The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave

Abolitionism was an 18th- and 19th-century movement to end the institution of slavery and effect the emancipation of all enslaved people. This movement, particularly aimed at the liberation of enslaved Africans and people of African descent, had its most ardent support in Western Europe and the Americas. While the movement reached its height in the early-to-mid-19th century, action in opposition to enslavement began centuries earlier. In 1690 there was a Quaker protest against the African trade of enslaved people (Ferrell, Claudine L. The Abolitionist Movement. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005). Likewise, rebellions and resistance by enslaved people began in the earliest days of the slave trade. The roots of the formal abolitionist movement, however, lie in early-16th- and 17th-century Quaker activism. As the trade expanded, the population of enslaved people increased exponentially, especially in American colonies of European nations such as England, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal. In response, various organizations and abolitionists organized lectures, petitions, publications of narratives by enslaved people, support for fugitives from slavery, and anti-slavery newspapers. Among these organizing institutions was the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, better known as the London Anti-Slavery Society. As the name indicates, abolitionists’