Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves is a non-fiction book by Adam Hochschild that was first published by Houghton Mifflin on January 7, 2005.

[18][19] The group includes Granville Sharp, an unconventional civil libertarian; Thomas Clarkson, a University of Cambridge graduate who dedicated his life to the antislavery campaign; John Newton, a former slave ship captain turned Evangelical preacher; William Wilberforce, an English politician and close friend of British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger; and Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who bought his freedom and became an abolitionist writer.

The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was thus formed in May 1787 with both Clarkson and Sharp as founding members, holding meetings in Phillips's bookstore.

[21] Hochschild covers "the bleak decade" from 1792 to 1802, when the needs of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Haitian Revolution initially set the antislavery campaign back.

[4] Even then, the campaign continued to gain ground thanks to an effective boycott of slave-produced sugar, and the advocacy of men such as army officer George Pinckard and painter William Blake.

[22] Hochschild explains how the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807 came about not just through activism alone, but also as a result of national rhetoric and economic warfare against France who had renewed slavery under Napoleon.

[8] Bury the Chains received many positive reviews for its compelling[24][20][25][26] and witty[27][28] narrative, which according to The Daily Telegraph's Max Hastings, "never fails to hold the reader's attention.

"[18] While most reviewers enjoyed Hochschild's "vivid"[13][17] writing, the Chicago Reader called it "ingratiating"[19] and the Journal of Social History felt it sometimes "descends into silliness".

[13][17] Despite its dark subject matter, some reviewers commended Hochschild's account for being an ultimately "inspiring"[1][17][29] one, focused on the courage of the abolitionists[13][18] and celebrating their achievements.

[4][30] While the former still considered the book "a brilliant distillation of the most recent generation of scholarly research," the latter felt that even as a work of popular history, Bury the Chains could have been "more nuanced and sophisticated".

[30] Reviewers agreed that Hochschild's intent in writing Bury the Chains was to use the successful British abolitionist movement to inspire contemporary activists and provide them with a model from which to emulate.

[19][25][31] The New York Times's Marilynne Robinson felt his intent was an "honorable one",[31] while NPR's Maureen Corrigan selected the book as one of her favorites of 2005[32] and commended it for advancing the work of the abolitionists in "lifting our moral blindness.

[note 4] He suggests that the main lessons climate change activists can learn from the British abolitionists are the importance of building coalitions of people from diverse backgrounds and beliefs, and the need for effective campaign messaging.