Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves

Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains is the taut, gripping account of one of the most brilliantly organized social justice campaigns in history—the fight to free the slaves of the British Empire.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
A National Book Award Finalist
A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller

In early 1787, twelve men—a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery—came together in a London printing shop and began the world’s first grassroots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement’s leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens’ movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft chronicle of this groundbreaking antislavery crusade and its powerful enemies, Bury the Chains gives a little-celebrated human rights watershed its due at last.

"Bury the Chains is by far the most readable and rounded account we have of British antislavery, a campaign that…helped to change the world and can be seen as a prototype of the modern social justice movement"—Los Angeles Times Book Review