Abolitionism in the United Kingdom
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas. It spanned over a century and involved a wide range of activists, politicians, religious groups, and former slaves.
The trade of slaves was abolished throughout the British Empire by 1937, with Nigeria and Bahrain being the last British territories to abolish slavery.
Origins
In the 17th and early 18th centuries, English Quakers and a few evangelical religious groups condemned slavery as un-Christian. A few secular thinkers of the Enlightenment criticised it for violating the rights of man. James Edward Oglethorpe was the first to act on the Enlightenment case against slavery on humanistic grounds. In his "Georgia Experiment" he convinced Parliament to ban slavery in his Province of Georgia from 1735. However, slavery was reinstated in 1751. He also encouraged his friends Granville Sharp, who founded the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and Hannah More to pursue the cause vigorously. Soon after his death in 1785, they joined with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect.The slave trade had been banned in England in 1102, by the Church Council of London, convened by Anselm. However, the council had no legislative powers, unless decreed and signed by the monarch. In Cartwright's Case of 1569 regarding the punishment of a slave from Russia, the court ruled that English law could not recognise slavery, as it was never established officially. This ruling was overshadowed by later developments. It was upheld in 1700 by Lord Chief Justice Sir John Holt when he ruled that "As soon as a man sets foot on English ground he is free".
English colonists imported slaves to the North American colonies and by the 18th century, traders began to import slaves from Africa, India and East Asia to London and Edinburgh to work as servants. Men who migrated to the North American colonies often took their East Indian slaves or servants with them, as East Indians have been documented in colonial records. David Olusoga wrote of the sea change that had taken place:
To fully understand how remarkable the rise of British abolitionism was, both as a political movement and as a popular sentiment, it is important to remember how few voices were raised against slavery in Britain until the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
Some of the first freedom suits, court cases in Britain to challenge the legality of slavery, took place in Scotland in 1755 and 1769. The cases were Montgomery v. Sheddan and Spens v. Dalrymple. Each of the slaves had been baptised in Scotland and challenged the legality of slavery. They set the precedent of legal procedure in British courts that would later lead to success for the plaintiffs. In these cases, deaths of the plaintiff and defendant, respectively, brought an end to the action before a court decision could be rendered.
File:Dido_Elizabeth_Belle.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and Lady Elizabeth Murray, the great-nieces of Chief Justice Lord Mansfield living at Kenwood House. Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray by David Martin, 1778
African slaves were not bought or sold in London but were brought by masters from other places. Together with people from other nations, especially non-Christian ones, Africans were considered foreigners and thus ineligible to be English subjects; England had no naturalisation procedure. The African slaves' legal status was unclear until Somersett's Case in 1772, when the fugitive slave James Somersett forced a decision by the courts. Somersett had escaped and his master, Charles Steuart, had him captured and imprisoned on board a ship, intending to ship him to Jamaica to be resold into slavery. While in London, Somersett had been baptised and three godparents issued a writ of habeas corpus. As a result, Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench, had to judge whether Somersett's abduction was lawful or not under English Common Law. No legislation had ever been passed to establish slavery in England. The case received national attention and five advocates supported the action on behalf of Somersett.
In his judgment of 22 June 1772, Mansfield held,
The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.
Although the legal implications of the judgement are unclear when analysed by lawyers, the judgement was generally taken at the time to have determined that slavery did not exist under English common law and was thus prohibited in England. By 1774, between 10,000 and 15,000 slaves gained freedom in England. The decision did not apply to British overseas territories; e.g. the American colonies had established slavery by positive laws. Somersett's case became a significant part of the common law of slavery in the English-speaking world and it helped launch the movement to abolish slavery.
After reading about Somersett's Case, Joseph Knight, an enslaved African who had been purchased by his master John Wedderburn in Jamaica and brought to Scotland, left him. Married and with a child, he filed a freedom suit, on the grounds that he could not be held as a slave in Great Britain. In the case of Knight v. Wedderburn, Wedderburn said that Knight owed him "perpetual servitude". The Court of Session of Scotland ruled against him, saying that chattel slavery was not recognised under the law of Scotland and slaves could seek court protection to leave a master or avoid being forcibly removed from Scotland to be returned to slavery in the colonies.
