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William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner | 
 enlarge | Author: William Hague
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
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Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 2714
Media: Paperback
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 2
ISBN: 0007228864
EAN: 9780007228867
ASIN: 0007228864
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book dispatched from stock in the UK
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
Very Good November 4, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
William Wilberforce by William Hauge is a very good book about one of the leaders of the campaign to abolish slavery. It has a clear narrative structure and is informative without being overcomplicated. It is all in all a very good book about a man who acquired a deep evangelical faith (how Hauge deals and explains this is one of the best pieces of the work) which inspired him to help to rid the world of slavery.
 A beacon of light August 17, 2007
34 out of 34 found this review helpful
"A beacon of light which the passing of two centuries has scarcely dimmed". This is Hague's concluding assessment of Wilberforce. This fine biography should keep that light blazing. I think it will probably be the definitive biography of the great abolitionist for quite some time to come. Hague writes well and keeps one's attention throughout a long book. He is masterful at setting the historical scene. No doubt his previous biography of Wilberforce's friend Pitt was a great help in researching the period. One is given a real feel for a very different world where only men of means could afford to enter politics for getting elected, except to a rotten borough, could mean huge expense. It was a time when party allegiance was not so well developed and Wilberforce maintained his independence as a member of parliament for Yorkshire. He was a friend of Pitt but opposed him over the war with France as he opposed a later government over Queen Caroline. Hague does not fall into the trap of judging an historic figure by more modern criteria. Contemporary critics of Wilberforce disliked his social conservatism. His radicalism was aimed at stopping an evil trade not promoting cause of the poor close to home.Hague explains it. Wilberforce would give no support to those who would be socially disruptive and those applauding the French Revolution. His detestation of what had happened in France, Hague rightly identifies as Wilberforce's opposition to all things against religion.
One expects Hague to be good on the politics of Wilberforce's life but I was pleasantly surprised by his understanding of his subject's Evangelical faith. Christian faith we know transformed Wilberforce from a pleasure seeking young man into an ardent reformer. It was the motivation in all his subsequent life. As well as abolition it also moved him to seek the opening of India to Christian missions. Hague seems to have a sympathetic understanding of Wilberforce's Christianity as well as a great appreciation of his political achievements. here was an MP who was most diligent in his duties though he never held an office of state. There is also admiration for the personal character of his subject. He was a man who made friends, was hugely charitable and a loving husband and father. Here was a notable orator and a man of wit, welcome at the tables of the great and the good. His character was indeed that of a joyful Christian as Piper writes in his short biography. He died impoverished by his own personal charity and the foolishness of his eldest son. He declined ennoblement and wanted a quiet burial place but was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey for his contemporaries judged him to be great as well as good.
Wilberforce August 9, 2007
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
William Hague follows up his debut biography of Pitt the Younger with Pitt's best friend and tireless slave-trade campaigner. It is the perfect sophomore effort. Similar era; one of the closest friendships in politics, yet, some great differences between the two great men. Pitt, the son of the great Chatham; by no means wealthy; eager for ministerial power. Wilberforce: from a very wealthy mercantile background; advocating the abolition of the slave-trade as an `Independent' constituent for Yorkshire.
I too disagree with a previous reviewer who seems to criticise Hague's book on his own personal dislike of Wilberforce, not on the merits of the book itself. I have to say that Hague paints a very fair and unbiased account of Wilberforce. Wilberforce considered himself an `Independent', not a Tory. He could be rightly called one of `Pitt's friends' but famously turned against Pitt in opposition to the Revolutionary War; he managed to remain on friendly terms with Fox and Grenville as a matter of fact. Hague does point to certain faults: his licentious youth, his frequent inability to commit to one side of an argument; his complete naivety on military affairs. The biography as a whole however is favourable to what emerges as a brilliant man; Hague quite rightly makes great use of contemporary descriptions of Wilberforce and offers a succinct argument for his policies.
For anyone who believes politics are boring, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Hague's description of the various machinations building up to the 1807 act is about as dramatic and exiting as it gets. Those were certainly exiting times in politics: two Revolution and two subsequent wars; Irish Union; reform; the trial of Warren Hastings; Catholic emancipation; the slave-trade etc.. Some of the greatest orators of all time graced the Commons' floor: Pitt, Burke, Fox, Sheridan and of course Wilberforce. Later Canning and Castlereagh would be added to that long list of luminaries. It puts our own politics to shame if truth be told.
Hague occasionally juxtaposes his own modern political world with the politics of that era yet never goes overboard while doing it. He instead draws out the eccentricities and bustle of the 18thc election; the lack of a party machine; the greater reliance on debate etc.. It frequently is reminiscent of an early satirical scene in A Pickwick Papers.
