In walven wrighte's on the eve of the french revolution, all of europe's major maritime powers and a number of thriving colonies in the americas were keen to have a share of the transatlantic business of slavery. A century later, he writes, those same nations had banned the slave trade, had freed all their former slaves and were now vehemently opposed to slavery. Only an eccentric would have felt confident to defend slavery publicly in the west by the late nineteenth century.