Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies
Two-day International Conference at the King's Manor
12-14 April 2007
ABOLITIONS, 1807-2007
ENDING THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE TRANSATLANTIC WORLD
Conference Organiser: Miles Taylor
PROGRAMME
Opening address: JAMES WALVIN (York)
1. Rethinking abolitionism:
• Plenary: CHRIS BROWN (Rutgers).
• Maartje Janse (Leiden): ‘Abolitionism in the Netherlands, a failure?: a new approach to Dutch anti-slavery, 1840-63’.
• Katherine Paugh (Penn): ‘Rationalising reproduction: abolitionism and the preservation of the West Indian labour supply’.
• Christer Petley (Leeds Met): ‘Transatlantic links and British pro-slavery arguments’.
• Geoff Plank (Cincinnati): ‘The first person in anti-slavery literature: John Woolman's Journal and the politics of the British slave trade in the 1780s’.
• Jon Sensbach (Florida): ‘Black Christianity and anti-slavery in Denmark and Britain’.
• Edlie Wong (Rutgers): ‘The meaning of black freedom after abolition: Mary Prince and the slave, Grace’.
2. Abolition and after in Africa:
• Plenary: JOSEPH INIKORI (Rochester).
• Adiele Afgibo (Uturu, Nigeria): ‘The bight of Biafra: the forgotten abolition’.
• Kwabena Akurang-Parry (Shippensburg): ‘Rethinking African agency in the global abolition epoch in the Atlantic world: the case of the African intelligentsia in the Gold Coast’.
• Jeffrey Fortin (New Hampshire): ‘African-American imperialism and the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, 1807-60’.
• Lisa Lindsay (North Carolina): ‘A South Carolinian in colonial Nigeria, or one man's attempt to reverse the Atlantic slave trade’.
• Koya Ogen (Ile-Ife, Nigeria): Abolition and the Ikale-Yoruba country, 1807-50
3. The Caribbean crucible:
• Plenary: VERENE SHEPHERD (UWI) and PHILIP MORGAN (Princeton).
• Manuel Barcia (Leeds): Illegal migration and enforced slavery in the Caribbean: the Kelsall slaves' story.
• Kate Ferris (UCL): ‘Models of abolition: the US in Spanish political culture and the question of the abolition of slavery in Cuba, 1868-74’.
• Dick Geary (Nottingham): ‘A long time dying: the slow death of Brazilian slavery
• Alejandro Gomez (EHSS Paris): My friends Brissot, Raynal and Wilberforce: Francisco Miranda's position towards slavery in his emancipation projects for Spanish America, 1788-1811’.
• Shaun Regan (QUB): ‘Abolition, amelioration, evasion: Matthew Lewis' Journal of a West India Proprietor’.
4. The slaving powers:
• Plenary: CATHERINE HALL (UCL): ‘Zachary Macaulay and the politics of abolitionism’.
• Christiane Chivallon (CEAN, Bordeaux): ‘How to speak of slavery and of its racialised inherited order in the French republican model’.
• Madge Dresser (UWE): ‘Abolition in Bristol: a reinterrogation’.
• John Oldfield (Southampton): title tbc
• Carl Pedersen (Copenhagen): ‘Slavery, abolition and Danish collective memory’.
• Marika Sherwood (ICS): ‘Liverpool and anti-slavery’.
5. Representing anti-slavery:
• Plenary: VINCENT CARRETTA (Maryland).
• Editha Jacobs (UWI): ‘A reproach to humanity: images used to influence the campaign to end the slave trade, 1787-1807’.
• Alan Rice (U Central Lancs)
• Anita Rupprecht (Brighton): ‘A limited kind of property: representing the Zong’.
• John Wood Sweet (North Carolina): ‘After origins: Venture Smith's Narrative and the politics of the slave trade in post-colonial New England’.
6. The legacy and memory of 1807:
• Plenary: JAMES CAMPBELL (Brown): ‘ “We leave for future generations to investigate …”: the slave trade, abolition and the politics of memory in Rhode Island’.
• Jean Allain (QUB): ‘Suppression of the transatlantic slave trade through international law: from the 1890 Brussels Act to the present’.
• Ana Laucia Araujo (Quebec): ‘Heroes or victims: memory of slavery and slaves in museums and monuments of the republic of Benin’.
• Amalia Ribi (Lincoln College, Oxford): ' “Clinging chains and crying slaves”: British anti-slavery campaigns, 1918-33’.
• Susan Skedd (English Heritage): ‘Commemorating the anti-slavery movement: the role of blue plaques’.
This conference, organised by Miles Taylor and colleagues in the History Department, brought together scholars from Africa and the Caribbean as well as from America, Australia and continental Europe, and was the centrepiece of a series of events hosted by the University to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain in 1807.