Bristol Abolitionist Poetry: Hannah More and Ann Yearsley

A kneeling and shackled man, his face looking at someone who stays in a higher perspective, his hands together as if he is praying and beseeching compassion and on his feet the resigned question: "Am I not a man and a brother?".

This is the image which would become the symbol of the abolitionist movement, paving the way to great years of changing, struggle and transformation. It was designed by Josiah Wedgwood in 1787, who was one of the earliest supporters of the abolitionist cause. The creation of an image which had the aim to move the sensibility of as many British people as possible, placed in a period when visual culture was emerging within a society in evolution. This is what J. R. Oldfield asserts

Wedgwood’s aim was to make abolition fashionable at a period when social emulation already had a powerful hold over the lives of many middle-classes men and women. The whole concept was brilliantly conceived, drawing on existing images of kneeling black figures as well as religious and secular belief in the equality of mankind.

During this period, slavery and the slave trade were intimately bound up with British culture and society at every level. The slave trade was a profitable enterprise and in consequence it contributed to the creation of new industries and new attitudes. Historians may still disagree as to why, how and precisely when these changes began, but the signs of progress and improvement are obvious enough; one important indicator is popular growth. The fact that Britain perfected the Atlantic slave trade during the eighteenth century ( Britain and France reaching their apex in slaves traffic in the 1780’s) carrying more slaves than other nations demonstrates how was transforming into a major mercantile and military power. As a chain, more people required more goods and so the introduction and the importation of new tropical products such as tobacco, cotton, rum, rice, sugar, which arrived from the Americas and so from the labor of the colonies, produced an insatiable demand for them. To quote Oldfield again:

there is no doubting the growing range of goods available to eighteenth century consumers or the fact that more social groups were in a position to purchase and enjoy them. The key to this bustling consumer society was fashion. New marketing devices, especially fashion magazines, stimulated the public’s thirst for the latest styles and colours began increasingly to mould their tastes and preferences.

Not surprisingly Wedgwood took advantages of marketing in order to sensitize people now representing a new social class which organized committees, subscribe funds, signed petition and distributed books and pamphlets. Several critical voices began to question the morality and legality of the slave trade, reflecting and commenting on its effects, its costs in terms of human beings exploited and deprived of their right to life and liberty.

Some scholars uphold the theory that Britain and Americas had no intention to abolish slavery because it was strictly connected to a mere economic necessity. One of them is the historian Rv. Dr. Robinson who in his European Christianity and the Atlantic Slave Trade: a Black Hermeneutical Study argues that: "it was the slaves through their consciousness and relationship with the cosmic God expressed by their revolutions in Haiti and insurrections elsewhere against France, Spain and Britain that brought about the abolition of slavery". Even the historian Eric Williams considers the economic interest as the only reason for the rise of abolition. According to him, by the late eighteenth century the British sugar colonies had become hopelessly uncompetitive, largely as a result of soil exhaustion, overproduction, debt and absenteeism. In theory, abolition of slave trade was decided by English government in 1807 because it was not longer profitable and useful in financing the Industrial Revolution. [...]