Rossi, Benedetta; (2023) Global Abolitionist Movements. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press (In press).

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Abstract

Abolitionism succeeded thanks to the struggles of many groups, some genuinely global, others national or local but interconnected at a global level. This article takes a pluralist approach to global abolitionism. Since the end of the seventeenth century, the membership, objectives, and strategies of different abolitionist movements have been varied, but they shared the same objective: to impose their understanding of slavery as an aberration that ought to be delegalized and eventually prohibited worldwide. The article periodizes global abolitionism in three main stages characterized, successively, by the primacy of egalitarianism, imperialism, and internationalism. By the mid-twentieth century pro-slavery ideologies were obsolete in Euro-America and had disappeared from official policy globally. They survived in circumscribed contexts where anti-slavery activists are struggling against the lingering vitality of pro-slavery ideas in the twenty-first century.

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