The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France, 1814–48
ISBN: 9780230288416
Platform/Publisher: SpringerLink / Palgrave Macmillan UK
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: unlimited; Download: unlimited
Subjects: Palgrave History Collection;

Britain's rarely-examined, nineteenth-century diplomatic efforts for abolition took contemporary pre-eminence over most questions and almost sparked war with France in 1845. Kielstra examines the issue in Anglo-French relations: how conflicting moral, economic, and nationalist pressures and lobby groups affected domestic politics and high diplomacy. To preserve peace and their positions, statesmen had little margin for error as they framed policies which attacked the trade and satisfied mutually incompatible domestic opinions, in a struggle which holds lessons for current efforts to include human rights concerns in foreign policy.

Paul Michael Kielstra is Director of Studies, 21st Century Trust.

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