Social Entrepreneurs through History: Thomas Clarkson

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published October 04, 2008 @ 10:37PM PT

Ed. Note: Every month or two we’ll add a new profile of an important social entrepreneur throughout history. We’re launching the series with a profile of Thomas Clarkson, one of the most important actors in the late 18th century British abolitionist movement.

In 18th Century England, the Cambridge Latin Essay prize was one of the highest achievements as any student could strive for.  In 1785, it was the lanky red-haired Thomas Clarkson’s essay on the slave trade that took the top prize.

Yet as Clarkson trotted back from Cambridge to London, he was overcome not by pride but contemplative anguish. As he had explored the horrors of the slave trade more and more deeply, what had started as an essay felt more and more like a calling. Finally, dismounting from his horse, Clarkson plopped down under a tree and recognized that his life had been irrevocably changed and that he could not, with his knowledge, do nothing. What he didn’t know is that he was about to become one of the social entrepreneurs at the core of the first and most successful human rights movement of the early modern era.

The slave trade

A map of the slave trade from slaveryinamerica.org

When Clarkson first began his essay research, the slave trade was a common part of the modern world. In 1787, it would have seemed inconceivable to almost any observer that just two decades later, Britain would become the first economy to ban the trade. In the two decades before the trade was banned in 1807, British slave ships transported more than half of all slaves taken from Africa to the new world, including almost 400,000 people from 1791-1800.

Scholars estimate that some 11 million people were taken from Africa during the era of the transatlantic trade, of which more than a million died at sea during the perilous ‘middle passage.’ Both the journey from Africa and the working conditions the slaves were subjected to in the new world were beyond brutal. It was not uncommon for 5%-20% of any given ship’s slaves to die in transit.  For Africans destined to work in the Caribbean, only one in three of those surviving the trip lived more than three years.

The trade was also ingrained in the increasingly global British economy. Sugar, the product two-thirds of slaves lived and died producing, was Britain’s largest import throughout the 18th century. Much of the waterfront economy came from participation in the slave economy, such as the example of Liverpool, the ship-producing city who’s vessels provided the means to transport some 300,000 slaves from 1773-1783 alone. The economic consequences of abolition would be significant: some scholars have estimate that abolishing the trade and later (in 1838) the practice of slavery cost approximately 1.8% of British national annual income for more than 50 years.

But to people like Clarkson, it was clear that something had to be done to change the status quo and, as he wrote, “see these calamities to their end.”

A Liverpool slave ship (1780) from the National Museum Liverpool

What he did

Clarkson was not the first abolitionist. Indeed, for more than a century, the Quakers of Britain and America had been advocating for the abolition of slavery on religious grounds. The Quakers, however, were on the margins of British society with little political capital to expend to change government policy.

In 1787, Clarkson was invited to join together with some of the most active Quaker abolitionists as well as the few Anglican legal experts who had been fighting the trade as individuals to form the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. As the only paid staff member of the Committee, Clarkson took off riding around the country, collecting evidence and testimony about the horrors of the slave trade, including diagrams of the insane conditions in which slaves were transported and horrific instruments like the prongs used to force open the mouths of slaves who tried to committee suicide through starvation. In addition to interviewing tens of thousands of sailors for testimony, he rooted out supporters and helped set up meetings and events through which the movement grew.

A famous diagram of a slave ship that abolitionists like Clarkson used to show how horrendous and inhuman the conditions of the trade really were

It was during this time that many of the modern techniques of organizing and advocacy were either developed or perfected. While not everyone had the right to vote, Clarkson and the abolitionist movement used petitions to demonstrate the sheer volume of people who believed in their cause. Former slaves, most notably Olaudah Equiano turned their life stories into first person narratives that helped bring the horror of the movement directly to people who otherwise felt far removed. Consumers boycotted slave produced sugar and TV, putting economic pressure on companies who used slave labor.

New "slave-free" producers found a market through consumer boycotts

Of course all these varied efforts needed common language, organizing, and support. For much of the period between 1787 and 1807, Clarkson’s task was keeping these efforts on a parallel track.

Perhaps the most important ally Clarkson helped enlist was William Wilberforce, an evangelical leader and member of the British Parliament. It was William Wilberforce who for almost twenty years devoted himself to making sure that a debate about slavery was part of the parliamentary agenda. Without Wilberforce as a governmental champion, Clarkson’s organizing would have found little voice in the halls of power. Yet without Clarkson’s organizing, particularly the tens of thousands of petition signatures he routinely delivered, Wilberforce would not have been able to leverage the awe and fear of the pages and pages of angry citizens. It was truly one of the greatest social entrepreneurship partnerships in history.

In 1807, after challenges and setbacks (most notably the impact of the French Revolution), the British parliament signed into law the Slave Trade Act, which banned the British commerce in human beings forever. The final emancipation of current slaves across the empire, however, wouldn’t come until 1838.

What we can learn

Social entrepreneurs see an unjust or unsustainable equilibrium and develop strategies for recreating the world in a more just iteration. Often, their vision is ahead of their time and they face incredible hurdles.

Clarkson was successful for a few reasons that, despite time and historical distance, are instructive for today’s social entrepreneurs:

1. He built upon the work of others. The first thing Clarkson did after committing to his mission was to reach out to other, more experienced mentors who could help him determine the best way to undertake the great challenge of changing British society and policy.
2. He helped people find ways to contribute to the cause that reflected the specific types of and limitations of the power they had. Petitions, consumer boycotts, direct government advocacy were all important parts of the abolitionist movement’s strategy, and provided a variety of opportunities for people to get involved, even if they didn’t have the right to vote directly.
3. He found key allies. Clarkson simply could not have done his work without allies, particularly the Quakers who provided a language and a moral force for tackling the issue and William Wilberforce, who’s indefatigable willingness to press for legislation banning the slave trade slowly eroded the British parliaments will.
4. He understood the power of testimony and story. Clarkson was a collector. He brought together testimonies from slaves and slave ship captains with actual visuals – diagrams of slave ships and instruments of captivity – to create emotionally visceral appeals. As scholar Adam Hochschild has put it, “the abolitionists succeeded because they mastered one challenge that still faces anyone who cares about economic and social justice: drawing connections between the near and the distant.”
5. He didn’t give up. In some ways, building public support was easier than changing actual policy. The economic power behind the slave trade was strong, and had powerful access to Members of Parliament. What’s more, the rise of the abolitionist movement coincided with the French revolution, instigating a general Parliamentary fear of mass movements. It would have been easy for Clarkson and his allies to simply cede their efforts, but they persisted. Perhaps most telling, when the slave trade was finally banned in 1807, Clarkson did not retire his organizing. He spent the next three decades advocating for workers rights and mentoring a new generation of abolitionist leaders who would help abolish slavery itself.

References, Resources, and Links

The statistical information came from the following resources:

Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free the Empire’s Slaves by Adam Hochschild

The single book to start with to learn about the early British abolitionist movement

Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World by David Brion Davis

A spectacular synthesis of slavery in human history and society

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism by Christopher Leslie Brown

A challenging work that puts the motives of the British abolitionist movement in its historical context relative particularly to the American revolution

http://www.bbc.co.uk/abolition/

A great site set up by BBC for the 200th anniversary of the abolitionist movement in 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Clarkson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_the_Abolition_of_the_Slave_Trade

Basic background