The Culture of English Antislavery is an intervention in the lively international debate of recent years about the relation of antislavery in Britain to the deep changes of the period of the Industrial Revolution. It offers an account of the overall shape of organised antislavery from its beginnings in the 1780s and provides fresh perspectives from which to assess contending interpretations of antislavery. The evolution of antislavery is portrayed as a series of changing alliances of different and sometimes conflicting religious traditions. The successive alliances of abolitionists are analysed through the concept of a culture of reform embracing ideology, organisational and propaganda forms and the more intimate connections and rituals which reformers used to reinforce their identity and solidarity. The result is a definition of the middle class reform mentality' which links the antislavery work of reformers to social improvement and to campaigns for transatlantic reform. The analysis is further grounded in short narratives about reform in different communities in different moments.
The various elements of the antislavery coalitions are finally related to the popular radicalism of the 1790s and early Chartism.