1st June 2009, National Maritime Museum at Greenwich

With generous support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and National Maritime Museum, a workshop on British anti-slavery will be held in June this year. It hopes to bring together the most distinguished academics in the field with graduate students and early career scholars to discuss new research and consider new directions for the investigation of British anti-slavery.

Important questions still remain regarding the motivations for British slave trade abolition (1807), emancipation (1834) and the end of apprenticeship in the West Indies (1838); the country’s attempts to suppress the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades (for more than a century from 1808); the ways in which anti-slavery ideas and traditions interacted with the rise of new racial ideology later in the nineteenth century; and how it related to the British empire in its various historical manifestations.

Graduate students with an interest in British anti-slavery from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries are encouraged to apply for a place at the workshop. Thanks to the AHRC’s support, we can offer modest bursaries to subsidise a limited number of graduate students where their HE institutions are unable to cover their travel costs.

The workshop consists of three sessions, examining the relationship between anti-slavery and imperialism; the impact of naval suppression; and future directions for anti-slavery research. It will be held at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich on 1st June.

Attendance is free but places are limited; please e-mail antislaveryhistory@gmail.com to apply for a place.