Christian Evangelicalism of course was hugely important to Wilberforce. In fairness he never imposed his Christianity though he sometimes despaired of Pitt's relevant lack of religion. Instead he offered guidance to any of his friends so inclined. It's significant that once he went through his dramatic conversion he still remained something of a social animal (despite his best efforts). Wilberforce has an amazing knack of remaining friends with rivals; contemporaries describe him as humorous, amiable and the soul of the party. He saw his own religion as enlightened, benevolent and uplifting; in stark contrast to Methodism which influenced him. Wilberforce never withdrew from life, his own Christianity reinvigorated it.
Hague's book is wonderfully presented with numerous plates; particularly brilliant are the many (nothing less than scathing will do) Gillray sketches. His research and use of sources is impeccable; his prose informative and accessible. All in all, Hague is turning into the new-Roy Jenkins. I like the fact that he seems to specialise in a era; an era I am very interested in as it happens. How about a Charles James Fox book William?
Fascinating history by an impressive historian! July 30, 2007
8 out of 14 found this review helpful
I disagree fundamentally with another reviewer who seems to base his opinion of William Hague's book and his qualities as an historian on his (the reviewer's) personal distaste for the author's latest subject, William Wilberforce, the man himself and his doings.
This, in my opinion, is unfair, for, whilst I, too, did not 'take to' Wilberforce and would probably have found him to be an insufferable prig - the Paddy Ashdown of his day - and an overly-religious zealot, I admire Hague's impressive research and his excellent writing and I also seem to detect in the author a previously unnoticed tendency to liberalism. I was in the hall when William Hague made his famous Conservative Party Conference speech at the age of sixteen and he showed then no tendency to liberalism, excepting the economic variety.
I now suppose that he has seen in Pitt and Wilberforce (both the subjects of triumphant tomes from this historian) that, from promising youth, there can emerge powerful and lasting political personalities who were, in their day, though each conservative and/or Conservative in their respective ways, far ahead of their contemporaries in both ability and thinking. Hague himself showed promise in youth and has gained much with more years. (Will he ever be another Pitt or a replacement Wilberforce, though?).
Now, as to why Hague is apparently so sympathetic to Wilberforce is another matter. It is obviously received wisdom today that Wilberforce was right in many matters, especially his successful campaigning against the slave trade and slavery itself, but what I found surprising in Hague's biography was the strength of the case and the powerful reasoning against Wilberforce's attitudes to the slave trade and slavery. And when one sees today the situations in Haiti and Sierra Leone, both of which obtained Wilberforce's ardent support in their earliest years of 'independence,' it is scarcely surprising that Hague's hero's contemporaries and his many opponents should have envisaged the mayhem and disorder that actually occurred and has lasted.
I will end on a more generous note. The fine portrait of Wilberforce by George Richmond shows a man whom I would have been pleased to meet - for a short while, at least - despite his alleged canting hypocrisy. It oozes a handsome decency and is a fine inclusion - amongst many others - in a fine book. Well done, young William!
 Poor history by a poor 'historian' July 20, 2007
13 out of 65 found this review helpful
William Hague's recent biography of Wilberforce unsurprisingly paints a very pretty picture of the Tory MP from Yorkshire. But what is the historical context of Wilberforce's policies?
During the 18th century, Britain became the `honourable slave carriers' to the sugar planters of her rivals France and Spain, as the abolitionist the Reverend James Ramsay complained. He lamented that the slave trade "has contributed more to the aggrandisement of our rivals than of our national wealth."
Between 1782 and 1792, British slave traders doubled the slave population of France's colony St Domingue (present-day Haiti). St Domingue was more fertile than the British West Indies, whose soil was becoming exhausted. St Domingue's sugar cost a fifth less and its exports and profit rates were twice Jamaica's. By 1789, St Domingue's sugar production was a third more than that of all Britain's West Indies colonies. The sugar colonies were far more important to France than to Britain.
Prime Minister William Pitt raged that the slave trade, "instead of being very advantageous to Great Britain, is the most destructive that can well be imagined to her interests." Abolishing the slave trade would ruin St Domingue. So he urged his friend William Wilberforce to campaign against the slave trade: the abolitionist movement was created to serve the British state's interests.
The British ruling class's frenzied reaction to the French revolution of 1789 intensified the antagonism with France, as she became not just a rival but a political alternative. Pitt expected to win before Christmas, and he didn't mean Christmas 1815. Wilberforce shared, indeed often led, the British ruling class's hostility to the French revolution, and he supported the long wars against revolutionary France, sometimes voting for peace but always voting for supplies for the war.
