Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807 2007

34 Pages·2007·1.53 MB·English

Contents
Images courtesy of The
Bridgeman Art Library,
The Palace of Westminster, PAGE 1 PAGE 2 PAGE 4 PAGE 6 PAGE 8 PAGE 13 PAGE 17
Parliamentary Archives, Foreword The transatlantic A life in chains Resistance Parliament, 2007 Calendar An inhuman
The Religious Society of slave trade passion and of events traffic
Friends,Wilberforce House
people power
Museum,Hull Museums,
Karen Robinson/Panos
Pictures,Stuart
PAGE 18 PAGE 20 PAGE 22 PAGE 24 PAGE 26 PAGE 28 PAGE 29
Freedman/Panos Pictures,
‘The Sharp End’,Sarah The The road to Cities 21st century Today’s issues Freedom now Afterword
Williams/Anti-Slavery abolitionists emancipation commemorate slavery
International,Anti Slavery
International,National
Museums Liverpool,
British Empire &
Commonwealth Museum,
Royal Naval Museum,
Museum in Docklands
and National Archives
B I C E N T E N A RY O F
the Abolition
Department for Communities and Local Government Publications
PO Box 236 of the Slave Trade Act
Wetherby
West Yorkshire
LS23 7NB
Tel:[phone] – 2007
‘Sheol’by Rod Brown
Fax:[phone]
‘Breaking the Chains’exhibition
Textphone:0870 120 7405
at Bristol’s British Empire and
E-mail:[email protected]
Commonwealth Museum
© Crown Copyright 2007.Copyright in the contents,the cover,
the design and the typographical arrangement rests with the crown.
This document is also available on the Communities and
Local Government website:www.communities.gov.uk
Reference number:06REU04476
Published by the Department for Communities and Local Government,
Eland House,Bressenden Place,London SW1E 5DU,March 2007.
Printed on material containing no less than 75% post-consumer waste.
Contents
Images courtesy of The
Bridgeman Art Library,
The Palace of Westminster, PAGE 1 PAGE 2 PAGE 4 PAGE 6 PAGE 8 PAGE 13 PAGE 17
Parliamentary Archives, Foreword The transatlantic A life in chains Resistance Parliament, 2007 Calendar An inhuman
The Religious Society of slave trade passion and of events traffic
Friends,Wilberforce House
people power
Museum,Hull Museums,
Karen Robinson/Panos
Pictures,Stuart
PAGE 18 PAGE 20 PAGE 22 PAGE 24 PAGE 26 PAGE 28 PAGE 29
Freedman/Panos Pictures,
‘The Sharp End’,Sarah The The road to Cities 21st century Today’s issues Freedom now Afterword
Williams/Anti-Slavery abolitionists emancipation commemorate slavery
International,Anti Slavery
International,National
Museums Liverpool,
British Empire &
Commonwealth Museum,
Royal Naval Museum,
Museum in Docklands
and National Archives
B I C E N T E N A RY O F
the Abolition
Department for Communities and Local Government Publications
PO Box 236 of the Slave Trade Act
Wetherby
West Yorkshire
LS23 7NB
Tel:[phone] – 2007
‘Sheol’by Rod Brown
Fax:[phone]
‘Breaking the Chains’exhibition
Textphone:0870 120 7405
at Bristol’s British Empire and
E-mail:[email protected]
Commonwealth Museum
© Crown Copyright 2007.Copyright in the contents,the cover,
the design and the typographical arrangement rests with the crown.
This document is also available on the Communities and
Local Government website:www.communities.gov.uk
Reference number:06REU04476
Published by the Department for Communities and Local Government,
Eland House,Bressenden Place,London SW1E 5DU,March 2007.
Printed on material containing no less than 75% post-consumer waste.
Afterword
Slavery and This year,we commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of
the slave trade,and we remember those who were bought and sold
abolition
into the indignity and degradation of slavery.
As our Prime Minister William Pitt said in 1792,the slave trade was
"the greatest stigma on our national character which ever yet existed".
Everyone should feel the sorrow,pain and regret of man’s inhumanity
Key events
to men,women and children.
So we pay tribute to those people from all walks of life,the enslaved
and the free,who struggled against this injustice.I am particularly proud
that it was my predecessor as Member of Parliament for Hull,William
Wilberforce,who successfully campaigned alongside Granville Sharp,
Thomas Clarkson,Olaudah Equiano,Hannah More and many others
for legislation to abolish the slave trade.
In Freetown in Sierra Leone,I saw recently where the slaves liberated
by the Royal Navy came ashore through the Freedom Arch - such a
contrast to the "point of no return",the place where slaves were forced
on to ships,which I saw at the castle walls at Elmina in Ghana.Both
1562 1672 1772 1781 1787 1791 1807 1819 1838 1865 1888 Sierra Leone and Ghana are also commemorating this anniversary of
a British Act of Parliament.
But slavery did not end when we passed that legislation in 1807.
Today the nations of the world must unite and campaign to end the
unspeakable cruelty that persists in the form of modern day slavery -
such as bonded labour,forced recruitment of child soldiers and human
trafficking,especially of women and children.
