From Publishers Weekly
"Men from England bought and sold me,/ Paid my price in paltry gold;/ But, though theirs they have enroll'd me,/ Minds are never to be sold." So went "The Negro's Complaint" by noted 18th-century poet William Cowper—written, says Hochschild, as an op-ed piece would be today, to spread the message of England's fledgling movement to abolish the slave trade. Hochschild, whose last book, King Leopold's Ghost, was a stunning account of the ravages perpetrated by Belgium on the Congo, turns to a more edifying but no less amazing tale: the rich, complex history of a movement that began with just 12 angry men meeting in a printer's shop in London in 1787 and, within a century, had led to the virtual disappearance of slavery.The men who met in James Phillips's print shop included Quakers, Evangelical Anglicans and a young Cambridge graduate who had had an epiphany about the evils of slavery while on the road to London. The last, Thomas Clarkson, became an indefatigable organizer, carrying out the first modern-style investigation into human rights abuses. Granville Sharp was an eccentric but socially respected man of progressive ideas who dreamed of founding a colony of free blacks in Africa. Within a short time these men and their colleagues had created a mass movement that included the first boycott, in which hundreds of thousands of Britons, chiefly women, refused to buy slave-made sugar from the Caribbean; petitions from all over the country flooded into Parliament; and a mass-produced drawing of a slaver's lower deck, showing where the slaves were densely crowded for the middle passage, became the first iconic image of human oppression.Hochschild tells of this campaign with verve, style and humor, but without preaching or moralizing, letting the horrific facts of slavery in the Caribbean (far more brutal than in the American South) speak for themselves. And he refuses to make saints out of the activists; while highlighting bravery in the face of death threats and physical violence by promoters of slavery, the author equally points out their foibles and failings, and the often ironic unintended consequences of their actions. Along the way, Hochschild illuminates how Britain's economy was dependent upon the slave trade, why England's civil society was particularly hospitable to a movement to abolish that trade, and the impact on the movement of the French Revolution and the particularly bloody slave uprising in French St. Domingue (today's Haiti). It's a brilliantly told tale, at once horrifying and pleasurable to read. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Often, outrage is not enough. If campaigns to end injustices have succeeded, it is because they have been thought through, built well, fought hard. In our lifetimes, we have seen great strides in the effort to end child labor, segregation and apartheid; we have seen real gains in the battles for women's rights, consumer safeguards and environmental protections. But successful movements require more than the audacity to try to right a wrong, especially when that wrong is pervasive, widely accepted and underpins a vast economic enterprise. They succeed because of organizational savvy. The granddaddy of these transforming citizens' crusades, and the one that altered perhaps the most amazingly unjust and savage institution of all, was the British movement to end the international slave trade.Adam Hochschild's wonderful, vivid new Bury the Chains argues, in part, that the British abolition movement of the late 1700s pioneered the strategies that every activist group now takes for granted: direct mailings, legal test cases, campaign pins, grassroots lobbying. "Each of these tools, from the poster to the political book tour, from the consumer boycott to investigative reporting designed to stir people to action, is part of what we take for granted in a democracy," Hochschild writes. "Two and a half centuries ago, few people assumed this." Fascinating as this is, what makes Hochschild's book so readable is the rich cast of characters who created the movement, and the appalling nature of slavery itself. This isn't just any social movement, and the reader can't help but share the mingled sense of outrage and disbelief that the abolitionists themselves must have felt as they witnessed or heard about the incredible inhumanity of this practice.Hochschild, a founder of Mother Jones magazine and the author of several books, including King Leopold's Ghost, begins his story with the May 22, 1787, meeting of a dozen men in a print shop in London -- a time when roughly three-quarters of humanity lived in some sort of bondage, be it slavery, serfdom or indentured servitude. Every year, nearly 80,000 Africans were captured, shackled and loaded onto slave ships bound for the New World. Most British leaders and citizens accepted the system as necessary to sustain the economy of British colonies in the West Indies and of port cities in the United Kingdom itself; slavery's advocates said that without the institution, the price of sugar would soar. Few Britons evidenced much thought or distress about the morality of slavery. Even the Church of England owned a plantation where slaves were branded and mistreated. "If, early that year, you had stood on a London street corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped," Hochschild writes, "nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot." Yet within a few years, the abolitionists had established committees in every major town, rallied 300,000 Britons to support a boycott of slave-grown sugar and flooded Parliament with petitions to end slavery.As with many activist movements, the catalysts for this one often came from the oddest places. One was an insurance dispute. An inexperienced slave-ship captain, his boat overcrowded with slaves and sailors and alternately becalmed and beset by headwinds, lost his way en route to the West Indies. The slaves began to die, and their corpses would bring the captain no profit. Then he realized that since slaves were considered cargo, they could be jettisoned if conditions at sea required. So he decided to throw 132 still-living slaves overboard, let them drown and collect insurance money for them. But his insurance company, for mercenary (not moral) reasons of its own, said it wasn't liable. The dispute led to a trial over money, not murder. One of those in attendance was a lawyer named Granville Sharp, who at age 32 had become the leading defender of black rights in London after meeting a severely beaten black man being treated by Sharp's brother, a physician. Sharp became one of the leading pamphleteers of the abolition movement and began to prick the sleeping conscience of England.The ripples from the insurance trial began to wash over British society. One of Sharp's indignant pamphlets wound up in the hands of a minister who later became head of Cambridge University. Once there, he set a question for the university's prestigious Latin essay contest: Is it lawful to enslave others against their will? The contest's winner, a tall, red-headed divinity student named Thomas Clarkson, became overwhelmed with revulsion while researching his essay. After the contest, as he galloped toward London on his way to a promising career