Why was slavey abolished in the 19th century?

Why was Slavery abolished in the 19th century?

After years of campaign by some sections of British society, the Anti-Slavery Abolition Act was finally passed by the Prime-Minister Earl Grey’s Whig government in 1833. This was a great result for the many slave trade demonstrators, such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, who had been part of the Anti-Slavery Society from 1923 and who had been fighting for this result throughout the previous decades. However, slavery had been a fashion of human life for thousands of years and had become a beneficial part of the British Empire so why did Britain’s authorities bring along measures to have its existence eradicated?

British colonies had witnessed the ordeal of the slave trade since the 16th century when the first black slave ships were transported to America from the African coastlines. Along with other European colonial powers such as Portugal and Holland, it is estimated that up to eleven million Africans were taken across the Atlantic in the atrocious state of the slave ships up until the latter parts of the 19th century.

The first real campaign against the slave trade within Britain came from about the 1780’s, where religious objectors such as the Quakers and Methodists spoke out against this imprisonment of men with petitions submitted the Parliament. These efforts were insignificant though, with a lack of support and financial backing damaging their protest. This initial wave of protest led to a more organized anti-slavery movement in the form of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, set up in May 1787. Now, solicitous Britons had a means of communication and a chance to voice their complaints on the harmful effects of slavery in the form of books, pamphlets and even artefacts. Thomas Clarkson, a travel operator, was a major contestant in this movement, providing the link between the society’s base in London and the rest of the country; in the process aiding hundreds of underground activists.

What was remarkable about these protests was that some middle classes fought along side the poor in their attempt to ban slavery. This had never been seen before. For example Granville Sharpe, an educated writer employed in a minor role by the government, fought on behalf of black people in court throughout the late 18th century. In contrast to this the working classes, predominantly found in the northern industrial areas, took time out from the daily struggle of their lives to assist the cause also. These different activists concluded two nationwide petitions; one in 1788 collecting over 100 signatures attacking the slave trade and one in 1792 with 519 signatures being presented to the House of Commons. This 1792 appeal actually became the largest number of complaints submitted in Parliament in one single session, quite impressively with every English county represented.

The French Revolution had an adverse effect on what the anti-slavery movement was trying to achieve, especially in the French colonies. Places like St. Dominique and Haiti learned the morals of liberty and equality that those in France had been fighting for. The revolution in Haiti saw some authorities to deem the ending of the slave trade as a danger for the ruling classes. This was something that would decrease the chance of abolition. In economic terms though, revolution had the opposite effect for the planters as the cost feeding, shipping and securing the slaves would go on to increase, lessening the chance of slave owners wanting to keep them.

Back in Britain, through the influence and high standing of William Wilberforce who helped lead the mass petition, the House of Commons resulted by 230 votes to 85 that slavery should be abolished gradually. However, government officials who had an eye on what was happening in France were wary of what this mass petitioning could possibly bring in the form of rebellion. The year after the 1792 petition was presented to Parliament, government officials refused to revive the promises they made to Wilberforce and other campaigners, effectively halting the progress that had been made in the previous years.

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With pressure building on the British government to act though after this, reviewing the case of slavery became more important. Economically, they had to decide whether it was worth keeping any longer. Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’ published in 1776, contains the view that slave-worked economies were not financially beneficial because enslaved men would simply not work as hard, quite simply because they weren’t being paid for their efforts. The fact that they didn’t pay taxes or increase the ‘supply and demand’ ethic that helped boom industry’s also supported this view. An example of when financial criteria affected British slavery was when sugar markets in Brazil and Cuba began to make an improved and cheaper sugar cane, there was no need for the slave routes to the West Indies’ sugar markets to be continued which led them to be reduced.

By 1807 the slave trade was made illegal. Abolitionists re-evaluated their campaigns in 1804 and helped pass a bill that saw the outlaw of any British involvement with slavery worldwide. Any navy captain who was caught transporting slaves was to be fined £100 for every slave found onboard. However, this didn’t necessarily put a stop to the conveying of these imprisoned men as if slave ships were in danger of being caught, captains would simply order slaves to be thrown into the sea. Britain’s rulers, supported by other internal anti-slavery organizations, then saw it in her duty to imply pressure on other countries to ban slavery themselves, although this task became difficult for authorities due to economic and political reasons. However, America, Denmark, France and Holland all took note and outlawed their slave trade between 1803 and 1830.

Despite the obvious discontent over the world slave trade, this didn’t stop the industry to boom. The early effects of the industrial revolution helped to increase the number of world slaves, most notably in the Americas as a means to feed the cotton, sugar and coffee markets. The growth of industry and expansion of trade links meant that it made sense for areas without a satisfactory labour force to receive larger instalments of men to work the land.

The situation seemed to call for a more direct call of action from anti-slave protesters and soon a new body was formed in 1823 which included individuals such as Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and other African representatives. This was to be called the Anti-Slavery Society whose ideological beliefs for the gradual long term freedom of slaves put them on a collision course with other pro-slavery supporters. Like other anti-slavery organizations before them, the Anti Slavery Society remonstrated through petitions and was run with its own network of regional bases. The two years after 1928 saw Parliament indulged with over 5000 petitions, all signed by Britons wanted to see the principles of the slave trade banned. Campaigners were then aided by the 1832 Reform Act where a wider range of the British public became enfranchised; the new voters elected a new Parliament who became more sympathetic to slavery abolition. The 1st August 1934 saw a new plan announced by Parliament named the Slavery Abolition Act which called for the gradual abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire where all slaves under the age of six were to be immediately released from any forced working contract. The freedom granted to the 750,000 slaves, mostly in the Caribbean, was initially misleading in that many were put forcibly into apprenticeships for some time longer as slaves over the age of six needed to serve four more years. This was a way of compensating the slave owners for their obvious loss of manpower. These men were also reinstated in money for the loss of their workers. In total, the government paid around twenty million to West Indian planters and also faced the prospect of the dissolution of key sugar plantation economy in the Caribbean.

