Anti-Slavery International:

The Binns and Supplementary Collections of Anti-Slavery Tracts, Pamphlets and Books, 1767 et seq.

From the Library of Anti-Slavery International, London, England

45 reels 35mm silver positive microfilm, ISBN 1 897955 44 8

List price: POA

This collection of nearly 800 titles covers a century of campaigning in Europe and America on the subject of slavery and includes tracts, pamphlets, books, albums of press cuttings and engravings, maps and diagrams, as well as volumes of literature and poetry.

Thomas Binns was a well known physician and an active member of the Anti-Slavery Society in Liverpool. He was a friend of such significant abolitionist figures as William Roscoe, William Rathbone, and Thomas Clarkson (who signed their own works included in the collection). Together with his son Jonathan, Thomas was a supporter of the anti-slavery movement from its earliest beginnings, and as a doctor lost many patients among the Liverpool traders as a result.

The Binns Collection alone covers the period 1767 to 1855, numbering over 400 pamphlets, which were the main campaigning tool used by both the abolitionist and pro-slave lobbies in their attempts to gain the public's sympathies. The pamphlets describe the brutality and practicality of the industry of slavery, including the capture of millions of men, women and children along the West Coast of Africa. Others detail the horror of the transatlantic crossing, as families were split and then transported in cramped, disease infested ships to the Americas, as part of the triangular trade. Then others illustrate the lives of the slaves in the Americas, on plantations in the West Indies, and the rebellion of slave communities, and their subsequent freedom or annihilation. Further the collection includes Parliamentary speeches, notes on the trials of slave traders following abolition, religious arguments and the application of the Bible to both abolitionist and pro-slavery arguments, the campaign against West Indian sugar, and regional society papers (including fund-raising).

The Binns Collection is accompanied by a large and varied collection of literature on the subject of slavery. This supplementary material provides a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive background to the more urgent style of the pamphlets. Many of the books contain plates and diagrams, from portraits of the main personalities to narrative drawings and maps.

The whole collection gives an admirable picture of the anti-slavery movement in general, as it was pursued in America. All the main personalities and societies involved are represented, charting the UK and development of probably the first human rights movement. The history is illustrated by the early writings of Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, includes the seminal pamphlet by Anthony Benezet, others are written by Reverend James Ramsay who had worked as a doctor on slave ships, abolitionists Zachary Macauley, James Cropper, and James Scoble, Parliamentarians William Wilberforce and William Pitt, and commentators such as James Stephen. It also traces the development of the movement in America, and the complications which ensued when the clash of aims and personalities resulted in the great schism of the early 1840's. It includes pamphlets and books from campaigners, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, William Jay, Dr Alexander Milton Ross, Angelina Grimke, Harriet Beecher Stowe, including those abroad such as Eliza Wigham an Edinburgh abolitionist. There are autobiographies from campaigners, many of whom were former slaves themselves, describing their life of bondage, their escape and subsequent life, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington and Phillis Wheatley.

Further there is coverage of the campaigns in mainland Europe, with pamphlets on the subject of France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The whole is available as 45 reels of 35mm silver positive microfilm. The microfilms are numbered by reels and every frame on each reel has a sequential electronic number facilitating reference.

The microfilm collection is supplemented by a printed Hand list, Index and Guide to the Microfilms by Jane M Gunn.