Abolitionist Artifacts: How Objects Helped End the Slave Trade within the British Empire (2023)

Undergraduate: Jordan Mundy

Faculty Advisor: Lisa Lindsay
Department: History

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In 1787, the antislavery movement was solidifying in Britain, and activists first targeted the slave trade using a variety of methods, including firsthand accounts from enslaved individuals, images, essays, societies, and petitions to Parliament. However, many of these actions left out women and lower-class Britons. I argue artifacts served as an important method of abolitionism because objects both reached wide audiences and allowed a variety of Britons to participate in activism. Three artifacts that exemplify this phenomenon are the Wedgwood Antislavery Cameo, Thomas Clarkson’s Campaign Chest, and the “East India Sugar Not Made by Slaves” sugar bowl. The Wedgwood cameo made antislavery so fashionable that within three years, imitation versions of the cameo were produced. The cameo reached wide numbers of Britons with its message of antislavery and allowed women to express abolitionist sentiments in a world where women were discouraged from leading or even participating in antislavery societies. Thomas Clarkson’s Campaign chest contained goods from Africa and instruments of torture from the slave trade, which he often acquired from working-class individuals. Clarkson presented these goods in discussions and to Parliament, furthering the cause through tangibly demonstrating the horrors of the slave trade. The “East India” sugar bowl arose in a moment when hundreds of antislavery petitions were sent to Parliament and abolitionists boycotted sugar made in British colonies in the Caribbean. The sugar bowls were a vital means of abolition to women who were barred from petitioning and spread abolitionism by promoting antislavery from the increasingly important tea table.

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