Ambiguous Anniversary

"A group of international scholars discuss the complex transatlantic historical ramifications of abolition. . . . They take us from the edge of American frontier settlement to the broad contours of contemporary slave-based economics and from the minutiae of parliamentary arguments to considerations of gender and childhood. . . . What follows is in effect an opportunity to explore the wider intellectual problems posed by historical commemorations and the current issues that lurk beneath the surface of what seem, at first glance, straightforward historical anniversaries. The essays also allow us to think more closely about the connections between the academic and the popular, between the worlds of scholarship and public history. In the process we might begin to appreciate the realities and mythologies of the shaping of historical memory—on both sides of the Atlantic."—James Walvin, professor of history emeritus, York University, from the foreword