ABSTRACT
The interruption in the expansion of New World slavery as a result of the St Domingue revolution and the abolition of the British slave trade, however, generated expectation of a speedy end to the institution of slavery itself. Historians routinely conceive of British abolition as part of a long-term structural process, involving variables of demography, economics, political economy, ideology, class relationships, popular organization and slave resistance. The major episode of popular pressure against the slave trade occurred seven years later, in the summer of 1814. In a decisive move to internationalize the prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade, abolitionists launched one of the most extensively signed petitions in British history. Abolition was considered to be a major factor in the alignment of Yorkshire's electors. The Yorkshire election was more than simply evidence of the significance of abolition to the electorate.
