Ephemeral Improvement: Interactive Print and the Material Texts of Early Abolitionism

Abstract This article argues that a reliance on material texts tied to the concept of improvement—such as picturesque engravings, diagrams, and account books—pushed the early abolitionist movement toward a reforming, ameliorationist ethic that disavowed revolutionary action and immediate emancipation. Although the term improvement had broad social applicability by the late eighteenth century, its original connections to land management made it an especially important concept for the abolitionist debate. Integrating book history with studies of enslavement and abolition, I show how abolitionists’ use of visual-textual forms such as diagrams and account books created an emphasis on gradual improvement. In response, Black abolitionists both emphasized concepts other than improvement and presented their works in different material forms. Olaudah Equiano and Quobna Ottabah Cugoano adapted the genre of autobiography to demonstrate how their own ostensible improvements did not have the effects anticipated by the logic of white abolitionists, ultimately undercutting the usefulness of improvement as a guiding concept for abolitionism.