Overview

In the context of slavery, science is usually associated with slaveholders’ scientific justifications of racism. But this book demonstrates that abolitionists were equally adept at using scientific ideas to discredit slaveholders. Focusing on antislavery scientists and black and white abolitionists in Britain and America between the 1770s and 1860s, historian Eric Herschthal shows how these activists drew upon chemistry, botany, medicine, and mechanics to portray slavery as a premodern institution bound for obsolescence. These activists contended that slavery stood in the way of scientific progress, blinded slaveholders to scientific evidence, and prevented enslavers from adopting labor-saving technologies that might eradicate enslaved labor. Historians have recently begun to challenge the myth that slavery was premodern—backward—demonstrating slavery’s centrality to the rise of modern capitalism, science, and technology. This book demonstrates where the myth comes from in the first place.

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9780300236804

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Reviews

A smart, wide-ranging and learned book which will reshape our understanding of science's role in the international movement against slavery. -Nicholas Guyatt, University of Cambridge While recent historical literature has shown the complicity of the early science of man in the defense of slavery, Herschthal unearths an equally long intellectual tradition of antislavery science. This innovative book is timely, when science itself is under assault. -Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition A brilliantly written and engaging text that succeeds in complicating how prominently science was featured in the writings and lives of both abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates. Herschthal deftly centers black thinkers and leaders as they engaged with how science and scientific thinking could be utilized radically to help dismantle slavery. -Deirdre Cooper Owens, author of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology

Author Information

Eric Herschthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of Utah. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, the Washington Post, and the New York Review of Books, among other publications.

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