An Essay on the Slavery & Commerce of the Human Species
Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) — the young Cambridge scholar whose prize essay grew into a lifetime of abolitionist labor — sets forth in three parts the historical, philosophical, and moral case against the slavery and commerce of the human species. A modern English edition with linked scripture and historical references.
- The 1786 essay that helped ignite the British campaign to abolish the slave trade
- Traces the history of slavery from antiquity to the African trade and colonial plantation
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read4.9 hours
- Length69,433 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 4.9 hours
This figure is here so you can compare one book against another. Every title on the site is timed from its own word count at the same reading speed — nothing is adjusted book by book — so if this edition says 4.9 hours and another says half that, the second one really is about half the reading. It is a measure of size, in the way a page count is. Your own pace is your own: at the speeds typical adult readers actually manage, this edition runs anywhere from 3.9 hours to 6.6 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 60,529 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 8,904 words |
| Total | 69,433 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 8,904 of the 69,433 words above, and they are part of what you are buying.
Counted from the text of the EPUB you receive. Navigation, the title page, the table of contents and the licence page are excluded — they are packaging, not reading.
The reading rate
238 words per minute, for adult silent reading of non-fiction, applied unchanged to every title on the site. We did not pick the number; it is the pooled result of a published meta-analysis. Nothing is adjusted book by book — that consistency is what makes two of these figures worth comparing.
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
190 studies, 18,573 participants.
The same paper puts most adult readers between 175 and
300 words per minute, and those two speeds give the
3.9 hours and 6.6 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 4.9 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 198–278 pages.
Words per printed page is a typesetting convention, not a measurement — it moves with trim size, type size and leading. The range above assumes 250–350 words a page. Friends Illuminated publishes no print edition of this book; the figure is here only because pages are a more familiar size than words.
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About This Edition
Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) was the most tireless investigator the abolitionist movement ever produced. In 1785, as a Cambridge undergraduate, he entered and won the university’s Latin essay competition on the question whether it is lawful to make slaves of others against their will. On the ride back to London, he was overtaken by the conviction that if the things he had written were true it was time some person should see these calamities to their end. He translated the essay into English at the urging of Anthony Benezet’s Quaker friends in London, expanded it with fresh evidence, and published it in 1786 through the Quaker printer James Phillips. Within a year it had drawn Wilberforce, Sharp, and the London Friends into a common cause, and Clarkson had begun the traveling — some thirty-five thousand miles by his own count — that would gather the parliamentary case against the trade.
An Essay on the Slavery & Commerce of the Human Species is the founding document of that campaign. In three parts Clarkson traces the whole subject: the ancient trade in slaves from war, piracy, and hereditary bondage; the modern African commerce, in which European merchants set petty kings against one another for slaves; and the treatment inflicted on the enslaved in the colonies, from the middle passage through the seasoning to the discipline of the plantations. To this he adds a patient refutation of every argument then offered in defense of the trade — from purchase, from genius, from color, from the alleged improvement of the African’s condition — and closes with a final appeal to the conscience of Britain.
Running through the whole is Clarkson’s conviction that no purchase, no custom, and no long acquiescence can constitute a right to the liberties of another. This Friends Illuminated edition presents his text in lightly modernized English, with the plain speech of the eighteenth century preserved where the argument requires it, and scripture, classical sources, and historical references linked throughout.
