Tracing the development of the Irish anti-slavery movement, this book shows how slaves and sugar produced economic and political change in Eighteenth-century Ireland and discusses the role of Irish emigrants in slave societies in the Caribbean and North America.

This book tackles a hitherto neglected topic by presenting Ireland as very much a part of the Black Atlantic world. It shows how slaves and sugar produced economic and political change in Eighteenth-century Ireland and discusses the role of Irish emigrants in slave societies in the Caribbean and North America. It traces the development of the Irish anti-slavery movement explaining why it appealed to such prominent figures as Olaudah Equiano, Fredrick Douglass and Daniel O'Connell.

Introduction - PART I: AWAY - Slaves and Scholars - Servants and Slaves: the Seventeenth Century - Creoles and Slaves: the Eighteenth Century - Sojourners, Slaves and Stipendiarys: the Nineteenth Century - The Trade - PART II: AT HOME - Protestant, Catholic - And Dissenter - Dublin, Sweet City - Dynasties - Anti-Slavery Literature, Mostly Imaginative - PART
III: EMANCIPATION - Daniel O'Connell and Anti-Slavery - Frederick Douglass and the 'Antieverythingarians' - Famine and War - A Special Relationship? - Conclusion