British Feminism and the Anti-slavery Movement: A transatlantic perspective

Abstract

In recent years universities in the UK have been investigating the extent to which they might have benefitted from the Atlantic slave trade between the 17th and the early 19th centuries. Of course, it emerges that those benefits have long been contested and it is therefore also relevant to investigate the anti-slavery views and actions of some of those involved. This paper focuses on the main founder of the first residential institution of higher education for women in Britain, Emily Davies, and thus opens up a broader inquiry into the theme of women and the anti-slavery movement in 19th century Britain. The anti-slavery movement was the first major campaign in which British women became involved, beginning as early as the late 18th century and reaching peaks in the 1830s and 1860s. So, the women who formed the first generation of British feminists in the middle of the 19th century were deeply shaped by what they had seen the women of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations doing in campaigning for abolition: first of the British slave trade, next of chattel slavery on British territories and then of slavery in the United States. For all these age groups it became common to compare the position of middle-class women, particularly those who were married, with the position of black slaves. As a result, the American Civil War had a galvanizing impact on British women activists. The Ladies’ London Emancipation Society, set up in 1863 to propagandize for the Northern case against chattel slavery, became a central focal point for a network which went on to mount important domestic campaigns to improve their own situation in Britain: including the first movement for the extension of the vote to women and the establishment of the first residential college of higher education for women. In this way, the anti-slavery movement was not just one issue among many that early women activists were concerned about: it was the central issue which shaped the nature and the timing of the emergence of the feminist movement in British public life.