John Newton, Collective Shame, and the Repentant Imagination of British Abolitionism

Abstract: This article argues for the significance of shame within British abolitionism. Close reading of the autobiographical writings of John Newton, an enslaver-turned-abolitionist and evangelical minister, reveals how changing ideas of shame shaped British responses to slavery in the late eighteenth century. I focus in particular on the idea of collective shame, through which Newton and other abolitionists claimed that slavery represented a source of shame for the entire British nation. Attending to Newton's sense of the shame of slavery, I show, yields fresh answers to longstanding historiographical questions about how (and whether) to account for the motivations of abolitionists.

Duke Scholars

Author Tye Landels