Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006 M02 10 - 508 pages

From the author of King Leopold’s Ghost, a narrative history of the social justice campaign formed in the fight to free the slaves of the British Empire.

In early 1787, twelve men—a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery—came together in a London printing shop and began the world's first grass-roots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens' movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft chronicle of this groundbreaking antislavery crusade and its powerful enemies, Bury the Chains gives a little-celebrated human rights watershed its due.

A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller

A Book Sense Selection

“By far the most readable and rounded account we have of British antislavery, a campaign that, as the author rightly claims, helped to change the world and can be seen as a prototype of the modern social justice movement.” —Robin Blackburn, Los Angeles Times Book Review 

“A thrilling, substantive, and oftentimes raw work of narrative history. In its own fashion, it furthers the abolitionists’ crucial work of lifting our moral blindness.” —Maureen Corrigan, National Public Radio’s Fresh Air
 

Contents

A Moral Steam Engine
The First Emancipation
I Questioned Whether I Should Even Get Out of It Alive
Not a Man and a Brother?
A Place Beyond the Seas
Ramsay Is DeadI Have Killed Him
An EighteenthCentury Book Tour
Photos
Redcoats Graveyard
These Gilded Africans
A Side Wind
Come Shout oer the Grave
To Feel a Just Indignation
Source Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author

Bleak Decade
At the Foot of Vesuvius

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About the author (2006)

Adam Hochschild is the author of seven books. King Leopold's Ghost was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as was his recent To End All Wars. His Bury the Chains was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN USA Literary Award. He lives in Berkeley, California.

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