Emancipation and the Making of a Modern Empire

In this ambitious study of the transition from slavery to freedom, Christopher Bischof explores the idealism that characterized imperial responses to emancipation. Employing a new analytical framework, he considers how British reformers used schemes of liberal humanitarian reform to encourage outcomes that were humane for freedpeople but also secured the continued prosperity of sugar plantations. Through wide-ranging case studies of free-labor abolitionism, special magistrates, elementary education, freeholding, and Chinese indentured labor, the cheap, light-handed humanitarian interventions designed to produce this outcome come into view. As Bischof argues, this idealistic vision helped to legitimize British imperialism at a key moment in its expansion and ideological consolidation. However, this ultimately proved insufficient as freedpeople pursued their own vision of freedom. Combining social, cultural, and political history, Bischof sheds light on the story underpinning this endeavor and the new forms of racism and imperial authority that emerged in its wake.