Sweepers, Suffrage, and the Shifting Language of Slavery in Industrial Sheffield, 1823–1848

Abstract This article examines how Atlantic slavery debates interacted with domestic reform demands in industrial Sheffield between 1823-48. It explores the shifting language of slavery, which has an ancient political tradition, but in the nineteenth century increasingly involved allegories between Britain’s working classes and enslaved Africans. The article first analyses Sheffield’s specific economic and sociopolitical heritage. Next, it investigates how slavery metaphors emerged in middle-class reform culture. Finally, it examines how slavery tropes impacted working-class radicalism. Highlighting the ways slavery terminology evolved across these different social movements unearths how broad ideas of human difference were conceptualized within provincial nineteenth-century Britain.