The Price of Emancipation

"When colonial slavery was abolished in 1833, the British government paid £20 million to slave-owners as compensation: the enslaved received nothing. Drawing on the records of the Commissioners of Slave Compensation, which represent a complete census of slave-ownership, this book provides for the first time a comprehensive analysis of the extent and importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society. Moving away from the historiographical tradition of isolated case studies, it reveals the extent of slave-ownership amongst metropolitan elites, and identifies concentrations of both rentier and mercantile slave-holders, tracing their influence in local and national politics, in business, and in institutions such as the church. In analysipermeationermation of British society by slave-owners, and their success in securing compensation from the state, the book challenges convenarrativesrativess of abolitionist Britain and provides a fresh perspective of British society and politics on the eve of the Victorian era.