There is an interesting writing explaining the developments of abolitionism on both sides of the Atlantic leading to the transatlantic antislavery movement. A great source of antislavery attitude derived from the Quaker region, with its strong convictions of human equality. Antislavery activism spread along established Quaker networks in England, Ireland, and the United states, driven by traveling ministers and religious pamphlet literature. Non- Quakers Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine founded the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Quaker counterparts in London and Plymouth formed antislavery societies that same year and began a drive to ban Britain’s transatlantic traffic in humans.
Women also played an important role in abolition movements. From 1787 to 1791, the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade collected thousands of signatures on petitions and organized a boycott of slave-produced sugar. This boycott is said to have involved 300,000 Britons; however women were key in this effort being the traditional cooks of English families. British antislavery opinion took a new direction in the 1820s, when women became more active and pushed beyond the band on trade. Quaker widow Elizabeth Heyrick wrote Immediate not Gradual Abolition in 1824, which prompt the formation of scores of all women societies. A massive petition campaign bombarded Parliament, and out of 1.3 million signatures submitted in 1833, 30 percent were women. This help pass the Abolition of Slavery Act, which freed all slave children under age six.
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4 comments:
It's interesting to know that there was a large abolition movement overseas in Great Britain and that a lot of women were involved in it.
The abolishionist movement that the Quakers helped push can be chalked up to a plus for religion in history. I think that religion gets a bad wrap as a whole in history. Religion never affected anyone, it was the men and women who perverted or distorted their religion to their own midguided will that has had bad affects in history. Christianity does not teach to use missionaries as a method of subjagating Native Americans. The Spanish came up with that on their own.
I don't see how it is possible to say "religion never affected anyone." I agree that men and women perverted religion in many cases and especially when referring to missionaries but many devoted, non-perverted Christians lived their lives by the bible which had a enormous impact on the great inequalities between male and female which affected many people, and still does to day.
Jessica, I always appreciate your posts on such related topics as "transatlantic" abolition. And again, it is another example of the interconnected-ness of other nations and women in history.
In response to Sean's comment, what role do contemporary events have on religious interpretation? In the Quaker example, their religious interpretation was related, in this period, to abolition and ending slavery. However the Spanish interpretation of New World colonization, quest for imperial domination and wealth, in addition to domestic Spanish issues influenced the Spanish missionary efforts in the Americas. For study, the question seems to be are historically "distorted" or "misguided" religious interpretations only classified as such in a 21st century context and were these actions viewed as "distorted" by people of that period?
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