Fundamentals As Drivers of Moral Change: the British Abolitionist Movement

Abstract: What drives change in a society's values? From Marx to modernization theory, scholars have often highlighted a connection between structural transformation and value change, yet the links connecting the two processes are not always precisely identified. We argue that one of the ways through which changes in fundamentals lead to change in social values is by altering the distribution of economic power, and, by extension, the relative influence of values held by different groups in society. We study the case of the movement for the abolition of slavery in late 18th and early 19th century England, one of history’s most well-known campaigns for social change, and an instance of massive shift in public opinion on a morally charged topic over only a few decades. Using geocoded data on anti-slavery petitions, MP voting behavior in Parliament and economic activity, we show that support for abolition was strongly connected to the rise of the industrial class. We rely on a large corpus of newspaper articles and the analysis of parliamentary speeches to understand the relative contribution of economic and ideological factors in the anti-abolitionist stance of the new industrial bourgeoisie.