Slave trafficking did not instantly come to an end from this moment though, despite the fact that over the course of the century it would become extinct in most parts of the world. France, Spain and Holland all witnessed abolition during the mid 19th century’s whilst in the America’s, Brazil and the United States saw the liberation of over five million slaves. It was in Russia where the largest slave emancipation came, where over thirty million serfs previously owned by private entrepreneurs or the government, were granted freedom in 1861. This abolition of slavery in these other parts of the world was principally down to the newly expanded Britain and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which joined together with other pro-slave eradication movements in America and Europe to help combat the illegal traffic of men being transported for the unpaid and cruel labour which had previously been allowed to happen.

Why the 19th century observed the downfall of the slave trade has many reasons; presented and bought to the forefront of society’s minds by pro-freedom groups such as the Anti-Slavery Society. It was quite surprisingly Britain, who had earned roughly twelve million pounds from the African slave trade in the 18th century and who owned the most productive colonial empire in the world, which gave birth to these organizations. Moral contemplation was the greatest factor in these groups formation. The industrial revolution had created a new leisured middle class within the country and it was the dignified pressure from these groups which helped persuade Parliament to act. The working classes played their part by contributing to the thousands of signatures put on petitions but it was also ex slaves who bought awareness to people’s minds. Olaudah Equiano was one such man, who worked with people like Granville Sharpe to tour Britain, proving the effects of the slave trade first hand.

Moral reservations over the treatment of slaves only went some way to result in its extinction. Black peoples began to become affected by the consequence of the Enlightenment and interested in the values bought along by revolutions in places such as France and Haiti. They began to stop accepting the idea that they were ‘born to be slaves’ and began protest by themselves, disrupting their masters to such a point that made keeping the ever growing populations unviable. James Walvin in his book “Britain’s Slave Empire” even goes so far to say that the slaves revolting themselves played the most “obvious and undeniable role in the debate of their own future and turning point in the story of British abolition”.¹ Pressure on slave masters did not just come from the people they were ruling but from their own governments, who themselves became subjected to the emancipation demands of foreign countries which had already passed these new anti-slavery laws. In the new era of humanism, nobody argued that slavery was a good thing.

Religion played an imperative role in conscientious decline of worldwide slavery, but also in its rise. Islam law for example actually recognizes slaves, gives them a certain legal status and assigns duty to their slave owner. Muslims by religious nature would rather not disobey Gods’ wishes than oppose them; this meant that the entrapment of men was part of Islam’s holy laws. Some passages from the Bible were also interpreted at the time to mean black people were inferior and cursed by the Lord. However as time moved on, new separatist religious groups were formed, such as Quakers, with modernized and rationalized enlightened beliefs. Walvin emphasises this in his book; “the majority of men in the first abolitionist group in 1781 were Quakers. And it was Quaker groups, which had been created across the face of Britain from the early eighteenth century, which gave the founding abolitionists an immediate national network."² Overall, religions part in the struggle for the abolition of slavery wasn’t too crucial in the authority’s minds to ban it, but these groups did play an active part in and making their discontent known and supporting the anti-slave trade campaigners.

As with most governments decisions though, the final consideration in their choice to begin anti-slave advances came down to economic concerns. After Adam Smith had declared slavery to be not necessarily beneficial to the economy, governments began to re-evaluate their outlook on it. Afterall, Britain was experiencing the planet’s first industrial revolution, becoming the ‘workshop of the world’ in the process. Was there any need for developing foreign slave markets if financial matters back home were prospering on their own? The industrial revolution also bought through the invention of machinery used in the new mills and factories, meaning the need for some man powered labour became unnecessary.

Overseas, slave-worked colonies like West Indies had been suffering because sugar markets in places such as Jamaica, Brazil and Cuba began to produce a faster and cheaper sugar cane. This meant there was no logical financial reason to keep the slave trade going in this part of the world going. Also, as Great British law from 1807 made slavery illegal, it became more and more expensive for planters to keep and ship slaves from place to place.

In the space of some 46 years, between 1787 and 1833, Britain had not only outlawed the slave trade but also abolished slavery throughout her colonial possessions. Why Britain went from being at the forefront of the slave trade to then contributing to its decline around the start of the 19th century can explained by the period the world was in. Modernity and conscientious thought took over and moral belief told many that slavery was unjust; it was the British middle classes presented this view to their Government. However, despite the fact that the slave trade wasn’t necessarily unprofitable after 1833, the British government of the time must have obviously thought it wasn’t worth keeping anymore financially. Moral considerations and religious objection helped bring the issue to people’s minds but it was economic considerations that played the crucial role in Britain’s decision to initiate anti-slavery steps.

The struggle wasn’t necessarily over though after 1833 as in some parts of the worlds, such as America and Barbados, slavery continued for a while longer. It wasn’t until the 20th century when the UN explicitly banned the slave trade unconditionally that the anti-slave trade campaigners from centuries before such as William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharpe and Olaudah Equiano could finally be recognized for their strenuous efforts for the removal of worldwide slavery.

References

¹. " by James Walvin, p71

². " by James Walvin, p68

Bibliography

· Wise, S Though the Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery (New York: Da Capo Press 2004)

· Hochschild, A Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 2004)

· Walvin, J Britain’s Slave Empire (Tempus Publishing 2000)

· www.wikipedia.co.uk

· Clarence-Smith, W Islam and the Abolition of slavery (Oxford University Press 2005)

· www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/huk-1833act