The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition

Given the volume of recent works produced on the anti-slavery movement of the 19th–century Atlantic world, it was time for someone to create a new synthesis. Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause is a synthetic work that traces the long trajectory of the anti-slavery movement in the United States and places it into an international context. It provides a catalogue of antislavery figures, organizations, and publications and will likely serve as a valuable go-to reference work for years to come. Besides bringing the different waves of anti-slavery together in one place, Sinha offers her own conclusions about the anti-slavery movement, primarily that divisions of race, gender, class, and ideology were not as pronounced in the movement as some historians have made them out to be and that the overall history of the movement was one of continuity more than change. Just as importantly, in illustrating the radical nature of the movement she highlights the connection between anti-slavery sentiment and an early critique of capitalism and imperialism.