In 1791, St Domingue's slave-owners offered to leave French rule and put themselves under British rule. In 1793, Pitt accepted their offer and agreed that they could keep their slaves. As Wilberforce noted in his diary, "Pitt threw out against slave motion on St. Domingo account." Suddenly, the slave trade was in `British interests' again. So Pitt blocked abolition for the next 14 years, and British slave ships clearing for Africa doubled.
When St Domingue's slaves rebelled against Pitt's betrayal, he sent hundreds of thousands of troops to try to crush them, in a disastrous and futile war. 50,000 British soldiers died, 50,000 were permanently invalided. When St Domingue's revolutionary government ended slavery, the British ruling class did not need the slave trade any more and so could abolish it in 1807.
In Britain, Wilberforce was the foremost apologist and champion of every act of tyranny, from the employment of Oliver the Spy and the illegal detention of poor prisoners in Coldbaths Fields jail to the Peterloo massacre. Wilberforce supported the 1794 Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, which let the government imprison people against whom it had no evidence at all. Habeas Corpus was suspended until 1802. Across Britain, trade union members, journalists and publishers were arrested and detained.
He backed the 1795 Act against Seditious Meetings and Assemblies, the 1795 Act against Treasonable and Seditious Practices, the 1797 Seduction from Duty and Allegiance Act, the 1797 Act against Administering Unlawful Oaths, the 1799 Newspaper Publications Act, and the 1799 Act for the More Effective Suppression of Societies Established for Seditious and Treasonable Purposes. Consequently, the state prevented meetings of the Literary Society of Manchester, the Academical Society of Oxford, and even of a mineralogical society, on the grounds that the study of mineralogy could lead to atheism. Wilberforce backed the Tory government's Six Acts of 1819, including the Blasphemous and Seditious Libel Act, known as the Gagging Act.
In 1794 Pitt's government prosecuted twelve members of the London Corresponding Society for high treason - their crime? Advocating universal suffrage. Wilberforce backed the prosecution, and when a jury acquitted the defendants, he backed the government's decision to arrest 65 leading members of the Society and imprison them without trial for two years. No wonder that it was said of Wilberforce, "he never favoured the liberty of any white man in all his life."
Wilberforce wrote that Christianity "renders the inequalities of the social scale less galling to the lower orders, whom also she instructs in their turn to be diligent, humble, patient: reminding them that their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the hand of God; that it is their part faithfully to discharge its duties, and contentedly to bear its inconveniences." William Cobbett called him the prince of hypocrites, who praised the benefits of poverty, from a comfortable distance.
The bishops and baronets of the Proclamation Society (as Wilberforce's Society for the Suppression of Vice was earlier called) prosecuted the impoverished publisher of Tom Paine's The Age of Reason. Sydney Smith called it "the Society for the Suppression of Vice among those with less than five hundred pounds a year." In 1801 and 1802, it launched 623 successful prosecutions for breaking the Sabbath laws. Pitt's government declared The Rights of Man seditious and prosecuted those who published and sold copies of Paine's book.
The government, with Wilberforce's support, imposed censorship, launching 42 prosecutions of publishers, editors and writers between 1809 and 1812. It became a criminal offence to write that the Prince of Wales was fat (he was), or to report that Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh had ordered the flogging of Irish peasants (he had).
Wilberforce also backed persecution of the whole working class. He proposed a general Combination Act, calling combinations - trade unions - `a general disease in our society'. The Pitt government's Acts of 1799 and 1800 were the severest of their kind ever enacted in Britain. They made all unions illegal as such, whether conspiracy, restraint of trade or the like could be proved against them or not. In theory, the Acts applied to employers as well as to workers, but workers were prosecuted by the thousand, never a single employer. In 1834, a year after the emancipation of the slaves, the penalty for trade union activity was still transportation for life.
But Pitt looked after the slave-owners; he introduced non-domicile tax status in 1799, so that those who had made their fortunes from slavery abroad paid no tax on their profits.
The abolitionist movement flourished when it backed the current interest of the British state - it made no gains when the British state opposed it. It was never able, or willing, to overrule the state. It did not challenge slavery itself: Wilberforce consistently opposed those who worked for the abolition of not just the slave trade but slavery as well. Wilberforce was about as independent as Sir Bob Geldorf.
In sum, as his biographer the last Lord Birkenhead wrote approvingly, Wilberforce "was a Tory through and through; he never shed the political ideas he had inherited from Pitt and his religion intensified his conservatism."
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