Ryan Hanley | |
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Board member of | British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies |
Awards |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull |
Academic work | |
Discipline | History |
Sub-discipline | Black British Writing |
Institutions | University of Exeter |
Ryan Hanley is a British professor of history at the University of Exeter. He specialises in race and slavery in modern Britain,with a focus on the perspectives of people of African descent. [1]
He is notable for being one of only two historians to have been awarded both the Alexander Prize and the Whitfield Book Prize from the Royal Historical Society. [2] [3] In 2023,Hanley was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize "for his work on Black British history,history and cultures of British anti-slavery,and class and ‘race’in Britain." [4]
Hanley earned his doctorate in history from Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull. After obtaining his degree,he worked at the University of Oxford,UCL,and the University of Bristol before taking up a full-time lecturing position at the University of Exeter. He has also had visiting fellowships at Queen Mary University,London and at the Huntington Library in California. He serves as a member of the executive committee for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. [1]
Hanley has published two books and more than twenty chapters and journal articles. His most notable work is that which focuses on the perspectives of those of African descent in Britain,for which he has been awarded both the Whitfield Book Prize and Alexander Prize from the Royal Historical Society. Alongside A. G. Rosser,he is one of only two historians to have received both awards. [2] [3]
He received the Alexander Prize in 2015 for his article Calvinism,Proslavery and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw. [3] In it,Hanley re-examines Gronniosaw's autobiography within the context of Calvinist and Dutch Reformed confessional networks to better understand how the text could advocate for slavery despite being written by a formerly enslaved author. It portrays Gronniosaw as a Black intellectual,and not simply as an ex-slave. [5] The article was deemed significant enough to feature in the Economic History Review's List of publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland published in 2016. [6]
Hanley continued this approach by conducting the first full-length historical study of pre-abolition Black British writing in his 2019 Whitfield Prize-winning book Beyond Slavery and Abolition:Black British Writing,c.1770-1830. [2] [7] In each of the eight chapters,Hanley provides a case study on a different Black British writer,and categorises them into three sections. Firstly,'Black Celebrities',containing Ignatius Sancho,Olaudah Equiano/Gustavus Vassa,and Mary Prince. Next,the 'Black Evangelicals',Ukawsaw Gronniosaw,Boston King,and John Jea. Ending with the 'Black Radicals',Ottobah Cugoano and Robert Wedderburn. [8] In his review of the work,Matthew Wyman-McCarthy emphasises the significance of Hanley's choice to frame Black British writers within their authorial 'networks'. He says the book makes strides for scholars who can now holistically approach these individuals as intellectuals,rather than simply abolitionists. He also says that the individual case studies conducted by Hanley deserve their place on undergraduate syllabi. [7]
Year | Title | Publisher | Notes |
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2016 | Britain's History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery | Oxford University Press | Co-authored with Jessica Moody and Katie Donington |
2018 | Beyond Slavery and Abolition Black British Writing,c.1770–1830 | Cambridge University Press | Awarded the Whitfield Book Prize |
Year | Title | Journal | Notes |
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2014 | Calvinism,Proslavery and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw | Slavery &Abolition | |
Biography and the Black Atlantic | Itinerario-International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction | ||
Affect and Abolition in the Anglo-Atlantic,1770-1830 | Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies | ||
2015 | The Royal Slave:Nobility,Diplomacy and the “African Prince”in Britain,1748–1752 | Itinerario-International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction | |
Invoking Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century British Imagination | Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies | ||
Inhuman Traffick:the International Struggle against the Transatlantic Slave Trade | Social History | ||
2016 | Slavery and the Birth of the Working-Class Racism in England,1814-1833 | Transactions of the Royal Historical Society | Awarded the Alexander Prize |
A Radical Change of Heart:Robert Wedderburn's Last Word on Slavery | Slavery &Abolition | ||
2017 | Slavery Hinterland:Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe,1680-1850 | Social History | |
2019 | Black Jokes,White Humour:Africans in English Caricature,1769-1819 | English Historical Review | |
2020 | Children Against Slavery:Juvenile Agency and the Sugar Boycotts in Britain | Transactions of the Royal Historical Society | Co-authored with Kathryn Gleadle |
2021 | The Shadow of Colonial Slavery at Peterloo | Caliban | |
Tacky's Revolt:the Story of an Atlantic Slave War by Vincent Brown,and:Black Spartacus:the Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh | Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies | Review essay | |
Henry Redhead Yorke,Colonial Radical:Politics and Identity in the Atlantic World,1772–1813,by Amanda Goodrich | English Historical Review | ||
Britain’s Black Past,ed. Gretchen H. Gerzina | |||
2022 | Not Made by Slaves:Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition | Slavery &Abolition |
Year | Title | Book | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2017 | Introduction | Britain's History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery | Co-authored with Jessica Moody and Katie Donington |
‘There to sing the song of Moses’ | |||
2018 | The Equiano Effect | Migrant Britain | |
2019 | Cato Street and the Caribbean | The Cato Street Conspiracy | |
2022 | Black Authors and British National Identity,1763–1791 | African American Literature in Transition,1750–1800 |
Year | Award | Institution | Work |
---|---|---|---|
2015 | Alexander Prize | Royal Historical Society | Slavery and the Birth of the Working-Class Racism in England,1814-1833 |
2019 | Whitfield Book Prize | Beyond Slavery and Abolition Black British Writing,c.1770–1830 |
Abolitionism,or the abolitionist movement,is the movement to end slavery and liberate slaves around the world.
