The Unnatural Trade: Slavery, Abolition and Environmental Writing

Brycchan Carey gives a lecture titled The Unnatural Trade: Slavery, Abolition and Environmental Writing at York Mansion House on Monday 10 August, as part of the York Georgian Festival. It's one of the talks the festival has lined up this year, and the title points exactly where it's heading: the link between the slave trade, the movement to abolish it, and the way nature and the environment were written about during that period.

The talk sits within the festival's broader look at the late eighteenth century. A key theme this year is how British abolitionists of the time viewed the slave trade and colonial slavery as contrary to nature — the idea that these systems were an affront to the natural order of things. Carey's lecture takes that specific argument and works it through the lens of the writing that came out of it.

It's worth remembering the setting here. York Mansion House on St Helen's Square was built in 1725 and is the oldest surviving Lord Mayor's residence in the UK; it's been running as a museum since 2018. During the festival, it also puts its collection of gold and silver on display and hosts Georgian cooking demonstrations, so the building itself is leaning into the period as much as the programme is.

The lecture is part of the York Georgian Festival, an annual celebration of eighteenth-century life in the city that brings together talks, tours, performances and workshops across York. This is the festival's fourth year, and the 2026 edition includes other names like author Terry Deary and the Georgian Ball at the Grand Assembly Rooms. Carey's talk is one of the more serious entries in that mix, focusing on the abolitionist debates that shaped the end of the century. It runs on 10 August at the Mansion House in St Helen's Square, YO1 9QL.