THE INTEREST

HOW THE ESTABLISHMENT RESISTED THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

MICHAEL TAYLOR

Bodley Head, 400pp, £20

Taylor tells ‘the story of how widespread and deeply rooted... [pro-slavery] attitudes were, how powerfully calls for abolition were resisted and why the British parliament nonetheless voted at last in 1833 to end slavery in its West Indian and African territories’, wrote Fara Dabhoiwala in the Guardian. ‘In 20 brisk, gripping chapters, Taylor charts the course from the foundation of the Anti-slavery Society in 1823 to the final passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. Part of what makes this a compulsively readable book is his skill in cross-cutting between three groups of protagonists.

‘On one track, we follow the abolitionist campaigners on their lengthy, uphill battle... A second strand illuminates the fears and bigotries of white British West Indians... The main focus of the book, however, is on the colonists’ powerful domestic allies, the so-called West India Interest – the countless merchants, civil servants, judges, writers, publicists, landowners, clergymen and politicians who believed that even the gradual abolition of slavery was extremist, treasonous folly, and fought tooth and nail to preserve it.’

Writing in the Critic, University of Exeter historian Bruce Coleman found that Taylor’s ‘largely narrative style works against serious focus and analysis’. In his effort to emphasise black agency through the slave rebellions, Taylor ‘dislikes the idea of religious conscience playing any significant part in this story, ignoring those parts of his narrative that showed how much it did, both in Britain and in the East Indies’. He also found Taylor’s evident wokery unbearable. This is ‘an exercise in self-flagellation, even national self-hatred, and, in an embarrassing passage, Taylor doesn’t spare himself; “I am not immune from the criticism. I must do more. I must do better.”’