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The abolitionist movement launched the global human rights struggle in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, redefining the meaning of equality throughout the Atlantic world. In the twenty-first century, it remains a touchstone of democratic activism—a timeless example of mobilizing against injustice. Abolitionism: A Very Short Introduction highlights the key people, institutions, themes, and events that shaped the antislavery struggle across the Atlantic world. Highlighting the activist exertions of abolitionists from the Caribbean and Great Britain to the United States and Iberian society, this short text shows that abolitionism was a potent social movement that ended the most profitable institution of the early modern era: racial slavery.Less

American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction traces the development of American slavery, from the Portuguese capture of Africans in the 1400s until its abolition following the Civil War, and explores its effects on the American colonies and the United States of America. It examines legislation that differentiated American Indians and Africans from Europeans as the ideology of white supremacy flourished. These laws reflected the contradiction of America's moral and philosophical ideology that valorized freedom on one hand and justified the enslavement of a population deemed inferior on another. The tense and often violent relationships between the enslaved and the enslavers are explored, as well as those between abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates.Less