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 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 among 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 analysing this permeation of British society by slave-owners and their success in securing compensation from the state the book challenges conventional narratives of abolitionist Britain and provides a fresh perspective of British society and politics on the eve of the Victorian era.