Michael Brown : “Britain’s Bystander Society, and the Argument for Abolition in the late Eighteenth Century” (20 mars)

Jeudi 20 mars 2025 à 17h

Michael Brown (University of Aberdeen) : “Britain’s Bystander Society, and the Argument for Abolition in the late Eighteenth Century

This paper argues that eighteenth-century Britain can effectively be understood as a bystander society to the cruelties of its empire. Many Britons had elective affinities with those in the empire; engaging in a form of banal imperialism in their everyday lives through a politics of consumption. Moreover, they employed rhetorical tactics such as feigning ignorance, asserting impotence, and displaying casual indifference to the reports of spectacular suffering they saw in their newspapers and elsewhere. The abolitionist movement, in particular, faced the challenge of breaking down these rhetorical barricades in its pursuit of imperial reform. The paper opens and closes with comments on the changing opinions of one such bystander, the novelist, playwright and bluestocking Frances Burney.

Michael Brown est historien des cultures politiques en Irlande, Écosse et plus largement en Grande-Bretagne au siècle des Lumières. Il est directeur du Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies. On lui doit notamment Adam Ferguson and the Politics of Virtue (Aberdeen University Press, 2023),  The Irish Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2016), A Political Biography of John Toland (Routledge, 2011).

 


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
fbensimon (11 mars 2025). Michael Brown : “Britain’s Bystander Society, and the Argument for Abolition in the late Eighteenth Century” (20 mars). Séminaire franco-britannique d'histoire. Consulté le 8 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13ga4