Reviews/ Criticism

Bury the Chains addresses the innumerable setbacks and eventual success of Britain's abolitionist movement
By Richard Brookhiser

Other than the last two paragraphs of this review, there is nothing to disagree about. The author just lays the facts of the story and gives no insight or bias. Then the end of the article dives right into his opinions. He states that “Bury the Chains suffers, however, from a major flaw, which I can only call Hochschild's dislike of Christianity”. I disagree with this statement only because he goes onto say that Hochschild favors the Quakers. In the book the author gives positives and negatives of both groups. Hochschild idolizes Clarkson throughout the novel and gives him more praise than any other character and he is Anglican. The reason why this critic may see bias in Hochschild’s writing is because at the time of the story there were extreme biases towards certain groups. And the church was deeply part of the slave trade, that was fact- Hochschild was not making it up to put down a group of people. Brookhiser ends by saying that if Jesse Jackson had written the book it would not make the mistake of these biases, which is absolutely false. I cannot say how the story would be altered, but one group of people would absolutely seem belittled. It just depends on the author.

Critic #3
Lazzare makes several good points about Hochschild focusing on only the story of the 12 men, well really 2 or 3 men. There were many issues around the time of the British empancipation such as the American Revolution, French Revolution, boycotting and many others. This story is about the emancipation of the slaves in Britain and Hochschild should have recognize that the movement was much larger than just Clarkson and Wilberforce. I agree with this author in that there could have been more chapter focusing on perhaps the women's role in this movement. Yet I feel as if this book is designed to follow the men that sparked the movement and everything else was a sub topic.