ABSTRACT
This book has attempted to map a culture of antislavery which incorporated understandings of and responses to the process of industrialisation, but which also extended beyond such preoccupations. The more the culture has been analysed in this extended way, the more appropriate it has seemed to characterise antislavery as constituting a series of changing alliances. The alliances necessarily had strong integrating features but were at the same time composed of distinct elements with divergent attitudes and emphases. This is especially apparent if due recognition is given to antislavery Rational Dissenters and Unitarians whose significance has often not been appreciated. Heterogeneity of religious and intellectual tradition, and of attitudes on a range of issues, create complexities for the interpretation of antislavery, exemplified in abolitionist activists, as facilitating the hegemonic class interests of a developing industrial bourgeoisie. Equally, from such a perspective, any simple alternative reading of abolitionists as predominantly advancing on a broad front the values of freedom and independence and thus defining the core of a general movement of improvement and liberalisation, is problematic.1
