By the mid-eighteenth century, the transatlantic slave trade was
considered to be a necessary and stabilizing factor in the
capitalist economies of Europe and the expanding Americas. Britain
was the most influential power in this system which seemed to have
the potential for unbounded growth. In 1833, the British empire
became the first to liberate its slaves and then to become a
driving force toward global emancipation. There has been endless
debate over the reasons behind this decision. This has been
portrayed on the one hand as a rational disinvestment in a
foundering overseas system, and on the other as the most expensive
per capita expenditure for colonial reform in modern history.
In this work, Seymour Drescher argues that the plan to end British
slavery, rather than being a timely escape from a failing system,
was, on the contrary, the crucial element in the greatest
humanitarian achievement of all time. The Mighty Experiment
explores how politicians, colonial bureaucrats, pamphleteers, and
scholars taking anti-slavery positions validated their claims
through rational scientific arguments going beyond moral and
polemical rhetoric, and how the infiltration of the social sciences
into this political debate was designed to minimize agitation on
both sides and provide common ground. Those at the inception of the
social sciences, such as Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, helped to
develop these tools to create an argument that touched on issues of
demography, racism, and political economy. By the time British
emancipation became legislation, it was being treated as a massive
social experiment, whose designs, many thought, had the potential
to change the world.
This study outlines the relationship of economic growth to moral
issues in regard to slavery, and will appeal to scholars of British
history, nineteenth century imperial history, the history of
slavery, and those interested in the history of human rights.
The Mighty Experiment was the winner of First Prize, Frederick
Douglass Book Prize, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of
Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.
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