Anatomy of the Somerset Case of 1772: Law, Popular Politics and Slavery in Hanoverian Britain

Abstract

This thesis examines the Somerset Case of 1772 and considers it within its immediate social, political, and legal landscape. Legal and political reform and imperial debate ensured that the case would be important for the understanding of core English ideals such as property, slavery, liberty, humanity and natural rights. These issues coalesced in 1772 and provided the background against which Lord Mansfield reached his famous decision. Instead of contributing to the ongoing economic versus humanitarian debate in recent scholarship, this thesis seeks to uncover the genesis of these humanitarian sentiments, and show how humanist arguments became useful and important in late-eighteenth century legal and abolitionist thought. Popular political agitation, the proliferation of pamphlets, the circulation of ideas concerning the rights of man, and legal reformist argument throughout England and Scotland influenced the case and Mansfield's final decision. By considering the Somerset decision within its immediate social, political, and legal landscape, it is unmistakable that the case was a harbinger that abolition was to come in England.