ABSTRACT
Samuel Moyn argues for an even greater disjuncture between the eighteenth and late twentieth centuries in the global history of human rights. The abolitions of the slave trade and slavery hold a special place in the history of the globalization of rights in law. The American Civil War and the political liberalization of the empire opened the door to a modest abolitionist revival. Focusing on the comparative histories of two major national and imperial initiators of antislavery action under the standard of universal humanity, this chater analyzes the implications of different paths to the globalization of human rights. The distance between the civil societies' approach to slavery in Britain and France is best illustrated by their divergent responses to one initial impact of the Saint-Domingue revolution. The rapidly shifting outcomes of revolutionary conflict resulted in dramatic transformations in the status and treatment of the slaves, ex-slaves, and re-enslaved in various parts of the French overseas empire between 1789 and 1815.
