Emancipation (1807-1860)
Despite the efforts of the American and British navies, almost 3 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, mainly to Brazil (coffee) and Cuba (tobacco) between 1807-1860. Slavery continued to be important, notably in coffee and tobacco plantations in Brazil and Cuba. Slavery - as opposed to the slave trade – also continued in the West Indies (and in the U.S. South - now booming on slave-grown cotton.) Abolitionist hopes that the ending of the slave trade would lead to a natural decline of slavery itself did not materialize. Moreover, major slave revolts (Barbados 1816, Demerara 1822 and Jamaica 1831-1832) were grim reminders that, whatever outsiders said, the slaves themselves were determined not to tolerate slavery. In the mid-1820s British abolition was revived with the aim of ending slavery completely. The cause was carried forward by the wider demands of reform (notably the reform of Parliament.)

When Parliament was finally reformed in 1832, slavery was doomed. The composition of Parliament was changed and its new members disliked slavery. The once powerful West India lobby had lost its political strength. Demands for black freedom became universal, driven forward not merely by the formal abolition campaign (in which women played a key part) but by Evangelicals in the Church of England and by the coalition of new non-conformist churches (which had also converted tens of thousands of slaves to Christianity in the West Indies.) Black and white, on both sides of the Atlantic, united to demand an end to slavery.

Nineteenth century slavery (1834-1838)
Parliament agreed to free slaves partially in 1834, completely in 1838. Even then, Parliament compensated the slave owners (to the tune of twenty million pounds) - but not the slaves. At a stroke, three quarters of a million slaves became free people in the Caribbean. Slavery in the U.S. South however continued to thrive until destroyed by the Civil War and the 13th Amendment in 1865. Cuban slavery was ended in 1886, Brazilian in 1888.

Why was slavery ended?
Was the drive against slavery inspired by religious/moral outrage, or was it determined by a change in economic interests? Perhaps the British no longer needed slavery and slave-based goods, and perhaps they could prosper from new systems of free trade and free labour? Even so, the new Lancashire cotton industry depended on slave grown cotton (imported from the U.S. South) in its early days. Historians continue to argue about the precise reasons for the ending of slavery. But no one, now, doubts the critical role played by African slavery in the evolution of the western world in the long span between European settlement of the Americas and the rise of modern industry in the mid-nineteenth century.

  < previous   Page 3 of 3