. His own reflections as a historian of eighteenth-century Britain lead him to stress the importance of religion and providential themes of punishment and atonement. But abolition was never entirely a British affair. In a typically thoughtful essay, Phillip Morgan invites us to see abolition not in terms of the triumph of ideology over interests but as “a coalescence of interests and ideology” (121). Rebellious slaves and reform-minded planters both played a part here, he argues, as did imperial policy makers. Interestingly, Morgan also draws attention to the impact of African colonization schemes on wider debates about abolition, a theme also picked by Christopher Leslie Brown in his chapter, “Empire without America: British Plans for Africa in the Age of the American Revolution.” The history of these schemes, notably the ill-fated Sierra Leone experiment, is not a happy one. But this is perhaps to miss the point. Dreams of imperialistic expansion in Africa, particularly after the loss of the American colonies, helped to extend the appeal of British abolitionism. As Morgan succinctly puts it, “Without the long-standing hopes for a commercial empire in Africa, the abolitionists would have faced a much tougher struggle” (111).

Imperialism in many ways presents a trickier interpretative challenge. On the one hand, abolition undoubtedly shaped British imperialism, not least by making antislavery the gold standard of “civilization.” It is probably also true, as Seymour Drescher points out, that in committing themselves to abolition the British “helped expand the wealth and power of foreign states and empires more than their own” (135). On the other hand, in its emphasis on coercion and its disregard for African sovereignty, the abolitionist project was inherently imperialistic. In a telling contribution to this debate, Robin Law argues that British suppression of the slave trade tended toward illegality, not least by encroaching on the rights of African rulers to defend their own territorial waters. Perhaps just as revealing, the same policy in Law’s view led to attempts to redefine the boundaries of international law, so that while “civilized” nations could and did enter into legally binding “treaties,” which involved reciprocal rights, agreements with African rulers were usually referred to as “arrangements” and, hence, could be more easily broken. Here, in other words, we can see the legal and political trajectory that led to the European partition of Africa.

Abolitionism affected Africa in other ways, too. In his introduction, Derek Peterson reveals how after the Second World War the Nyoro people of Uganda used abolitionist imagery to establish their own unique identity. Similarly, Jonathon Glassman shows how abolitionism provided African and Arab activists in Zanzibar with a set of discursive themes that over the course of the twentieth century indelibly shaped their respective political agendas. Here and elsewhere, the contributors emphasize the need to integrate Africa into histories of abolitionism. John Thornton, for instance, raises some interesting questions about African political ethics and the slave trade (meaning, in this context, legal limits to who could be enslaved and when). What he has identified, in effect, is another form of black resistance, this time originating in mainland Africa, that like shipboard revolts on the Middle Passage and slave rebellions in the Americas forced Europeans to react accordingly.

Conference volumes can sometimes be a mixed bag, but Derek Peterson has succeeded in putting together a first-rate collection that extends our understanding of the global reach and influence of British abolitionism. Original and innovative, it offers a range of insights, not least about the legacy of abolitionism, that will have a major impact on future research in this area, while at the same time reshaping what has become known as the “new Atlantic history.” Beautifully produced by Ohio University Press, Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic is an important contribution to the growing literature on British abolitionism.