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Why Was Slavery abolished in the British Empire in 1833?

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Introduction

Why Was Slavery abolished in the British Empire in 1833? In 1807, slavery was abolished, there were many reasons for this; some of the reasons include the white working class men and the actions of some black people. Slavery was not abolished due to only one thing, it was abolished by parliament for many reasons varying from English citizens signing petitions to slaves rioting. I am going to explain the whole story of what happened in 1833. The slave trade first started in 16th century, this was when the ships in Europe first started to travel to Africa and America. When the Europeans discovered that the African tribes were fighting between each other, the Europeans offered to trade guns and copper for slaves that were captured from the enemy tribes. England did not have much use for slaves as there were hardly any resources for the slaves to work on, which is why many wealthy people built plantations in America to harvest sugar, tobacco and other resources to send to Europe. ...read more.

Middle

Olaudah also wrote a book but he was also a member of parliament after he bought his freedom. Equiano was also a close friend of Thomas Hardy, secretary of the London Corresponding Society. Equiano became an active member of this political society that campaigned in favour of universal suffrage. Very few African-Americans accepted themselves as slaves. Most slave-owners were completely aware of this and they lived in fear of the African-Americans under their control. Not only did slave-owners expect slaves to run away, letters and diaries give strong evidence that slave-owners (and even non-slave-owners) in the south believed that rebellion was imminent. They had lived with this fear since 1792 when the Haitian Revolution proved unambiguously that slaves were ready to revolt and could do so with a passion as they had something to fight for, freedom. ...read more.

Conclusion

When Strong's former owner tried to sell him back into slavery in the Caribbean, Sharp took the owner to court, he won his case and Jonathan was freed. Sharp then devoted his life to the abolition of slavery. The main reasons for the abolition of slavery were the white middle class men as they campaigned inside and outside of parliament, more than half a million people signed a petition to stop the slavery. Black writers opened up English people's eyes and showed them what was happening in their country, the plantations couldn't cope with the slaves as Europe was buying sugar from elsewhere. Just because they were the main reasons, it doesn't mean that the others don't count, everything that everyone did in the 17th to the 18th century had an impact, from the Quakers, who didn't believe in violence or enslavement to the revolt in Haiti where ex-slaves showed people of the world that they could govern themselves. If it wasn't for the abolition where would we be today? ...read more.

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