author
Carl Bernhard Wadström
1746–1799
A Swedish reformer, writer, and abolitionist, he became an important voice in the late 18th-century fight against the Atlantic slave trade. His work joined practical ideas about trade and colonization with a moral argument for human freedom.
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About the author
Born in Stockholm in 1746, Carl Bernhard Wadström worked across several fields, including engineering, economics, writing, and art. He is best remembered today for his opposition to slavery and for the part he played in abolitionist circles linked to Britain in the 1790s.
Wadström was influenced by the religious ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg, and that spiritual outlook shaped much of his social thinking. He promoted the idea that legitimate commerce and agricultural settlement in West Africa could replace the slave trade, and he wrote on these questions in works that connected moral reform with political economy.
He died in 1799 in Versailles. Though not as widely known as some British abolitionists, Wadström remains a notable international figure in the history of anti-slavery thought, especially for the way he linked Swedish, British, and broader European debates about human rights and reform.