The practice of humanitarian intervention – that is to say, of military intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state to stop the mass atrocities and the violation of humanitarian norms – is commonly situated within the international politics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Yet recent scholarship has identified the roots of humanitarian intervention in the nineteenth century.

This paper explores the ambivalent ways in which sections of the British anti-slavery movement addressed issues of colonial exploitation in India in the years after the Emancipation Act in 1833 and the end of apprenticeship in 1838. It follows British anti-slavery lecturer George Thompson’s campaign for East India reform through various stages of activism, comparing his activities in Britain with his later experiences in colonial Calcutta and Mughal Delhi.

This paper queries the ways in which abolitionist policies around the world were implemented roughly between the mid-1820s and late 1860s, focusing on how they often supported imperialist endeavors. Expanding well-beyond the Atlantic, it hopes to reveal how transnational Abolitionism often served expansionist agendas, and acted as a back-door for new forms of labour exploitation. The paper also compares how Abolitionism was used as a shield by politicians, officers, missionaries, and others, while engaging in questionable imperialist practices around the world.