Book review: William Wilberforce by William Hague

Hague, William, William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner (London: Harper Collins, 2007)

Relased to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, this detailed and engaging biography really makes clear the moral conviction, determination and no small degree of political skill that enabled Wilberforce (1759 - 1833) to lead the campaign against first the slave trade, and then slavery itself, for so many years. In so doing, it provides well-reasoned answers to questions like: Why did Wilberforce first campaign against the slave trade, and not slavery itself? Was abolition inevitable for purely economic factors? How strong was his influence in advancing the cause of abolition outside of the British Empire?

This book also shows how the aforementioned qualities combined to make Wilberforce perhaps the last and greatest truly independent British politician, from his election to the House of Commons in 1780 to his retirement in 1826. A close friend of William Pitt (the younger) from a young age, and often instinctively socially conservative, Wilberforce nevertheless was not afraid to oppose Pitt and his Tory government on issues as serious as war with France. When there was a constitutional crisis over the divorce of Prince George (the future George IV) and Caroline of Brunswick, Wilberforce's political independence made him the ideal mediator in many people's eyes at the time.

Hague makes no attempt to play down the importance of a profound (Evangelical) Christian faith to Wilberforce's work. After a time spent with a Methodist aunt and uncle as a teenager, and conversations with Isaac Milner later, Wilberforce gave his life to Christ in 1785. Pitt was surprised, but convinced his friend that his Christian convictions would be best served by continuing in public life. After meeting leading abolitisionists in 1787, and encouraged by John Newton and John Wesley, Wilberforce took up the leadership of the parliamentary campaign for abolition. His Christian faith also led him to support a myriad of charities and to campaign for the opening up of India to missionaries.

Overall, this is a sympathetic but not sycophantic account of a truly remarkable life from a very able author who on the one hand obviously admires his subject's politcal abilities, and on the other understands his Yorkshire roots. If Hague is nevertheless occasionally bemused by Wilberforce's Evangelical Christianity, that is to his loss, but not the reader's. Recommended.