Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838


Book Description

Although much has been written about Scottish involvement in slavery, the contribution of Scots to the abolition of black slavery has not yet been sufficiently recognised. This book starts with a Virginian slave seeking his freedom in Scotland in 1756 and ends with the abolition of the apprenticeship scheme in the West Indian colonies in 1838. Contemporary documents and periodicals reveal a groundswell of revulsion to what was described as "e;the horrible traffik in humans"e;. Petitions to Parliament came from remote islands in Shetland as well as from large public meetings in cities. In a land steeped in religion, ministers and church leaders took the lead in giving theological support to the cause of abolition. The contributions of five London Scots who were pivotal to the campaign throughout Britain are set against opposition to abolition from many Scots with commercial interests in the slave trade and the sugar plantations. Missionaries and miners, trades guilds and lawyers all played their parts in challenging slavery. Many of their struggles and frustrations are detailed for the first time in an assessment of the unique contribution made by Scotland and the Scots to the destruction of an institution whose effects are still with us today.







Parliamentary Papers


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The Athenaeum


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The Examiner


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Christianity and the Colonisation of South Africa, 1487-1883


Book Description

The initial religious encounters between settlers in southern Africa and the indigenous inhabitants entailed the establishment of settler churches and the relationships with their home countries. However, this era saw little by way of the spread of Christianity. In 1799, with the arrival of Johannes van der Kemp and other missionaries from the London Missionary Society, Christianity began to cross colonial boundaries, marking the great era of missions in southern Africa. At the outset, the missionary presence remained precariously perched between success and failure. While missionary influence among the indigenous peoples was relatively insignificant, the opposite was true within the colony. At the same time, expansion pressures from the Cape precipitated growing conflict between settlers and indigenous peoples. Increasingly, missionaries were caught between the interests of indigenous peoples and those of the colony. For the most part, they sided with their colonial heritage and roots, but in some significant instances, their identification with indigenous people led them to take extremely unpopular stands against both Boer and British colonial authority. Such conflicts are traced at various levels throughout this book. The broader spread of Christianity during this period is also examined through multiple voices and stories.