Bury the Chains

A very interesting and, despite its grim subject matter, a very enjoyable book Actually, insofar as the subject matter is the abolition, first of the British trans Atlantic slave trade, and subsequently, of slavery in the British Empire, it is not grim, but uplifting The author paints the movement as the prototype of contemporary activist causes Petitions, graphic images, local committees, boycotts, speaking tours all were used perhaps for the first time, or for the first time on such a scale as [...]

Margaret Mead once said, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has This book is the story of those thoughtful, committed citizens, beginning with twelve men who met in a bookshop in London in 1787 to form a society committed to abolishing the slave trade.The story of that campaign is really quite astonishing The slave trade s demise was helped by the incredible organisation of those original twelve men, who ef [...]

Five stars might be a hair too much, but it was pretty close I do not read much history but was intrigued by Thomas Clarkson and a friend recommended this book because he features prominently in it Hochschild s writing is lively, interesting, and informative through the whole book He doesn t sugar coat the major players who helped end the British slave trade, which I appreciated, and which often happens in the Christian world concerning Clarkson and especially Wilberforce Still, he lauds them pl [...]

Six reasons to read this excellent book 1 It gives a global overview of slavery, taking in all actors, from the UK, West Africa to the West Indies and the Southern states, and including France, Nova Scotia, South Africa and South America 2 It sets the record straight Abolition wasn t down to Wilberforce working alone, but the lifelong efforts of many, often working in the background After his death Wilberforce was the object of a massive and successful feat of image making a laudatory five volum [...]

An excellent book, very well researched and written A must read for everyone In fact, I think, this book should be a mandatory read in every high school and freshman classes I really loved this book He asks direct and hard questions He is very honest in how he details and educates his readers with factual narratives A detail of a very sad moving and unbelievably cruel account of slavery as well as the struggle to abolish the trade.A real must read

Well researched and written The book gives a good insight into the first breakthrough in the abolition movement Recommended to any study of history and politics

The Atlantic slave trade, and the institution of slavery it fed, ended, as evil things do, because people fought to end it There were a lot of vested interests that wanted it to continue, but a small band of people in Britain worked hard to raise public awareness and disapproval, using and mostly inventing the tools of modern progressive struggles to do it boycotts, lobbying, letter writing campaigns, petitions, fundraising, pamphlets, testimonials, demonstrations, images, press releases, speech [...]

Adam Hochschild is an exceptionally talented researcher and writer This book is about the British antislavery movement in the late 18th century Although most of the activists favored emancipation, the movement s explicit goal was modest abolition of the British slave trade This was still an extremely ambitious, almost outlandish, aim at the time The slave trade and slave produced goods were a huge part of the British economy Hochschild compares the importance of sugar then to oil today The Brit [...]

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has Margaret MeadBury the Chain is about the ending of the slave trade and of slavery itself in the nineteenth century, decades before it ended in much of the rest of the world, including the United States As of 200 years ago, at the end of the 18th century, about three quarters of humanity lived in bondage of some kind slavery, serfdom, indentured servitude They key movers [...]

Some books are just worth reading twice And Bury the Chains, which I wrote about previously in connection with the film about Wilberforce called Amazing Grace, is one of them.A second reading found me focussing on Adam Hochschild s framing the British anti slavery movement as the first modern social movement with its use of petitions, public meetings, boycotts sugar , propaganda, organising with particular reference to the ability of the Quakers here and, of course, lobbying and legislation in [...]

A beautifully written, extraordinarily moving account of the late 18th century battle to stop the slave trade within the British Empire Hochschild rescues some activists like Thomas Clarkson from ill deserved historical obscurity I got all verklempt when I realized that the Quakers who came to Clarkson s funeral lifted their hats in respect a measure that they refused to show even the King of England as well as talking about better known figures such as William Wilberforce Hochschild also makes [...]

This book should be required reading for the global climate movement and I was often reminded of 350 s efforts while reading it Two centuries ago, three quarters of the world s population lived in various kinds of slavery or serfdom This is a play by play account of how first the slave trade, and then, a few decades later, slavery itself, was abolished through the efforts of a committed group of individuals Their inspired efforts form some of the earliest investigative journalism, activist graph [...]

There is no way not to give the highest possible rating to this sweeping account of the British Abolition of the slave trade that spanned 50 some years from one man s inspiration to a movement aided by appeals to conscious and the grand events of history Hochschild is a wonderful historian and even better writer and it was hard to put this down I had an ARC of this sitting in a box for 7 years and just happened to pick it up needing something to read I have no idea why I took so long to do so, r [...]

I don t know how Adam Hochschild does it, but he makes history so interesting Granted, it took me a few months longer to finish the book than it normally does, but I have been reading multiple books at one time, so it may mean nothing In any case, I was very moved by the story I knew a few things about the abolition movement as it was, but there were so many key characters that were filled out for me Also, the explanation of historical forces at play to prolong or delay the end of the slave tra [...]

