2. The rise of black abolitionism and global antislavery struggles

Abstract

As a new century loomed, black activists pushed abolition forward across the Atlantic world. The greatest example came in Saint-Domingue, where a slave rebellion in the 1790s compelled the French government to issue a broad emancipation decree. “The rise of black abolitionism and global antislavery struggles” explains how a more assertive brand of abolitionism also developed in the United States, as free black communities rebuked American statesmen for allowing racial oppression to prosper, arguing that slavery and segregation violated the American creed of liberty and justice for all. Several European and American nations banned the slave trade in the early 1800s, but slavery proved to be a resilient institution in the 19th century.