Yoon, Young Hwi (2011) The spread and transformation of antislavery sentiment in the transatlantic evangelical network : 1730s-1790s. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The study will analyse how Anglo-American evangelicals' antipathy towards slavery spread and transformed in the context of the transatlantic evangelical network. Many researchers have treated antislavery sentiment as a spontaneous reaction, or as one of a number of background moods influencing those who started the abolitionist movement. However, this sentiment spread in the Atlantic world as result of evangelical activities throughout the eighteenth century. The formation of the transatlantic evangelical network is central to understanding the spread of antislavery sentiment. Stimulated by the Great Awakening in the 1730s and the 1740s, Anglo-American evangelicals began to travel between both sides of the Atlantic. Much evidence suggests that a religious and ideological sense of unity was being forged during this process. Importantly, the evangelical network offered a channel of transatlantic communication allowing Anglo-Americans to debate common issues. Although in itself not antislavery, it had the potential to develop antislavery sentiment among its members. Many historians have not traced the development of antislavery ideals in the mid-eighteenth century as there seemed no public self-identifying antislavery movement. However, close examination of 'proslavery' literature reinvents this period into years of transformation of evangelical attitudes to slavery, far from a 'dark age' of unquestioned proslavery expression. Below the surface, fledgling antislavery sentiment was spreading in the Atlantic world before the American Revolution. In the tense atmosphere of the American Revolution in the 1770s, antislavery sentiment became transformed into moral conviction. Many members of religious communities on both sides of the Atlantic lost their confidence in the imperial system, and were fearful for their moral health. As part of this process, ill-feeling towards both the inhumanity and religio-moral inconsistencies of slavery became transformed into a moral ideology. Furthermore, the Revolution stimulated evangelical abolitionism and participation in wider secular political activities. After the Revolution, the evangelical network seemed to be reinvigorated, responding to new territorial and economic circumstance. However, conflicts within the transatlantic evangelical community caused by disestablishment debates stimulated the process of division, and influenced the developmental process of the antislavery movement in the transatlantic evangelical network. Consequently, evangelicals in each area developed individual abolitionist movements, producing different outcomes. This reflects that the transatlantic evangelical network's mission for a transatlantic channel for the antislavery cause was finishing.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BR Christianity E History America > E11 America (General) H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Antislavery movements -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century, Antislavery movements -- United States -- History -- 18th century, Evangelicalism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century, Evangelicalism -- United States -- History -- 18th century
Date:	November 2011
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Richardson, Sarah, 1964 May 11- ; Lockley, Timothy James, 1971-
Sponsors:	Kim Hee-Kyung Scholarship Foundation for European Humanities ; Ok Han Heum Scholarship Foundation ; Rotary International ; University of Warwick
Extent:	iv, 276 leaves
Language:	eng
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/49218

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