This article examines British understandings of the laws and legal traditions that regulated slavery in French and Spanish colonies in the late eighteenth century, particularly between the American and French Revolutions. Based on reports from those with firsthand knowledge of different slave systems, many imperial commentators contended that enslaved persons under French and Spanish rule were treated more humanely—and consequently worked more efficiently—than those in British jurisdictions. Advocates of slavery reform therefore looked to the slave management strategies of competitors to help advance their cause. For some, appropriating foreign slave regulations became a central feature of programs designed to lessen the brutality of slavery and eventually bring about emancipation. For others, highlighting the comparatively benign treatment of enslaved workers in French and Spanish islands served as a way to pressure the British government to more proactively police slaveholding in its own colonies. By exploring calls to emulate the slave regulations of rival empires, this article provides a window onto shifting British attitudes toward both slavery and imperial governance during a period of major political and economic change in the Atlantic World.