Details

Subject(s)

• Antislavery movements—England—Yorkshire—History—19th century [Browse]
• Antislavery movements—Pennsylvania—History—19th century [Browse]
• Slavery—Religious aspects—Society of Friends [Browse]
• Slavery—Religious aspects—Moravian Church [Browse]
• Ackworth School—History—19th century [Browse]
• Richardson, Anna 1806-1892 [Browse]
• Armistead, Wilson 1819?-1868 [Browse]
• Abolitionists—Great Britain—Biography [Browse]
• Abolitionists—United States—Biography [Browse]

Series

Antislavery, abolition, and the Atlantic world [More in this series]

Summary note

"Bridget Bennett's "Antislavery in the Dissenting Atlantic" engages with a historically situated set of transatlantic networks, chiefly centered on significant communities of religious nonconformists in Yorkshire, England, and Pennsylvania in the decades between the American Revolution and American Civil War. She reveals the alliances forged out of progressive religious and political commitments to dissent that enabled a set of expansive connections across the Atlantic world. These emerged from local proximities and combined an optimistic commitment to social justice and education with a global vision. Dissenters played a crucial role in abolitionist and antislavery activism by providing educational facilities and training, scientific discovery, architectural innovation, and medical advances. Though often excluded from certain kinds of public office, some developed rewarding lives through close connections with institutions such as schools, libraries, and reading rooms. These were spaces where the local encountered the global through collections of books that allowed their members to imagine the possibility of different kinds of geographies, systems, and worlds. Print was only one of the resources they valued, and Bennett's study pays attention to the multiple ways they produced meaning and positioned themselves using oral, scribal, and sewn sources. "Antislavery in the Dissenting Atlantic" uses largely neglected or under-explored British archives to tell a story of transatlantic connectedness while suggesting a repositioning of the discipline of transnational American Studies by looking at sources outside of the United States. Bennett pays attention to the noise of antislavery and the power of quietness. Her work focuses on the quotidian and ordinary moments of antislavery and the communities out of which antislavery arose. Its first chapter examines girl scholars at Ackworth, a pioneering Quaker school in West Yorkshire. Taking a material culture studies approach, she reimagines how women on both sides of the Atlantic-free and enslaved, Black and white-used their sewing skills in multiple ways to petition for their rights, contribute to antislavery, create vivid tokens of loving relationships, and support themselves economically. The next section of her study turns to two important and neglected antislavery activists, Anna Richardson and Wilson Armistead, to explore their contributions not just to social justice but to multiple modes of campaigning. Both were part of a transatlantic speaking and writing commons. Reappraising Richardson's many contributions to antislavery, Bennett examines her deep rootedness in her Quaker community in Newcastle, giving a detailed picture of the relationship between her antislavery and peace activism. Wilson Armistead was a leading antislavery activist, prolific compiler, and contributor of antislavery materials. Repositioning him within the transatlantic struggle, Bennett describes his many contributions, including a "guerrilla inscription" he used on the British census to contest the Fugitive Slave Law when Ellen and William Craft, who fled slavery, were staying at his house in Leeds. In the last section of her study, Bennett turns to the activities of the Renewed Unitas Fratrum or Moravian Church. She presents new readings of the Moravian connections between two influential publications, bookending the key British abolitionist milestones of 1807 and 1833, John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796) and Mary's Prince's autobiographical The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (1831). Finally, Bennett examines a neglected series of publications by John Antes, a Moravian missionary, depicting his capture and torture in Cairo, situating it in the broader context of Barbary captivity and US antislavery. Bennett's work offers an original and innovative reading of transatlantic connectedness, exploring unfamiliar texts and individuals and bringing new perspectives to familiar antislavery texts"-- Provided by publisher.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• Prologue
• Sewing the seeds of antislavery : Ackworth smplers in the Atlantic World
• A tireless laborer : reappraising Anna Richardson
• The quiet abolitionist : Wilson Armistead's guerrilla inscription
• Mobile Moravians and British antislavery.

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ISBN

• 9780807183717 (hardcover)
• 0807183717 (hardcover)

LCCN

2024047651

OCLC

1467672158

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