4 - Anti-slavery, Colonization, and Emigration

Summary

This chapter traces Dr Thomas Hodgkin’s engagement with British anti-slavery, the American Colonization Society, Liberia and the African American Emigration movement. Hodgkin was the leading advocate in Britain for the colony of Liberia, and became its British consul after independence in 1848. Hodgkin conceived of solutions to slavery within an unusually transnational framework. However, his championing of gradual emancipation for British slaves and plans to civilize West Africa by repatriating emancipated slaves from the New World, led him into unsavoury alliances and conflict with leading British and US abolitionists. Hodgkin’s correspondence with humanitarian opponents, doyens of British abolition, leading Liberians, African American Emigrationists, and the American Colonization Society, reveals deep divisions within anti-slavery which had ramifications for the campaigns for indigenous protection and civilization.