Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg’s (2012) ‘Lincoln’. Fair use.
Campaigners and governments leading the fight to end ‘modern-day slavery’ regularly appeal to the history of anti-slavery to help justify their current activities and agendas. These appeals to history typically involve one or more of the following: 1) a selective focus upon mostly white anti-slavery campaigners in Britain and the United States; 2) a largely uncritical celebration of the virtues of ‘great emancipators’, such as William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln, whose personal examples are invoked as models to emulate; and 3) a recurring emphasis on innovative strategies used by ordinary citizens—petitions, boycotts, pamphlets—whose impact is held to have been politically decisive in securing ‘freedom’ for enslaved Africans.
Anti-slavery campaigners are therefore chiefly regarded as “heroes [who] won great battles”, to quote Kevin Bales, and their inspirational historical example is put forward as a model that we should follow today. In a high profile speech in 2012, US President Obama declared that “Our fight against human trafficking is one of the greatest human rights causes of our time, and the United States will continue to lead it—in partnership with you. The change we seek will not come easy, but we can draw strength from the movements of the past.” If pioneers such as Wilberforce and Lincoln were able to end legal slavery, then what stops a new band of college students, churches, activists and public officials from ‘liberating slaves’ today?
