The Price of Emancipation Draper Hardback Cambridge University Press

The Price of EmancipationSlave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery\nAuthor(s): Nicholas Draper\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521115254, 978-0521115254\nSynopsis\nWhen colonial slavery was abolished in 1833 the British government paid 20 million to slave-owners as compensation: the enslaved received nothing. Drawing on the records of the Commissioners of Slave Compensation, which represent a complete census of slave-ownership, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent and importance of absentee slave-ownership and its impact on British society. Moving away from the historiographical tradition of isolated case studies, it reveals the extent of slave-ownership among metropolitan elites, and identifies concentrations of both rentier and mercantile slave-holders, tracing their influence in local and national politics, in business and in institutions s.