Why did an antislavery movement emerge at the time of the American Revolution, both in the American colonies and in Britain?  Christopher Brown asks this question and many more in Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism.  The American Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic brought together strands of thought and feeling which had been latent, as men and women grappled with questions of power and justice.  Abolition was one way for Britons to restore their moral capital, and drew on many sources—economic, moral, religious.  In a fascinating study Christopher Brown upends much of what we thought we knew about the antislavery movement, and allows us to see the 18th-century world with fresh eyes.

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