So I'm taking the last of my undergrad history courses right now, and one of the books that my professor assigned us is Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains. We're six chapters in, and so far, Hochschild has centered British abolitionists (primarily Thomas Clarkson) in his accounting of the outlawing of the slave trade in England (I phrase it that way because we all, I assume, know that slavery itself didn't go anywhere after 1833).
Now, I might not be the best read Marxist, but I know enough to be skeptical of any claims of significant historical events being driven by the energy and moral force of "great" individuals rather than the ebb and flow of material reality, a claim Hochschild is definitely making here. He even quotes Emerson in saying "An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man."
Well! I couldn't let that nonsense go unargued, and since lambasting my professor would do no good, I'm here to ask if anybody happens to know the actual reasons the slave trade was outlawed, beyond vagaries about the industrial revolution and wage slavery. Gimme the real nuts and bolts.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-british-empire-was-built-on-slavery-then-grew-by-antislavery
"The campaigns against the slave trade and slavery aligned well with the interests of an industrial and capitalist British Empire. The end of slavery and the beginning of free labour, the leaders of the antislavery movement promised, would secure rebellious Caribbean subjects to British rule. The discipline of wage labour would be a civilising force, teaching thrift and forbearance to people who were believed to be mired in moral and economic depravity."
"As the Trinidadian historian, later first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams argued in Capitalism and Slavery (1944), in the era of abolition, economic conditions favoured cheap, easily exploited wage labour over enslaved labour. Antislavery Britons believed in justice and freedom, and enjoyed how their beliefs made them feel. But what justice and freedom meant, and Britain’s responsibility to carry them around the world by force, if necessary, were shaped by imperial power. The public celebrated. Parliament made the laws, and capital called the tune."