Many white middle class men who believed that slavery was wrong were in high places in parliament so people like William Wilberforce and Granville Sharpe had a big role to play in the abolition of slavery. That wasn’t the only thing white working and middle class men did, they also refused to eat sugar, so the sugar plantations were making a loss.
Another reason for the abolition is the actions of black people, they had gone through the slave triangle like Olaudah Equiano or Mary Prince. They both wrote books explaining their life as a slave. Mary prince’s book was very popular and she took many people through the tragic story of her life. 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. It was normal for slaves to run away, but they usually went to see family in other plantations but they returned afterwards as their plantations provided them with food and beds.
Economics was a very important reason for the abolition of slavery as other countries started selling sugar and tobacco cheaper than they were sold from the plantations in America, the plantations were losing money as they were not selling any produce and the slaves were expensive to feed and accommodate, so the demand for slaves fell dramatically. An example for this is, in Barbados in 1772 no slaves were imported whereas in 1771 they imported 2728 slaves. The slave triangle was broken but slavery carried on in countries like Cuba and Brazil (they were the countries that could produce sugar cheaper than the West Indian sugar.
Many names have gone down in history for helping abolish the slavery these are people like Granville Sharpe. His interest in slavery began in 1765 after he made friends with a slave called Jonathan Strong who had been badly beaten by his master. 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?
