Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's best

selling history magazine.

I'm Ellie Corpon.

Slavery and the British Empire have proven to be some of history's most debated subjects

in recent years. And on today's episode we'll be exploring how the two were intertwined.

Joining me for today's conversation was Patrick Scanlon, author of Slave Empire,

House Slavery built modern Britain, who told me about the ways that slavery fueled the British

Empire and some of the complicated motivations of abolitionists.

So, your new book Slave Empire, it looks at the ways in which Britain and its empire was

powered by slavery and it also looks at how anti-slavery and abolition were much more complicated

than we might first assume. What are some of the biggest conceptions about Britain's abolition

of slavery that you've come across? So I think most people understand the British Imperial

history is entangled with slavery. That Britain's colonies in the Atlantic world, in the Caribbean,

in the colonies that became the United States, made extensive use of enslaved labor, particularly

in the 18th century. But I think there's a kind of national myth in Britain that Britain may have

been a very enthusiastic slave trader and a very enthusiastic employer of enslaved labor.

But that in the 19th century, Britain turned against slavery and kind of reversed

the polarity of its empire. It went from being an empire devoted to slavery to an empire devoted

to freedom. Not only that abolished slavery, but an empire that actively prosecuted anti-slavery

wars. I think that that's just not true. One of the core arguments of my book Slave Empire

is that you can't understand the anti-slavery movement in Britain without understanding the ways

that it is entangled with the rise of the British Empire in the 18th century. So Britain built

...