ABSTRACT
Antislavery in Britain had a long and fluctuating history as a reform cause; it ultimately commanded the support of leading political and religious figures and the assent of a mass of ordinary citizens as petitioners. In many places it channelled the energies of leading figures in local communities whose passage through antislavery constituted a prominent aspect of their more complex engagement in moral and social improvement. It also contributed to the continuous working out of changing relations of power in particular localities in favour of some and to the detriment of other elements in a growing but heterogeneous middle class. As a subject of study, in other words, antislavery can be appropriately placed in the larger evolution of Britain in the later eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. Only recently, however, has historical writing begun to point in this direction.
