Episode
#145 Classic episode – Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasn't inevitable
- Podcast
- 80,000 Hours Podcast
- Published
- Jan 20, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 10577
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/80-000-hours-podcast-747608/episodes/145-classic-episode-christopher-brown-on-why-slavery-abolition-wasn-t-inevitable/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/80-000-hours-podcast-747608/145-classic-episode-christopher-brown-on-why-slavery-abolition-wasn-t-inevitable.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
In many ways, humanity seems to have become more humane and inclusive over time. While there’s still a lot of progress to be made, campaigns to give people of different genders, races, sexualities, ethnicities, beliefs, and abilities equal treatment and rights have had significant success. It’s tempting to believe this was inevitable — that the arc of history “bends toward justice,” and that as humans get richer, we’ll make even more moral progress. But today's guest Christopher Brown — a professor of history at Columbia University and specialist in the abolitionist movement and the British Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries — believes the story of how slavery became unacceptable suggests moral progress is far from inevitable. Rebroadcast: This episode was originally aired in February 2023. Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.link/CLB While most of us today feel that the abolition of slavery was sure to happen sooner or later as humans became richer and more educated, Christopher doesn't believe any of the arguments for that conclusion pass muster. If he's right, a counterfactual history where slavery remains widespread in 2023 isn't so far-fetched. As Christopher lays out in his two key books, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism and Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age , slavery has been ubiquitous throughout history. Slavery of some form was fundamental in Classical Greece, the Roman Empire, in much of the Islamic civilisation, in South Asia, and in parts of early modern East Asia, Korea, China. It was justified on all sorts of grounds that sound mad to us today. But according to Christopher, while there’s evidence that slavery was questioned in many of these civilisations, and periodically attacked by s…