One of my all time favorite narrative non fiction books is Hochschild s King Leopold s Ghost So I was excited when this book was proposed by my book club I was not disappointed, although I think I prefer King Leopold s Ghost Bury the Chains is about slavery in the British Empire and the first major social campaign to try to eliminate it It is a fascinating tale that definitely gave me a broader understanding of slavery beyond the US s history Hochschild, as usual, does a fantastic job of telling [...]

This is a book that can renew your faith in the human spirit for righteous social change There are so many remarkable stories in this history of the abolition of the British slave trade that it is hard to focus on one Hochschild acknowledges the heroes of the movement, giving due time to well known figures like John Newton and William Wilberforce But it s the little known yet tireless efforts of Thomas Clarkson and the Quakers that gave the movement life I must say that I was moved to tears by t [...]

This is a book for liberals It wants you to believe that good people can make social change happen after a long period of dedicated agitation It also wants to give you some tips about how a successful movement in the past made it happen It s a good read, although it goes off in two many different directions, acquiring a lot of characters who enter and then disappear without much apparent reason I ran into a college student recently who said that he read it for a class and found it inspirational. [...]

Duch Kr la Leopolda to arcydzie o Pogrzeba kajdany arcydzie em niestety nie jest To bardzo przyzwoity i poruszaj cy fascynuj cy temat reporta , ale brak mu jednej cechy, kt ra wyr nia a Ducha na tle innej literatury historycznej wartkiej akcji O tym, e Hochschild si gn do wszystkich mo liwych r de i w rezultacie ksi ka jest fantastycznym kompendium ruch w antyniewolniczych wspomina nie trzeba Skupi si wi c na czym innym.Historia ruch w abolicyjnych, cho bardzo ciekawa, nie jest niestety tematem [...]

An interesting and probably thorough account on the attempts of Quakers and other humanitarian Britons to abolish the Britain to Africa to West Indies slave trade between the American Revolution and the Emancipation Act in the mid 1800s Many people than Mr William Wilberforce were involved, though he got the credit since he was the Member of Parliament to carried the bills through Parliament Many unsung heroes and heroines too the men and women who signed petitions and who boycotted sugar Think [...]

Adam Hochschild sees the British anti slavery movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a remarkable event in the moral imagination of humanity For what may have been the first time in history, one set of people became convinced that what was happening to another group of people, who didn t look like them, didn t necessarily share their religion, and who didn t live in the same place, was wrong Even remarkable is that the labors of the oppressed group provided some of the common com [...]

So much better a book than I anticipated This was a selection of my Monrovia book group and I expected a slog Instead, it is an engaging read about some of the first successful abolitionists successful because they came up with a practical plan to make the cruelties of slavery clear to the British public They targeted the slave trade, not slavery itself as practiced in British colonies in the Caribbean, to minimize the number of interest groups that might oppose them for economic reasons They in [...]

This is clearly the best book I have read this year, and I read a lot of books in many categories It is not merely a history of the slavery abolition movement in the UK, but also a history of the development of opposition politics by the have nots and have littles against the wealthy establishment The epilogue describes the counter reaction we have seen described times before Jim Crow to Emancipation and reconstruction plus mass incarceration to the Civil Rights era, the modern slaughterhouse bu [...]

I have a profound respect for those who suffered and died under the oppression of institutional slavery Hochschild s account of the British path to abolish it from 1787 to 1838 gave me hope that given enough time, enough of the right people, and enough continuous courage that change CAN happen Also, I admire Hochschild s gift for narrative Each chapter becomes its own journey into a different aspect of abolition He respected his characters and gave them their dignity even if they were slave owne [...]

If you like gripping non fiction with larger than life characters, then you will love Breaking the Chains It s about one of the first successful grassroots campaigns in history the fight to abolish the British slave trade I especially enjoyed the inspirational people have the power message at the heart of this book.

3.5 stars Great storytelling that makes the historical people he writes about feel like a cast of heroic characters in a grand epic However, I had some problems with his conclusion, which seems to suggest that Christianity can t reach true empathy.

A good account of Slavery in t5he British empire in the 17 1800 and how 12 men started a revolution also how the Church of England, invested in the Slavery of blacks, shame on them

Well written and fascinating popular history

I finished reading this book about two or three weeks now I guess The reason I have not reviewed it yet is because I don t want to acknowledge that I have in fact finished reading this book, because then it would just depress me that I do not have something as well written, captivating, challenging, and stimulating to read as of right now.This book by far is the best book I have read in 2009 Adam Hochschild truly captured not only the spirit of the abolition movement, but also the many different [...]

One of the most frustrating things about history is how undramatic it is Things happen piecemeal over time, rarely reaching a proper conclusion characters are contradictory, and even the best of them do things that make you want to throttle them coincidences abound and even when the good guys win, they usually lose That s probably why WWII is such a popular subject, and the American Civil War These are conflicts with clear good guys and bad guys, the course of events follows a traditional throug [...]

The most important global commodity of the late 20th early 21st century has been petroleum That of the late 18th early 19th century was sugar It was Britain s biggest import, the source of junk calories for the workers of the satanic mills of the Industrial Revolution who did not have to grow their own food Most sugar was grown on Caribbean islands by black slaves They had terrible working conditions, and were fed a poor diet lacking in protein while most of the skilled jobs such as barrel makin [...]