‘For our necessities and luxuries in life, for the employment of our people, for our revenue, for our very position in the world as a nation,’ observed the Earl of Clarendon, President of the Board of Trade, in 1846, ‘we are indebted to the production of slave labour’ (p. 98). Like Clarendon, Britons struggled throughout Victoria's reign to resolve the dilemma of whether Britain could, or even should, isolate itself from thriving slave systems around the globe. What form would British anti-slavery take after British colonial emancipation? What did being an anti-slavery nation dictate for an anti-slavery state? More importantly, what role would anti-slavery play in the British imperial world system? These questions, and their manifold legacies, are the focus of Richard Huzzey's compelling account of British Anti-Slavery.
