Download or read book The Mighty Experiment written by Seymour Drescher and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2004-10-14 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work Drescher argues that the plan to end British slavery, rather than being a timely escape from a failing system, was, on the contrary, the crucial element in the greatest humanitarian achievement of all time. He explores how politicians, colonial bureaucrats, pamphleteers, and scholars taking anti-slavery positions validated their claims through rational scientific arguments going beyond moral and polemical rhetoric, and how the infiltration of the social sciences into this political debate was designed to minimize agitation on both sides and provide common ground.