in the Church of England, he paused, dismounted and sat by the side of the road. There he resolved that "it was time someone should see these calamities to their end." He went on to become one of the abolition movement's boldest leaders.Nor is Clarkson even the most colorful in Hochschild's roster. There's also John Newton, a slave-ship captain who became an evangelical preacher and wrote the song "Amazing Grace"; a former slave named Olaudah Equaino, who wrote movingly about being captured and about the wretched conditions on slave ships; the publisher James Phillips, who connected Clarkson and Sharp with a Quaker network that provided the backbone of the abolitionist organization; and Wilbur Wilberforce, the eloquent, evangelical member of the House of Commons who became the abolitionists' greatest ally in Parliament. Just as in U.S. reform movements from abolition to temperance, the pervasiveness of evangelicals in the British anti-slavery movement was no coincidence; evangelicalism was spreading at the time among Anglicans, who were reacting against a whole raft of immorality and licentiousness -- from public executions, prostitution, pubs and pickpockets to the lack of dignity shown by representatives in Parliament. "To evangelicals," Hochschild writes, "this was a nation that had lost its moral bearings." Nowhere was that lost moral compass clearer than with regard to slavery. Hochschild's ragged band of abolitionists, often armed with little more than their own ingenuity and moral suasion, went up against one of the great evils of the 18th or any other century. Bury the Chains features a stunning portrait of the sheer brutality of the slave trade and the British plantation system in the West Indies. On slave ships, kidnapped Africans were packed in rows in a 2'8"-high space, according to the intrepid Clarkson, who took measurements (and may have missed a calling as a brilliant investigative reporter). According to one captain's log that Clarkson examined, 20 percent of slaves died on the voyage from Africa. The trips were perilous for the crews, too: Another captain lost 32 sailors in a single voyage. Once in the West Indies, slaves died so regularly in hazardous working conditions -- unsafe machinery in the mills where the sugar cane was crushed, or dangerous cauldrons where the cane juice was boiled -- that the plantations relied on new shipments of slaves to keep their work force constant. Rebels were treated harshly; some were burned alive, others shot.In one particularly nightmarish section, Hochschild details the atrocities that accompanied the fighting after a rebellion against slavery broke out in August 1791 on what is now Haiti. Hochschild grippingly describes a series of war crimes by all sides -- the rebels, the French and the British, who briefly seized the island -- that would make today's Iraqi insurgents blush. One French general ordered a Haitian rebel leader's epaulets nailed to his shoulders -- in front of his wife and children, who were then drowned before the suffering rebel's eyes. The same general also packed Haitian prisoners into a ship's hold and burned sulfur throughout the night, thereby creating "what may have been history's first gas chamber." These harrowing passages show what the abolitionists were up against: an appalling institution and its appalling consequences. And yet, after the costly war in the West Indies, Lord Grenville, a new prime minister who was more sympathetic to the abolitionists, guided a bill abolishing the entire British slave trade through Parliament in early 1807. Full emancipation for the empire's slaves, however, did not come until 1833.That's still an astonishing achievement, and Hochschild believes the British abolitionists can provide inspiration for people today. "Their passion and optimism are still contagious and still relevant to our times, when, in so many parts of the world, equal rights for all men and women seem far distant," he writes. In a few paragraphs, Hochschild draws a parallel between the struggle of the abolitionists and current campaigns to improve working conditions and end child labor in developing countries. If those issues seem distant to many Americans, he writes, remember that slavery seemed distant to most British citizens who nonetheless consumed the sugar that slaves produced in that dawn of globalization.Hochschild's riveting narrative reminds us that people who fancy themselves civilized can have the most uncivilized institutions, that distance can lull a society into living with terrible injustices, and that economic interests can corrupt the moral fabric of a nation. Hochschild laments the absence of a sign or plaque to mark the place in London where the abolition movement began. The dedicated members of that campaign surely deserve a monument; until then, they have this splendid book. Reviewed by Steven Mufson Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Most fellow historians and writers agree that by tracing the international abolitionist cause back to Britain’s small “band of brothers,” Hochschild has uncovered a gem of a story with great drama and relevance even to this day. The author of previous award-winning books on colonialism in Africa, Hochschild has again delivered a fact-filled history that, despite its many horrific details, is consistently compelling. Some reviewers thought the author’s bigotry toward his subjects’ Christianity seriously and unnecessarily undermined the book. Others ventured that Hochschild should have given more credit to American abolitionists and the slaves themselves for dismantling slavery. Overall, Bury the Chains is an inspiring account of how a small group of men helped to alter the course of history.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
In 1787, 12 men met in a print shop in England to begin planning an antislavery campaign. It would eventually take 50 years for the campaign to accomplish its goal, but it would succeed in ending slavery in the largest empire on earth and would forge what would later become the standard means of civic protests in democratic societies, including petitions, boycotts, and grassroots political movements. The incredible cast of individuals who fought for abolition includes Olaudah Equiano, an ex-slave whose memoir and accomplishments made him famous and helped subvert the arguments that blacks were uncivilized, and Thomas Clarkson, the intrepid organizer and activist who chronicled the movement and mobilized supporters. Hochschild also recounts the complicated social and economic tensions at work, such as the fact that Britons who faced being pressed into involuntary naval service had sympathy for slaves being abducted from Africa, as factors in Britain's position on slavery. The tactics used in Britain inspired similar tactics by the U.S. abolitionist movement, which has enjoyed much broader acknowledgment. Hochschild, author of the highly acclaimed King Leopold's Ghost (1998), brings drama and incredible research to this thrilling look at the little-celebrated abolition movement in Britain and its reverberations throughout modern democracies. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Hochschild has a knack for vivid portraits, and an eye for arresting detail." --Richard Brookhiser