Henry Dundas,1st Viscount Melville,PC,FRSE,styled as Lord Melville from 1802,was the trusted lieutenant of British prime minister William Pitt and the most powerful politician in Scotland in the late 18th century.
The legal institution of human chattel slavery,comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans,was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865,predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526,during the early colonial period,it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies,including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law,an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought,sold,or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865,and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics,economics,and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877,many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation,sharecropping,and convict leasing.
The American Colonization Society (ACS),initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America,was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to the continent of Africa. It was modeled on an earlier British Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor's colonization in Africa,which had sought to resettle London's "black poor". Until the organization's dissolution in 1964,the society was headquartered in Room 516 of the Colorado Building in Washington,D.C.
Ukawsaw Gronniosaw,also known as James Albert,was an enslaved African man who is considered the first published African in Britain. Gronniosaw is known for his 1772 narrative autobiography A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw,an African Prince,as Related by Himself,which was the first slave narrative published in England. His autobiography recounted his early life in present-day Nigeria,his enslavement,and his eventual emancipation.
Olaudah Equiano,known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa,was a writer and abolitionist. According to his memoir,he was from the village of Essaka in modern southern Nigeria. Enslaved as a child in West Africa,he was shipped to the Caribbean and sold to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more before purchasing his freedom in 1766.
George Fitzhugh was an American social theorist who published racial and slavery-based social theories in the antebellum era. He argued that the negro was "but a grown up child" needing the economic and social protections of slavery. Fitzhugh decried capitalism as practiced by the Northern United States and Great Britain as spawning "a war of the rich with the poor,and the poor with one another",rendering free blacks "far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition." Slavery,he contended,ensured that blacks would be economically secure and morally civilized. Some historians consider Fitzhugh's worldview to be proto-fascist in its rejection of liberal values,defense of slavery,and perspectives toward race.
The Royal Historical Society (RHS),founded in 1868,is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history.
Seymour Drescher is an American historian and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh,known for his studies on Alexis de Tocqueville and slavery and his published work Econocide.
David Brion Davis was an American intellectual and cultural historian,and a leading authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University,and founder and director of Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery,Resistance,and Abolition.
Proslavery is support for slavery. It is sometimes found in the thought of ancient philosophers,religious texts,and in American and British writings especially before the American Civil War but also later through the 20th century. Arguments in favor of slavery include deference to the Bible and thus to God,some people being natural slaves in need of supervision,slaves often being better off than the poorest non-slaves,practical social benefit for the society as a whole,and slavery being a time-proven practice by multiple great civilizations.
Slavery in Britain existed before the Roman occupation and endured until the 11th century,when the Norman conquest of England resulted in the gradual merger of the pre-conquest institution of slavery into serfdom. Given the widespread socio-political changes,all slaves were no longer recognised separately in English law or custom. By the middle of the 12th century,the institution of slavery as it had existed prior to the Norman conquest had fully disappeared,but other forms of unfree servitude continued for some centuries.
Vic Gatrell is a British historian. He is a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College,Cambridge.
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The Sons of Africa were a late-18th-century group in Britain that campaigned to end African chattel slavery. The "corresponding society" has been called the Britain's first black political organisation. Its members were educated Africans in London,including formerly enslaved men such as Ottobah Cugoano,Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community.
The Whitfield Book Prize is a prize of £1,000 awarded annually by the Royal Historical Society to the best work on a subject of British or Irish history published within the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland during the calendar year. To be eligible for the award,the book must be the first history work published by the author.
Peter J. Kitson is a British academic and author. He is a Professor of Romantic Literature and Culture at the University of East Anglia where he teaches and researches the literature and culture of the British Romantic era.
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Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery,whether formal or informal,in the United Kingdom,the British Empire and the world,including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.
James Monroe Whitfield was an African-American poet,abolitionist,and political activist. He was a notable writer and activist in abolitionism and African emigration during the antebellum era. He published the book America and other Poems in 1853.