Sunday sees the 200th anniversary of the British law that abolished the slave trade between Africa and the Americas. That only affected the “middle passage” and slavery itself was not to be abolished in the British Empire until 1833. The prohibition on slavery was not to become part of the US Constitution until 1865 but little known is that 90 years before that Lord Dunmore, the British Governor of Virginia, freed slaves who fought for the British in the War of Independence.
The Philipsburg Proclamation of 1779 went even further, freeing any slave owned by the “Patriots” anywhere in the colonies, whether they were willing to serve the British of not. With the defeat of the British, the Treaty of Paris provided that property lost in the war should be returned. The slave owners sent raiders to recapture slaves in the British stronghold in New York.
George Washington demanded the return of all the Americans’ property, including the slaves. The British refused and Black Loyalists went into exile along with the other British loyalists. Many initially went to Canada, Nova Scotia in particular. There their conditions were not much better than when they were slaves and eventually almost 1200 left in 1792 to help found Sierra Leone as a colony for freed slaves in Africa.
Ironically the very year of the Black Loyalists’ exodus to Sierra Leone was the peak of the Atlantic slave trade. (You can read more of their story on the Black Loyalists Heritage Society’s Canadian web site) The great British ports of London, Bristol and Liverpool made their fortunes from the “triangle trade”. Ships left there with finished goods for trading in West Africa for slaves, the slaves were taken to the colonies in the Americas and the sugar, tobacco, rum etc were returned for sale in Britain.
Conditions on those slave ships were horrific. Africans would be chained together with just enough room to lie on their sides. You could pack more in that way than if they laid on their backs. Most captains allowed the goods on deck each day in batches to jump up and down as exercise to maintain their value at market. Many died and the person they were shackled to had to wait to be unchained from their corpse.
Most British were ignorant of these conditions until the Abolitionist movement began to publicise them. Among these were Granville Sharp who along with William Wilberforce founded Sierra Leone. Ex-slaves’ own stories helped to inspire the movement. A book by Olaudah Equiano is considered seminal in bringing the horrors of the trade to the attention of the public. By his account, he was captured in 1756 in Africa and taken to Virginia and then the Caribbean. Some doubts are now cast on this account as there appears to be documentary evidence that he was in fact born in the Americas.
It may seem strange that the first move was to abolish the trans-Atlantic trade rather than the institution itself. This gradualist approach was based in the belief by Wilberforce that by cutting off the supply of new slaves, those already in the colonies would be treated better by their owners. By the turn of the 19th century the worst excesses demanded address and the 1807 act was proposed by the then Prime Minister, William Wyndham Grenville, who was a long standing opponent. His speech at the second reading of the Bill included this passage:
“What right do we derive from any human institution, or any divine ordinance, to tear the natives of Africa, to deprive them by force of the means of labouring for their own advantage, and to compel them to labour for our profit?
Can there be a question that the character of the country ought to be cleared from the stain impressed by the guilt of such a traffic, by the effect of which we keep Africa in a state of barbarity and desolation?”
Sadly the abolition of the slave trade failed to greatly improve the lot of the Caribbean slaves. It would take a revolt by them to eventually bring the institution to an end in the British Empire. While celebrating a notable date in the story of slavery, it should never be forgotten that slavery in different forms still exists. Mauritania was the last country to legally abolish the practice although nobody told the slaves and many still live in their previous condition. Child exploitation and forced sex work are more modern manifestations seen even in the West. Human trafficking and slavery may be illegal but it is not dead:
What types of slavery exist today?
Bonded labour affects millions of people around the world. People become bonded labourers by taking or being tricked into taking a loan for as little as the cost of medicine for a sick child. To repay the debt, many are forced to work long hours, seven days a week, up to 365 days a year. They receive basic food and shelter as ‘payment’ for their work, but may never pay off the loan, which can be passed down for generations.
Early and forced marriage affects women and girls who are married without choice and are forced into lives of servitude often accompanied by physical violence.
Forced labour affects people who are illegally recruited by individuals, governments or political parties and forced to work — usually under threat of violence or other penalties.
Slavery by descent is where people are either born into a slave class or are from a ‘group’ that society views as suited to being used as slave labour.
Trafficking involves the transport and/or trade of people — women, children and men — from one area to another for the purpose of forcing them into slavery conditions.
Worst forms of child labour affects an estimated 126 million children around the world in work that is harmful to their health and welfare.
(Crossposted with additional information from Daily Kos)