In the introduction to Bury the Chains, Adam Hochschild cites Margaret Mead's claim, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world” (7). This assertion serves as the foundation for Hochschild's main thesis that the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, an organization consisting of Quakers and other “oddballs,” achieved its objectives by developing modern propaganda tools associated with the contemporary citizens’ interest group. The society pioneered the use of newsletters to keep its supporters informed (128). The famous image of a kneeling slave encircled by the phrase “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” produced by Josiah Wedgwood's workshops and employed by the society, was “probably the first widespread use of a logo designed for a political cause” (128). Olaudah Equiano's attempts to sell his narrative was “the first great political book tour” (168). The abolitionist-inspired refusal to buy slave-cultivated sugar was the first widespread “consumer boycott” (195). Not surprisingly, Hochschild finds the story of British antislavery agitation still relevant for contemporary political action when “we consider challenging the entrenched wrongs of our own age,” including the gap between the first and the third world, nuclear proliferation, deterioration of the environment, and the prevalence of war (365).

All history is to some extent influenced by contemporary concerns, but Hochschild's presentism leads to unusual analogies probably chosen with an eye toward a popular audience. Thus, a triumph in Cambridge University's Latin competition is equivalent to winning “the Heisman Trophy” (88), while the West Indies was the “Middle East of the late eighteenth century” (54). Perhaps more important, this presentism leads to an unsympathetic engagement with the past, particularly a tendency to judge people and institutions by modern standards. For instance, Hochschild claims the House of Commons on the eve of the Reform of 1832 was a “bizarre anachronism,” as if this were an objective fact (333). At the same time, although he does an excellent job describing the extent to which bondage was the norm for most people throughout the eighteenth-century world, he thinks slavery so manifestly outrageous that he does not appear to understand how people in the past could have tolerated or defended the institution once they comprehended its brutality. For this reason, he does not find it worthwhile to explain in much detail the arguments supporting or attacking slavery. Abolitionism was merely a matter of stirring “men and women to action … through vivid, unforgettable description of acts of great injustice done to their fellow human beings” (366). It seems Hochschild has fallen into the trap described by Robin Blackburn in which “the very revulsion prompted by the idea of slavery can lead to an oversimplified view of how easy it was to end it” (The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 [New York: Verso, 1988], 530).

Hochschild's narrative revolves around the personalities who insisted on presenting the British public with these descriptions of injustice. Each was perfect for his specific role, with Thomas Clarkson as the indefatigable organizer, Granville Sharp as the eccentric visionary, William Wilberforce as the respectable spokesman, Olaudah Equiano as the embodiment of the movement's objectives, and James Stephen as the master strategist. The story focuses on the unusual, idiosyncratic, atmospheric, and picaresque, which makes for entertaining reading. Focusing on individuals to such an extent, however, leaves important questions unanswered. Hochschild never studies in depth the forces that helped produce this movement in the first place, nor does he explain the great changes that made the British public responsive to the cause of antislavery. Politics is the art of the possible, but the conjunction of forces and events that made abolitionism and its triumph possible—in other words, the context and background to these individuals’ actions—never receives adequate treatment. Instead, in this case, to cite Ralph Waldo Emerson, “history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons” (90).

This difficulty stems from a lack of engagement with the historiography of abolition that has long emphasized the big picture. The relationship between abolition and the rise of capitalism, classes, and the market economy that has so exercised scholars since Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944) does not inform Hochschild's narrative in any way. The religious context within which the abolitionist movement developed also requires more elaboration. The sketches of the Evangelical movement and Methodism consist of vague paragraphs. Hochschild briefly discusses the Quakers but confines himself to their behavior (such as their use of “thee” and “thou,” their unwillingness to uncover heads except in the presence of God, and their democratic character) rather than doctrine and issues of deep piety. Hochschild includes a transatlantic angle in his story by describing how revolutions in France and the West Indies helped undermine British slavery, but his story does not cover important relevant developments in both North and South America. Most surprisingly, for all his claims on behalf of the society's modernity, Hochschild never discusses how the organization's machinery worked, especially the relationship between the London Committee and the provinces, something covered at length in J. R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery (London: Frank Cass, 1995).

Scholars familiar with the field will not find many original insights in this book, since Bury the Chains is a popular history that seeks to inspire and entertain. It may seem unfair to criticize such a work in an academic journal for not responding to current research in the field, but the public deserves a more nuanced and sophisticated popularization of this well-known story.