author
Carl Bernhard Wadström
1746–1799
A Swedish writer, economist, and reformer who became an important voice in the British anti-slavery movement, he wrote passionately about replacing the slave trade with lawful commerce in Africa. His life joined practical industry, travel, and idealistic social reform in a way that still feels striking today.
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About the author
Born in Stockholm in 1746, Carl Bernhard Wadström was a Swedish assessor, writer, and economic thinker whose interests ranged widely across industry, science, and social reform. Later in life he became closely associated with abolitionism and is often remembered for the part he played in linking Swedish intellectual life with the wider British campaign against the slave trade.
Wadström traveled in West Africa in the late 1780s with the naturalist Anders Sparrman, and those experiences deeply shaped his writing. In Britain he argued that agriculture and legitimate trade could offer an alternative to slavery, and his best-known work, An Essay on Colonization, helped make that case to readers at the height of the abolition debate.
He was also connected with Swedenborgian religious and philanthropic circles, which influenced the moral language of his reform work. Wadström died in Versailles in 1799, but his career still stands out for the unusual way it brought together commerce, travel, faith, and a determined opposition to human trafficking and the African slave trade.