THE FIRST ABOLITIONISTS

The First Abolitionists: How Britain Turned Against Slavery - and Fought to End It Across the World

Slavery is as old as civilisation itself. For five thousand years, from the clay tablets of ancient Mesopotamia to the dhow routes of the Indian Ocean, every great culture on earth practised it, justified it, and profited from it. No nation thought seriously to end it - until Britain did.

The First Abolitionists tells the full, remarkable story of how a small island nation became the first great power in history to turn against the slave trade, to outlaw it, and then to spend sixty years of blood and treasure enforcing that prohibition on a reluctant world. It begins with the twelve men who gathered in a London printing shop in 1787 and ends with a Royal Navy vessel on patrol in the Mediterranean today. In between lie some of the most extraordinary chapters in British history: the parliamentary battles of William Wilberforce, the horseback investigations of Thomas Clarkson, the testimony of the formerly enslaved Olaudah Equiano, the gun-decks of the West Africa Squadron, and the diplomatic siege of Zanzibar conducted by the remarkable John Kirk.

This is an unapologetically pro-British story - told with honesty about the contradictions and commercial hypocrisies that accompanied the achievement, but in no doubt about the achievement itself. No other nation did what Britain did. No other nation abolished the trade first, enforced the abolition at sea for six decades, pressed sixty bilateral treaties on reluctant governments, and closed the East African slave market through sheer diplomatic persistence. Britain earned this record, in the fever-ridden harbours of the West African coast and in the carved-door offices of Stone Town, and it deserves to be celebrated.

The story does not end in 1807, or 1833, or 1890. An estimated 49.6 million people live in conditions of modern slavery today - more than at any point during the height of the Atlantic trade. The Royal Navy is still at sea. The war that began in a printing shop has never ended. The First Abolitionists tells you why it started, how it was fought, and why it still matters.