Children against slavery: Juvenile agency and the sugar boycotts in Britain
dc.contributor.author | Gleadle, K | |
dc.contributor.author | Hanley, R | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2021-02-24T15:28:47Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2020-11-11 | |
dc.description.abstract | In late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, many contemporaries observed a striking phenomenon: that children were especially active in the boycotts of sugar produced by enslaved people. First-hand accounts often suggested that children's activism was unilateral and unmediated, whereas historians of British abolitionism have tended to assume that children were passive recipients of antislavery literature and adult influence. Engaging with both the historiography on British abolitionism and the new histories of childhood, this article examines the nature of juvenile engagement within the sugar boycotts. Collecting together some of the extensive but dispersed evidence of juvenile antislavery across the country, and focusing upon a case study of the Plymley household of Shropshire during the early 1790s, we explore the intricacies of children's involvement. Children's agency, we argue, needs to be understood as a specific, historicised phenomenon. Adults often chose to represent children's abolitionist activities as self-determined, for their participation in the boycotts affirmed both adult positions and their own child-rearing practices. However, whilst adults frequently solicited particular types of juvenile response, children often responded independently and in unexpected ways, negotiating their own positions in relation to their parents, siblings, and peers. We situate juvenile antislavery as a recursive process, operating within complex, intergenerational interactions. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 30, pp. 97 - 117 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1017/S0080440120000055 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/124887 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) / Royal Historical Society | en_GB |
dc.rights | © 2020. This version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | en_GB |
dc.title | Children against slavery: Juvenile agency and the sugar boycotts in Britain | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2021-02-24T15:28:47Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0080-4401 | |
dc.description | This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Transactions of the Royal Historical Society | en_GB |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | en_GB |
rioxxterms.version | AM | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2020-11-11 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2021-02-24T15:26:39Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | AM | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2021-02-24T15:28:51Z | |
refterms.panel | D | en_GB |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © 2020. This version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/