William Adam’s 1840 paper, Slavery in India, presented at the General Anti-Slavery Convention in London, remains a pivotal document in the history of the global abolitionist movement. While the American public was largely focused on domestic chattel slavery, Adam—a Scottish missionary and educator who lived in India and later settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts—exposed the vast and often "invisible" scale of bondage under British colonial rule.

A significant document in which American professor [Harvard], William Black, sought to expose the scale of the problem of slavery in India. At a time when the British government had already "abolished" slavery in its Caribbean colonies (via the 1833 Act), Adam demonstrated that the institution remained vibrant and legal within the East India Company's territories.

Adam estimated that there were between eight and nine million enslaved people in British India. This number dwarfed the population of enslaved people in the United States and the Caribbean combined, fundamentally shifting the perspective of the delegates in London. He described how Indian slavery differed from the Atlantic model. It was often domestic, agrarian, or tied to debt-bondage and caste, making it less visible to Western observers than the plantation system but no less coercive.

William Adam’s background gave him a unique perspective. Having moved to Massachusetts, he became a close associate of William Lloyd Garrison and other American abolitionists. His report served a dual purpose. He first argued that the British "crusade" against slavery was incomplete and hypocritical if it ignored millions of subjects in the East.

Significantly, he had a strategic aim in mind as well. He highlighted the connection between Indian labor and global markets. He suggested that if the British East India Company moved toward free labor, it could provide a viable alternative to the slave-grown cotton of the American South, thereby undermining the economic foundation of the U.S. "Cotton Kingdom."

Ultimately, his presentation was a catalyst for the Indian Slavery Act of 1843 and helped bridge the gap between Eastern and Western abolitionist rhetoric. He transformed "Slavery in India" from a niche colonial administrative issue into a central pillar of the international abolitionist movement.

Adam, Professor William [of Cambridge, Massachusetts]. Slavery in India. Paper Presented to the General Anti-Slavery Convention. London. Thomas Ward. 1840.

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