At this point the plantocracy became concerned, and got organised, setting up the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants to represent their views. From its inception in 1780, the organisation played a major role in resisting the abolition of the slave trade and that of slavery itself. The Society brought together three different groups: British sugar merchants, absentee planters and colonial agents.
Writing critically of English altruism in abolishing the slave trade, African-American historian W. E. B. Du Bois in 1948 said,
The rise of liberal and philanthropic thought in the latter part of the eighteenth century accounts, of course, for no little of the growth of opposition to slavery and the slave trade; but it accounts for only a part of it. Other and dominant factors were the diminishing returns of the African slave trade itself, the bankruptcy of the West Indian sugar economy through the Haitian revolution, the interference of Napoleon and the competition of Spain. Without this pressure of economic forces, Parliament would not have yielded so easily to the abolition crusade. Moreover, new fields of investment and profit were being opened to Englishmen by the consolidation of the empire in India and by the acquisition of new spheres of influence in China and elsewhere. In Africa, British rule was actually strengthened by the anti-slavery crusade, for new territory was annexed and controlled under the aegis of emancipation. It would not be right to question for a moment the sincerity of Sharpe, Wilberforce, Buxton and their followers. But the moral force they represented would have met with greater resistance had it not been working along lines favorable to English investment and colonial profit.
Activists organize
Antislavery sentiment may have grown in the British Isles in the first few years after the Somersett case. In 1774, influenced by the case and by the writings of Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet, John Wesley, the leader of the Methodist tendency in the Church of England, published Thoughts Upon Slavery, in which he passionately criticised the practice. In his 1776 A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals, the clergyman Humphry Primatt wrote, "the white man, can have no right, by virtue of his colour, to enslave and tyrannise over a black man." In 1781 the Dublin based Universal Free Debating Society challenged its members to consider if "enslaving the Negro race justifiable on principles of humanity of policy?"Image:Thomas Clarkson, 1760-1846 RMG E9112.tiff|thumb|Thomas Clarkson dedicated his life to ending slavery, he travelled 35,000 miles visiting ports gathering evidence against the slave trade to present to parliament.
Despite the ending of slavery in Great Britain, the West Indian colonies of the British Empire continued to practice it. British banks continued to finance the commodities and shipping industries in the colonies they had earlier established which still relied upon slavery, despite the legal developments in Great Britain. In 1785, the English poet William Cowper wrote,
Cowper was a close friend of John Newton, who had been involved in the slave trade during his naval career. In later life, following his conversion to Christianity, and his ordination in the Church of England, Newton was an active abolitionist. He described slavery as a "stain on our National character." One important contribution by Newton to the abolition of slavery was his influence on William Wilberforce. Newton convinced Wilberforce that he would achieve more by remaining in Parliament than by becoming a priest in the Church of England.
In 1783, an anti-slavery movement began in Britain. That year a group of Quakers founded their first abolitionist organisation. The Quakers continued to be influential throughout the lifetime of the movement, in many ways leading the campaign. On 17 June 1783, Sir Cecil Wray presented the Quaker petition to parliament. Also in 1783, Beilby Porteus, Bishop of Chester, issued a call to the Church of England to cease its involvement in the slave trade and to formulate a policy to improve the conditions of Afro-Caribbean slaves. The exploration of the African continent by such British groups as the African Association promoted the abolitionists' cause. Such expeditions highlighted the sophistication of African social organisation; before this, Europeans had considered them 'other' and uncivilised. The African Association had close ties with William Wilberforce, who became known as a prominent figure in the campaign for abolition in the British Empire.
Africans themselves played a visible role in the abolition movement. In Britain, Olaudah Equiano, whose autobiography was published in nine editions in his lifetime, campaigned tirelessly against the slave trade. Also important were horrific images such as the famous Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion of 1787 and the engraving showing the ghastly layout of the slave ship, the Brookes.