ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to extend and refine discussion of the cultural identity of antislavery reformers by analysing their relation to various kinds of reform. The opportunities afforded by abolitionists’ positive identification with philanthropic, moral and other reform activities, which mainly drew support at the level of subscription and organisational activity from the middle classes, are several. It becomes possible to understand on a broader social canvas both the characteristic preoccupations of reformers in the separate religious-intellectual traditions and their overlap and close collaboration on a number of questions. Because it is apparent that joint endeavour was often especially effective on issues within individual communities, the product of multiple layers of interlocking activity, a sketch of a broad front of reformers in action on specific terrain is feasible. Focus on antislavery within the middle-class reform complex also prompts recognition that parallel to its own international pretensions were other movements with ambitions for moral and material reformation abroad. Similarly, building on Britain’s enhanced international political and economic position at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, English reformers sought extension of their influence through links with like reformers in other countries and through the moral and ideological penetration of territories under British rule. As abolitionists and proponents of other projects of betterment, reform circles were equally progressively permeated by liberal economic ideas, whether derived from the political economists or evangelical pundits like Thomas Chalmers; they were thus encouraged to develop connections between the new international economic order and their ambitions for improvement far beyond Britain. Some reformers at least essayed a moral reach no secular British political leader would have attempted.
