Henry Dundas
Modern historians are divided over whether Dundas should be held responsible for prolonging the slave trade. Historians of the slave trade and the abolitionist movement, including David Brion Davis, Roger Anstey, Robin Blackburn, and Stephen Tomkins have commented that Dundas' actions delayed rather than facilitated abolition. According to Davis, "By making the abolition of the slave trade dependent on colonial reforms, Dundas suggested possibilities for indefinite delay." Stephen Mullen, a research associate at Glasgow University and historian of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, has called Dundas "a great delayer" of abolition.