Book Description
From the author of the prize-winning King Leopold's Ghost comes a taut, thrilling account of the first grass-roots human rights campaign, which freed hundreds of thousands of slaves around the world. In 1787, twelve men gathered in a London printing shop to pursue a seemingly impossible goal: ending slavery in the largest empire on earth. Along the way, they would pioneer most of the tools citizen activists still rely on today, from wall posters and mass mailings to boycotts and lapel pins. This talented group combined a hatred of injustice with uncanny skill in promoting their cause. Within five years, more than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat the chief slave-grown product, sugar; London's smart set was sporting antislavery badges created by Josiah Wedgwood; and the House of Commons had passed the first law banning the slave trade. However, the House of Lords, where slavery backers were more powerful, voted down the bill. But the crusade refused to die, fueled by remarkable figures like Olaudah Equiano, a brilliant ex-slave who enthralled audiences throughout the British Isles; John Newton, the former slave ship captain who wrote "Amazing Grace"; Granville Sharp, an eccentric musician and self-taught lawyer; and Thomas Clarkson, a fiery organizer who repeatedly crisscrossed Britain on horseback, devoting his life to the cause. He and his fellow activists brought slavery in the British Empire to an end in the 1830s, long before it died in the United States. The only survivor of the printing shop meeting half a century earlier, Clarkson lived to see the day when a slave whip and chains were formally buried in a Jamaican churchyard. Like Hochschild's classic King Leopold's Ghost, Bury the Chains abounds in atmosphere, high drama, and nuanced portraits of unsung heroes and colorful villains. Again Hochschild gives a little-celebrated historical watershed its due at last.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the Author of the Prizewinning King Leopold's Ghost comes a taut, thrilling account of the first grassroots human rights campaign, which freed hundreds of thousands of slaves around the world.

