Christopher Brown
speaker
1,098 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 20 Jan
Christopher Brown’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Yeah, slavery is horrible, but do we really want to get into the practice of just expropriating large inventories of human beings?
And this is why when emancipation does come in 1833, it's with a massive buyout.
of slaveholders, both resident in the West Indies and resident in Britain, because the preservation of the principle of property runs right through emancipation.
The right to purchase and hold property is withdrawn, but the capital sunk in it is recognized and paid for.
Oh, boy.
So complicated, Rob.
I mean, I...
Part of it, in some ways, the most important part of the story, both for slave trade abolition and for emancipation, are shifts in the political climate that actually have nothing to do with the issue of slavery.
In 1806, shortly after William Pitt dies, the ministry that's put together contains a number of politicians
Grenville, Charles James Fox, others who have been long in favor of slave trade abolition.
And they are... For moral reasons or religious reasons?
Well, for moral reasons, for political reasons, for some economic reasons that we could discuss.
But that's not the reason why they come into office.
But when they come into office, it's one of the few things that they're able to get done together.
But that's a ministry that only lasts for a year.
Something similar happens in the early 1830s, where after the reforms that considerably widen the franchise and bring in new members of parliament in 1832, the political balance is shifted away from the interests, the politicians who had protected the slaveholders for a quarter century.
So again, you know, the Reform Act of 1832, its purpose was not to promote, enable emancipation.
But that new parliament was far more open.
to the lobbying of abolitionists than earlier parliaments had been.
So one thing that's true is that from 1787 down to 1838, for nearly 50 years, there is an anti-slavery lobby at work in Britain.
Showing 661–680 of 1,098 · page 34 of 55
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