ABSTRACT
Slaves themselves instigated incessant and often massive revolts for centuries before the emergence of political abolitionism. The level of revolts in both ancient Roman and Medieval Muslim slavery produced uprisings of scale and durability that matched or exceeded similar conflicts in the Americas. The outstanding result of the revolt was its transformation into a quasi-metropolitan popular contention. After Haiti, Joao Pedro Marques aptly shifts his attention to the large-scale British slave uprisings that erupted between the ending of the Napoleonic wars and British slave emancipation. In most processes of emancipation, however, neither philosopher kings nor slave generals played the principal roles. In the wake of Barbados, British abolitionists skillfully developed arguments to mitigate and even defend the slaves' resistance, but their posture remained largely defensive. The British economy was more prosperous than its more slave-dependent competitors. It civil society allowed more leeway for continuous political action.