In 1787, twelve men gathered in a London printing shop to pursue a seemingly impossible goal: ending slavery in the largest empire on earth. Along the way, they would pioneer most of the tools citizen activists still rely on today, from wall posters and mass mailings to boycotts and lapel pins. This talented group combined a hatred of injustice with uncanny skill in promoting their cause. Within five years, more than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat the chief slave-grown product, sugar; London's smart set was sporting antislavery badges created by Josiah Wedgwood; and the House of Commons had passed the first law banning the slave trade.

However, the House of Lords, where slavery backers were more powerful, voted down the bill. But the crusade refused to die, fueled by remarkable figures like Olaudah Equiano, a brilliant ex-slave who enthralled audiences throughout the British Isles; John Newton, the former slave ship captain who wrote "Amazing Grace"; Granville Sharp, an eccentric musician and self-taught lawyer; and Thomas Clarkson, a fiery organizer who repeatedly crisscrossed Britain on horseback, devoting his life to the cause. He and his fellow activists brought slavery in the British Empire to an end in the 1830s, long before it died in the United States. The only survivor of the printing shop meeting half a century earlier, Clarkson lived to see the day when a slave whip and chains were formally buried in a Jamaican churchyard.

Like Hochschild's classic King Leopold's Ghost, Bury the Chains abounds in atmosphere, high drama, and nuanced portraits of unsung heroes and colorful villains. Again Hochschild gives a little-celebrated historical watershed its due at last.

FROM THE CRITICS

Steven Mufson - The Washington Post

Adam Hochschild's wonderful, vivid new Bury the Chains argues, in part, that the British abolition movement of the late 1700s pioneered the strategies that every activist group now takes for granted: direct mailings, legal test cases, campaign pins, grassroots lobbying. … Fascinating as this is, what makes Hochschild's book so readable is the rich cast of characters who created the movement, and the appalling nature of slavery itself. This isn't just any social movement, and the reader can't help but share the mingled sense of outrage and disbelief that the abolitionists themselves must have felt as they witnessed or heard about the incredible inhumanity of this practice.

Marilynne Robinson - The New York Times

… Hochschild interprets the success of the British abolitionist movement as a triumph of empathy, a humane response to horrors of which the public only gradually became conscious.

The New Yorker

Hochschild’s history of British abolitionism notes that ending slavery would have seemed as unlikely in eighteenth-century England as banning automobiles does today. Despite the “latent feeling” among intellectuals that slavery was barbarous, Caribbean sugar plantations were seen as a necessary part of the economy. Prefiguring many social movements to come, the anti-slavery crusade was driven by the partnership between a committed activist, Thomas Clarkson, and a connected politician, William Wilberforce. It was Clarkson and his Quaker associates who pioneered the use of petitions, eyewitness accounts, and even an early, innocent form of direct-mail solicitation. Hochschild argues that the violent techniques of naval press gangs primed England’s populace to consider the plight of the slaves. His capacious narrative is both disturbing and fascinating, and not without its ironies: when Parliament finally did abolish slavery, in 1833, plantation owners were generously compensated for their loss of “property.”

Library Journal

Hochschild (King Leopold's Ghost) enlightens general readers on the main men (and at least one woman), methods, and motivations behind the cause officially launched in 1787 that culminated by 1838 in the formal end of forced labor in the British Empire. Hochschild successfully anchors his work of synthesis around the personalities of Olaudah Equiano, an ex-slave author of a famous memoir; John Newton, the former slave ship captain who later authored "Amazing Grace"; Thomas Clarkson, an investigative journalist; William Wilberforce, the essential inside agitator and conscience-driven evangelical Member of Parliament; and Elizabeth Heyrick, a radical Quaker essayist. The author's intent is to show how this drive in Britain both transformed a world in which it was the norm for "the vast majority of people [to be] prisoners" and set a precedent for using committees, petitions, lapel buttons, and other forms of agitation to mobilize public opinion. In gruesome detail, the reader learns that profits from the slave trade ironically provided the funds for university libraries, hospitals, poorhouses, and elegant residences. Although scholars of this period should already be well acquainted with these empathetic reform figures, the nonprofessional history buff will benefit from this concise and readable summary of their accomplishments. Recommended for general history collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/04.]-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews