Historical Context of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

[Oju]

The Wider Historical Context of the Abolition of the
Transatlantic Slave Trade

by Hakim Adi

Trade in African slaves underpinned the British economy in the 18th century: the
rich and powerful, the monarchy and the Church. So why was an enterprise that
was so economically important ended so abruptly in the first decade of the 19th
century? Hakim Adi explains...

In March 2007 large-scale commemorative events were organised to mark the bicentenary
of the parliamentary act to abolish the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
This unprecedented commemoration of a historical event, in which the British
government itself is playing a leading role, was difficult to avoid.

There has been a frenzy in the British media. We have seen government
publications (allegedly designed to enlighten the public); meetings and
exhibitions; a debate in parliament; an apology from London’s mayor; the issuing
of postage stamps; a service in Westminster Abbey; and release of the film
Amazing Grace which promotes the well-established myth that abolition was
largely due to the efforts of the Hull-based MP William Wilberforce.

It would be hoped that owing to the vast amount of information that is being
disseminated, everyone would be now disabused of such erroneous views; and
would be able to place both the so-called abolition and the centuries of trafficking
of human flesh from Africa in historical perspective. The commemorative events
certainly provide the opportunity for broad and in depth discussion of Britain ’s
history and the crimes against humanity committed over many centuries.

But are we any clearer about what went on 1807? More importantly, do we know
why parliament decided to make illegal an enterprise which had underpinned
Britain ’s economy throughout the 18th century, when Britain was the world’s
leading slave trading power?

After all, Britain was involved in the trafficking of kidnapped and enslaved
Africans from the mid-16th century, when this enterprise was pioneered by John
Hawkins and Elizabeth Tudor, until the early 1930s, when legislation was still
being passed outlawing slavery in Britain ’s African colonies.

In the 18th century Britain , as the world’s leading slave trading power,
transported about half of all enslaved Africans not only to its own colonies but
also those of other major powers such as France and Spain . British ships
transported at least 3,500,000 Africans across the Atlantic .

In total, this entire ‘trade’ led to the forced removal of some 15,000,000 Africans,
transported to the colonies of the European powers and the Americas . Many
millions more were killed in the process of enslavement and transportation.
Historians now estimate that Africa ’s population actually declined over a period
of four centuries, or remained stagnant until the early 20th century.

In 1713 the British government was militarily victorious against its rivals in
Europe . By the Treaty of Utrecht (the same treaty by which Britain lays claim to
Gibraltar) , it gained the lucrative contract to supply Spain ’s American colonies
with enslaved Africans.

The government promptly sold the contract for £7.3m to the South Sea company,
whose first governor happened to also be the chancellor of the exchequer.


Indeed the trafficking of Africans was the business of the rich and powerful from
the outset. The monarchy was a zealous supporter and beneficiary, as was the
Church of England. The slave trade was Britain ’s trade in the 18th century. The
British Prime Minister William Pitt declared that 80 per cent of all British foreign
trade was associated with it. It contributed to the development of banking and
insurance, shipbuilding and several manufacturing industries. Most of the
inhabitants of Manchester were engaged in producing goods to be exchanged for
enslaved Africans. Their trafficking led to the development of major ports of
London , Bristol and Liverpool . Today it is difficult to find any major stately home,
or cultural or financial institution which is not connected with the profits generated
by this trade and the luxury items associated with it such as sugar, tobacco and
coffee.

It might be wondered therefore why an enterprise that was so economically
important to the rich and powerful in Britain in the 18th century should have been
so abruptly ended in the first decade of the 19th century.

The answer requires the abolition of various myths and disinformation peddled
since that time. One such myth is that abolition was largely the work of one man
– William Wilberforce; and that it was carried out largely for humanitarian
reasons. And there is another myth: that abolition was the work of an enlightened
parliament, finally acknowledging the barbarism and inhumanity of the
kidnapping, enslavement and trafficking of other human beings.

However, on the contrary, it is a matter of historical fact that the struggle to end
the enslavement and trafficking of Africans was first initiated and pursued
primarily by Africans themselves.

Historians now speak of centuries' long wars of resistance in the Caribbean ; of
the maroons; of day to day large and small-scale liberation struggles.
But such resistance also took place throughout the American continent, wherever
enslaved Africans were to be found. There were also significant acts of
resistance within Africa itself, and on many ships engaged in the human
trafficking, most famously on the Amistad.

Such acts of resistance also took place in Britain , where enslaved Africans who
liberated themselves were subjects of court cases contesting the legality of
slavery throughout the 18th century.

It was as a result of this self-liberation of Africans that drew some leading
abolitionists, such as Granville Sharp, into the abolitionist movement in the late
18th century. While the resistance acts of Africans culminated in the famous legal
judgement of 1772 which declared that it was illegal for self-liberated Africans to
be re-enslaved in Britain and taken out of the country against their will. Africans
in Britain had organised their own liberation. But they were assisted by the
ordinary people of London and other towns and cities.

African resistance to enslavement and kidnapping contributed to growing public
support and opposition to slave trafficking in Britain and elsewhere.
In Britain , a popular movement opposing the trade began in the 1780s. It soon
became a broad mass movement of enormous proportions, possibly the biggest.
It was certainly one of the first mass political movements in Britain ’s history,
although it is conveniently ignored in most historical accounts.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people eventually took part in this
movement which involved the petitioning of parliament and the boycotting of
slave-produced sugar. This abolitionist movement coincided with a more general
concern with and struggle for the ‘Rights of Man’. Its more advanced elements
consciously promoted the view that the rights of Africans were indeed part of that
struggle. Therefore what was required was a struggle for and defence of the
rights of all.

Africans themselves played a leading role in this movement as lecturers,
propagandists and activists. The most notable was Olaudah Equiano, formerly
enslaved, whose autobiography became a bestseller. But we should not forget
the writing of others, for example Phyllis Wheatley, Ottobah Cugoano and James
Gronniosaw.

Africans in London , including Equiano and Cugoano, formed their own
organisation, the 'Sons of Africa', which campaigned for abolition. It worked with
both the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the wider mass
abolitionist campaign.

But African resistance in the Caribbean and elsewhere was an even more
important factor in the abolitionist struggle, since it had the tendency to make
slavery both less profitable and more dangerous for the slave owners.
Uprisings by enslaved Africans threatened not just the profits of individual owners
but the control of entire colonies and the fate of Europe ’s economies.
The most important of these liberation struggles, the revolution in St Domingue,
the largest and most prosperous French colony in the Caribbean, broke out in
1791 not long after the revolution in France . Revolutionary St Domingue
therefore became the first country to effectively abolish the enslavement of
Africans.

In Britain , the popular mass abolitionist movement coincided with wider
demands for political change, at a time when the vast majority were denied the
vote. It also coincided with crucial economic changes; the industrial revolution;
the emergence of new social forces with the workers on one side and industrial
capitalists on the other, attempting to consolidate their economic and political
domination of the country. The industrialists were sometimes at odds with the
economic and political power exercised by those who owed their position to the
slave-based economies of the Caribbean .

Mass petitioning of parliament, the only means open to the disenfranchised,
against the trade was often strong in manufacturing towns such as Manchester ,
where perhaps a third of the entire population signed. This was viewed with
alarm by the ruling class.

The Prime Minister of the time, William Pitt, recognised that popular sentiment
might be used to persuade parliament to abolish Britain ’s exports of enslaved
Africans to its main economic rival, France. It was Pitt who first encouraged
Wilberforce to bring an abolition bill before parliament. Wilberforce’s bill was first
introduced in 1791. It was defeated, as were several similar bills during the next
15 years.

But during this period several significant changes took place. First, the French
Revolution of 1789. Britain ’s declaration of war against revolutionary France in
1793 allowed the suppression of the political activity of the people at home,
effectively limiting the popular abolitionist campaign and driving it underground.
The revolutionaries in St Domingue successfully defended their revolution
against the French army then against invasions by both Spain and Britain . It is
worth remembering that this war was pursued by Pitt and supported by
Wilberforce, who clearly did not belief that Africans should liberate themselves.
In 1804 St Domingue declared its independence and was renamed Haiti . The
revolution in Haiti contributed to, and occurred alongside, other major
insurrections across the Caribbean, in Jamaica , Grenada , St Vincent and
elsewhere, which severely threatened the entire colonial system.

Even those Africans forcibly recruited into Britain ’s West India regiment in
Dominica mutinied. Toussaint L’Ouverture and some of the other leaders of the
Haitian revolution became nationally known figures in Britain . Abolition came to
be viewed by some both as a means to press home a naval and economic
advantage over France and its allies, and a means to limit the numbers of
Africans imported into British colonies; thereby preventing the likelihood of further
revolutions and maintain the slave system.

It was with these aims in mind that parliament passed the Foreign Slave Act in
1806, banning the export of enslaved Africans to Britain ’s economic rivals, a
measure that effectively ended around 60 per cent of Britain ’s trafficking, but
which is now hardly remembered, and certainly not commemorated.

There is no doubt that for many in parliament and outside, the demand for
abolition was based largely on economic motives. Prime Minister Pitt, and others
had been concerned about competition from St Domingue and other Caribbean
colonies even before 1791. They had unsuccessfully sought agreement from
both France and Holland to prohibit the trafficking of Africans.

Others were more concerned about what they saw as the subsidies given to
slave owners and sugar producers in the Caribbean ; and government support
for economies and a trade that was declining in importance by the end of the
18th century, not least because there was over-production of sugar.

Others in Britain became more interested in developing direct trade links with
India , Brazil and other Spanish American colonies. The trafficking of Africans to
Britain ’s colonies was no longer so important and was seen as by some as being
an impediment to important trading links elsewhere.

These economic motives for abolition have long been associated with the names
of Eric Williams and C.L.R. James. Many attempts have been made to discredit
them. In fact very similar views were expressed by British historians of the late
19th and early 20th centuries. Most importantly economic justifications for an end
to ‘the trade’ were strongly advanced in the period preceding the Abolition Act.
What is significant is that this explanation for abolition is hardly ever discussed. It
has been largely absent from many of the commemorative events so far and
even from the government’s own publication which, it is claimed, is designed to
educate the public.

Simply stated, this explanation means that the parliamentary act was passed not
for humanitarian reasons but because it was in the interests of the rich and their
representatives in parliament to do so. And it should be added that it was the
actions of people, and most importantly of the enslaved themselves, in the
Caribbean, Britain and elsewhere that made enslavement and trafficking
increasing inefficient, unprofitable and dangerous.

In 1807 therefore, parliament was persuaded to pass the Abolition Act; partly on
the basis of such economic concerns, partly on the basis that limiting the
importation of enslaved Africans would likely limit future revolutions and preserve
slavery throughout the Caribbean colonies. Partly it seems, because it was seen
as a way of diverting attention away from an unpopular war against France and
its allies, and persuading the people that such a war was being fought in the
interests of abolition.

Of course after the 1806 act it is arguable that most of ‘the trade’ had ended
already. Even some of the major established Caribbean planters were in favour
of abolition since this worked against the interests of their commercial rivals, both
foreigners and those who had acquired newly captured territory in the Caribbean
from Britain ’s enemies. They reasoned that this might be especially
advantageous if abolition could be forced upon other countries as a consequence
of Britain ’s military and naval supremacy. Other representatives of the rising
bourgeoisie supported the measure as a means to limit the economic and
political power of those who had hitherto retarded the development of industrial
capitalism and ‘free trade’.

The 1807 Act was subsequently used as the representatives of the rich
envisaged, not least as a means by which the Royal Naval might interfere in
international shipping across the atlantic.

Yet it did not end British citizens’ involvement in the trafficking of Africans nor
slavery itself. Following other major insurrections in the Caribbean and similar
economic and political considerations, slavery itself was only later made illegal in
1834. But it continued in some areas of the British empire for another century.
The trafficking of Africans in general increased during the 19th century. Many
British slavers sailed under foreign flags of convenience.

The 1807 Act did not end Britain ’s dependence on slave produced goods such
as cotton, the mainstay of the industrial revolution. Even that so-called ‘legitimate
commerce’ subsequently developed with Africa , such as the extraction of palm
oil, was largely produced with slave labour. The act increased rather than
diminished Britain ’s interference in Africa which culminated in the so-called
‘scramble’ for Africa at the end of the 19th century: the invasion of the continent
and imposition of colonial rule.

It is sobering to reflect that Britain ’s first colony in Africa was Sierra Leone . This
was the region from where the first enslaved Africans had been kidnapped in the
16th century. It was established allegedly as a haven for liberated Africans in
1807, and has now been under Britain ’s domination for the last 200 years Much
of this time, it has been occupied by British troops, while its shores are still
patrolled by the Royal Navy.

Today the government is demanding that even its basic utilities, such as water,
should be privatised for the benefit of British multinationals. Centuries of
interference by British governments have produced a country that manages to be
one of the world’s poorest - and at the same time the world’s leading producer of
diamonds.

The trafficking of Africans over many centuries was one of the greatest crimes
against humanity. The current commemorative events, which are organised for a
variety of purposes, at least provide the opportunity for widespread discussion.
What is vital is that the myths are shattered and disinformation combated. We
must ensure that appropriate and adequate reparations are made for slavery,
colonialism and all crimes against humanity. People themselves must draw the
appropriate lessons from history, one of the most important being that it is people
that make and change history; and that therefore, we are our own liberators.

* Hakim Adi is reader in the history of Africa and the African diaspora at
Middlesex University , London , UK .

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka. Org

The Global Afrikan Congress is a Pan-Afrikan organization of activists, scholars,
and community organizers from around the world open to Afrikans and their
descendants. It is an organization dedicated to providing information,
encouraging intervention and supporting reparations for Afrikan people
regardless of their national ties.

[pain]

Great article!! This is yet another way that you can tell that these people haven't changed still TODAY!! They still have a need to try and deceive us in order to get us to continue to behave in a certain way toward them so as to allow them too to behave in a certain way towards us that perpetuates the same dynamics in this relationship that has been ongoing for hundreds of years now.