ABSTRACT
The emergence of the British abolitionist movement has often been conceived as a direct response to the trauma of the American Revolutionary War. On the contrary, British anti-slavery mobilisation against the slave trade emerged and flourished in moments of national optimism and confidence. Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery identified a combination of British industrialisation and the American War of Independence as the prime stimuli in the emergence and triumph of British abolition. The American Revolutionary War crisis produced a good deal of shock, but almost nothing by way of arousal against slavery or the slave trade. American economic difficulties overseas were compounded by a political crisis within the American confederation. America actually became more negatively linked to slavery during the post-war years. Christopher Brown has richly detailed the way in which blacks were woven into the British metropolitan consciousness in a new way following the American War.
