A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes

Abstract

Anthony Benezet scoured the available English literature of colonial exploitation for evidence of the humanity of the trafficked Africans and the inhumanity of the European traders in human beings. He compiled and published this Short Account in 1762 to present the case for termination of the trans-Atlantic transportation of kidnapped Africans, for abolition of slavery and the slave trade, and for emancipation of the enslaved persons held in bondage in North America and elsewhere. Drawing on Scottish moral philosophy, British Whig ideology, and, most importantly, on New Testament gospel teachings, Benezet presented both reasoned and impassioned appeals for the recognition that Africans had rights to life and liberty that were being abrogated on an industrial scale in violation of the most basic Christian beliefs. The mid-eighteenth century witnessed the height of the English and North American participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and this early abolitionist tract raised an important and ultimately influential outcry in favor of its termination and the remediation of its manifold abuses.