From Slavery to Freedom

Spanning four decades of debate on slavery and anti-slavery, this is a detailed comparative analysis of the transatlantic slave trade and abolition movements of 19th-century Europe and the Americas, and their continuing impact on 20th-century politics and race relations. Leading up to his argument that the end of slavery was not due to economic decline, but rather the cause of it, the author focuses on the dynamic interaction of economic modernization, religion and politics in early industrial nations. He seeks to expand the scope of abolition scholarship by including planters, merchants, parliament, abolitionist saints, and the working classes, and also turns his attention to questions arising from black-Jewish relations in the United States, the role of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade, and the comparative barbarism of slavery and the Holocaust.