Britain vs Slavery
The Hundred-Year War Nobody Taught You, the first of many. They had no army, no power, and no vote. They took on the ruling classes of the world, sent their sailors to die on foreign shores, spent a century and a fortune, freed millions of people they would never meet, and changed what it meant to be human. They were ordinary British people. And nobody taught you their story.
Slavery was universal. Every civilisation on earth had accepted it for thousands of years. One nation's ordinary people decided it would end. Everywhere.
The argument of the book
Here is what they did.
They ended serfdom on their own soil nearly three centuries before the rest of Europe. They established that no person could be imprisoned without legal justification, and then used that law to free a man in chains. They declared their own air too pure for slavery to exist. They made it stick.
They organised the first mass petition in history. Then the first consumer boycott. Three hundred thousand people stopped buying sugar in a single year. A man rode thirty-five thousand miles on horseback to gather evidence that would make Parliament weep. A politician introduced the same bill eight times and was defeated every time. He introduced it a ninth time and the House of Commons rose to its feet.
They freed eight hundred thousand people in a single act of law.
And then they decided that wasn't enough. They built a navy specifically to stop other nations trading in human beings.
Britain vs Slavery, Prologue
31 Chapters. One Finished Book.
Britain vs Slavery is written. It is in proof-reading and final editing now, a prologue and 31 chapters, around 80,000 words, coming as one complete volume. Eight chapters have already been brought to life as short films on the channel, watch them below. Chapters marked Watch now have a video you can see today.
The Character
How the English developed the moral compass that would change the world. From serfdom to Somerset. Five centuries of fighting for freedom on their own soil, against their own system, until the principle was locked into law.
The Forging
How the English character was formed through centuries of resistance to bondage at home. The foundation that made abolition possible.
The Man Who Could Not Look Away
Granville Sharp, Jonathan Strong, and the beginning of the fight.
“So Odious”
Somerset v Stewart, the moment the English character was locked into law.
132 People Thrown Into the Sea
The Zong massacre, the horror that turned a legal principle into a movement.
The Movement
How twelve men in a printing shop started a hundred-year war. The campaign, the evidence, the boycott, the voices, and the man who introduced the same bill eight times.
Twelve Men in a Printing Shop
The Quakers, the Committee, and the invention of modern campaigning.
The Man on the Horse
Thomas Clarkson's evidence crusade, the most important person in the movement that nobody remembers.
300,000 People Stopped Eating Sugar
The first consumer boycott in history, invented by British women.
The Man in Parliament
Wilberforce's eighteen-year campaign, the French contrast, and the standing ovation.
The Voices
Equiano, the Sons of Africa, Mary Prince, the enslaved and formerly enslaved who spoke for themselves.
The Fight for Freedom
The trade was banned. Slavery wasn't. Twenty-six years of continued bondage, the women who refused to wait, the enslaved who rose up, and the night it finally ended.
The Gap
1807–1823, the trade banned but slavery continues within the Empire.
The Women Who Wouldn't Wait
Elizabeth Heyrick and the push for immediate abolition.
The Rebellions
Demerara (1823) and Sam Sharpe's Baptist War (1831–32), the enslaved fighting for themselves.
The Price of Freedom
The 1833 Act, the £20 million, and Wilberforce's last three days.
The Night Slavery Died
Emancipation Night, 31 July 1838.
The Patrol
Britain freed its own slaves. Now it sent its sailors to free everyone else's. For sixty years, ordinary British men patrolled 3,000 miles of African coastline, died in their hundreds from tropical disease, and freed 150,000 people they never met.
The Squadron
The West Africa Squadron, the most unlikely humanitarian naval campaign in history.
The Graveyard
Death on the West Africa Station.
HMS Black Joke
A slave ship turned slave-ship hunter.
The World Campaign
The patrol was at sea. But ending the global slave trade needed more than sailors. It needed diplomats, threats, and sometimes warships in the harbour. Britain took on every major power on earth.
Denman's Raid
Captain Joseph Denman and the Gallinas action, going beyond orders.
Freedom on British Soil
The Creole, the Hermosa, and the principle that British soil means freedom.
Crowther
Samuel Ajayi Crowther, from slave ship to bishop.
The Congress
Vienna, 1814, Britain demands the world change.
The Bombardment
The Barbary Coast, Britain fought all slavery.
The Spanish Problem
Cuba and seven decades of broken promises.
The Portuguese Problem
The biggest slave-trading nation in history.
The American Problem
The Stars and Stripes as the slave trader's favourite flag.
The Reckoning
What it cost. What it meant. Why nobody teaches it.
The Brazilian Crisis
Warships in the harbour, the climax of the enforcement campaign.
Fifty Treaties
The African campaign, going ashore.
Livingstone and the East
The last slave trade, East Africa and the closing of the Zanzibar market.
The Workers Who Chose to Starve
The Lancashire Cotton Famine, the proof that the character lived on.
The Bill
The total cost, financial, human, political.
Why Don't You Know This?
The untaught history, and why it matters.
A complete timeline (1086–1888). The ships of the West Africa Squadron. All 45+ African treaties with dates and signatories. Biographical summaries of key figures. A full bibliography by chapter. And a reference to the UCL Legacies of British Slavery database, 46,000 names.
Be first to hear when Book One is out
Britain vs Slavery is finished, one book, a prologue and 31 chapters, around 80,000 words, now in final edits. Leave your email and you'll be the first to know when it's published, plus updates on the chapters brought to life as films and on the books that follow.
Book One is in final edits. 8 of its 31 chapters already have short films on the channel. Two more books are already written.
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