THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

labor.” However, the BIS also promised prosperity to England by removing British
dependence on American cotton. American statesmen, Chapman noted, will “see both
the patriotism and the cupidity of Britain ready to aid her philanthropists . . . to secure to
British India the undivided demand of the British cotton-market.” 90 Though not all
supporters of the BIS were interested in its humanitarian efforts, British and American
reformers looked to the BIS as yet another important development in the international
abolitionist movement. Operating contemporaneously with the American Free Produce
Association, free-produce activists had reason to hope the two organizations would aid
the cause of abolitionism. Between 1839 and 1841, the BIS captured the attention of
British and American abolitionists who believed India would become a major supplier of
free-labor cotton and sugar.
Organizing for the BIS began in 1838, following the formation of the Aborigines’
Protection Society a year earlier in London. The Society, organized by Thomas Buxton
and other British reformers, developed out of the turmoil of famine in India, trade
disputes with China, and the recent migration of Indian labor to the West Indies. 91
Though events in India, in particular, were important in leading to the founding of the
Society, the association focused on the condition of indigenous populations throughout
the British Empire. 92 In the summer of 1838, George Thompson and Joseph Pease helped
90 Maria Weston Chapman, “The British India Society,” The Liberty Bell, January 1, 1839.
91 S.R. Mehrotra, “The British India Society and Its Bengal Branch, 1839-1846,” Indian Economic
and Social History Review 4 (1967), 131; Anne Stoddart, Elizabeth Pease Nichol (London: J.M. Dent &
Co., 1899), 72.
92 Kenneth D. Nworah, “The Aborigines’ Protection Society, 1889-1909: A Pressure-Group in
Colonial Policy,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 5 (1971), 79-81.
174