Enslavement, Evangelicalism and Bibles

The Vigilante engraving echoed the similarly disturbing, and now more famous, print of a British slave ship called the Brooks, which was widely circulated by British abolitionists in the late eighteenth century.
Primarily designed for a white British audience, prints such as this ask the viewer to pass moral judgement on the appalling conditions on board slave ships. A recent commentator has argued that such ‘crude renderings of the enslaved … serve to dehumanise individuals at the very moment when the need to proclaim their humanity is paramount’.
<br><br>
<b>Title:</b><i> Seventeenth report of the directors of the African Institution</i> (London, 1823)<br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> C.27.36

15 / 19

The Vigilante engraving echoed the similarly disturbing, and now more famous, print of a British slave ship called the Brooks, which was widely circulated by British abolitionists in the late eighteenth century. Primarily designed for a white British audience, prints such as this ask the viewer to pass moral judgement on the appalling conditions on board slave ships. A recent commentator has argued that such ‘crude renderings of the enslaved … serve to dehumanise individuals at the very moment when the need to proclaim their humanity is paramount’.

Title: Seventeenth report of the directors of the African Institution (London, 1823)
Shelfmark: C.27.36

Enslavement exhibition