1562 1672 1772 1781 1787 1791 1807 1819 1838 1865 1888 I want to thank the members of the Bicentenary Advisory Group
First English slaving Royal Africa Company The Somerset case held that 132 African slaves Society for the 23 August – 25 March – Slave British West Africa 1August – All enslaved Slavery finally Slavery abolished and my Ministerial colleagues,Valerie Amos,Vernon Coaker,David
expedition by granted charter to carry no slave could be forcibly thrown overboard from Abolition of the Slave St Domingue (Haiti) Trade Abolition Squadron (Royal Navy) men,women and children abolished in the in Brazil Lammy and Meg Munn for their commitment to the success of
Sir John Hawkins Africans to the Americas removed from Britain.The case the slave ship ‘Zong’ Trade founded slave revolt Bill passed in the established to suppress in the Caribbean finally United States
this year's commemoration.
led to the widespread belief British Parliament slave trading.By 1865, become free after a period territories
that slavery itself was illegal in nearly 150,000 people of forced apprenticeship, This anniversary is,and must be,about looking forward as well as
England,Wales and Ireland freed by anti-slavery following the passage of
looking into the past.We recognise the tremendous contribution of
operations the Slavery Abolition Act
the Afro-Caribbean diaspora to the success of this country and the
in 1833
diversity of our culture and heritage.We renew our commitment to
help overcome poverty and help educate the children of the world.
And,reminded by our past,we reinforce our commitment to a
future in which there can be social justice and freedom for all.
John Prescott
The Brookes slave ship carried 609 Deputy Prime Minister
African men,women and children,
with barely room for them to move.
Afterword | 29
Afterword
Slavery and This year,we commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of
the slave trade,and we remember those who were bought and sold
abolition
into the indignity and degradation of slavery.
As our Prime Minister William Pitt said in 1792,the slave trade was
"the greatest stigma on our national character which ever yet existed".
Everyone should feel the sorrow,pain and regret of man’s inhumanity
Key events
to men,women and children.
So we pay tribute to those people from all walks of life,the enslaved
and the free,who struggled against this injustice.I am particularly proud
that it was my predecessor as Member of Parliament for Hull,William
Wilberforce,who successfully campaigned alongside Granville Sharp,
Thomas Clarkson,Olaudah Equiano,Hannah More and many others
for legislation to abolish the slave trade.
In Freetown in Sierra Leone,I saw recently where the slaves liberated
by the Royal Navy came ashore through the Freedom Arch - such a
contrast to the "point of no return",the place where slaves were forced
on to ships,which I saw at the castle walls at Elmina in Ghana.Both
1562 1672 1772 1781 1787 1791 1807 1819 1838 1865 1888 Sierra Leone and Ghana are also commemorating this anniversary of
a British Act of Parliament.
But slavery did not end when we passed that legislation in 1807.
Today the nations of the world must unite and campaign to end the
unspeakable cruelty that persists in the form of modern day slavery -
such as bonded labour,forced recruitment of child soldiers and human
trafficking,especially of women and children.
1562 1672 1772 1781 1787 1791 1807 1819 1838 1865 1888 I want to thank the members of the Bicentenary Advisory Group
First English slaving Royal Africa Company The Somerset case held that 132 African slaves Society for the 23 August – 25 March – Slave British West Africa 1August – All enslaved Slavery finally Slavery abolished and my Ministerial colleagues,Valerie Amos,Vernon Coaker,David
expedition by granted charter to carry no slave could be forcibly thrown overboard from Abolition of the Slave St Domingue (Haiti) Trade Abolition Squadron (Royal Navy) men,women and children abolished in the in Brazil Lammy and Meg Munn for their commitment to the success of
Sir John Hawkins Africans to the Americas removed from Britain.The case the slave ship ‘Zong’ Trade founded slave revolt Bill passed in the established to suppress in the Caribbean finally United States
this year's commemoration.
led to the widespread belief British Parliament slave trading.By 1865, become free after a period territories
that slavery itself was illegal in nearly 150,000 people of forced apprenticeship, This anniversary is,and must be,about looking forward as well as
England,Wales and Ireland freed by anti-slavery following the passage of
looking into the past.We recognise the tremendous contribution of
operations the Slavery Abolition Act
the Afro-Caribbean diaspora to the success of this country and the
in 1833
diversity of our culture and heritage.We renew our commitment to
help overcome poverty and help educate the children of the world.
And,reminded by our past,we reinforce our commitment to a
future in which there can be social justice and freedom for all.
John Prescott
The Brookes slave ship carried 609 Deputy Prime Minister
African men,women and children,
with barely room for them to move.
Afterword | 29
A message
The transatlantic slave trade stands as one of the most
inhuman enterprises in history.Over 12 million people were
from the
transported.Some two million died.
Prime Minister
Thankfully,on 25 March 1807,Britain became one of the first
countries to abolish the slave trade.The bicentenary of that
event offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly
shameful the slave trade was – how we condemn its existence
utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition – but also
to express our deep sorrow that it ever happened and to
rejoice at the different and better times we live in today.
The bicentenary is also an opportunity for us to recognise
the enormous contribution of Black African and Caribbean
communities to our nation.Britain is richer in every way – for
example in business,sports and culture – because of the part
played by these communities.
But there are still barriers to overcome before everyone
can enjoy the life chances we all deserve.So in 2007,we will
step up our efforts on three key issues:tackling inequality
for people of African and Caribbean heritage in the UK;the
challenges facing the African continent and the cruelty of
modern day slavery such as people trafficking and child labour.
You will hear about action on all these fronts during
the year.In the meantime this magazine aims to inform,
and to encourage you to take part in one of the many
commemorative events taking place at international,national
and local levels to mark the bicentenary.
This is everyone’s bicentenary.This anniversary is a chance
for all of us to deepen understanding of our past,celebrate
the richness of our diversity and increase our determination
to shape the world with the values we share.
Tony Blair
The Prime Minister
1 | Foreword
For nearly 400 years, from the early 16th
century, Europeans enslaved millions of
The Africans through the transatlantic slave
trade. It is estimated that well over
transatlantic
12 million Africans were loaded onto slave
slave trade
ships and that some two million died.
www.direct.gov.uk/slavery
25th March 1807 was the day Parliament passed to all those – Black and White – who campaigned
the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act,outlawing slave for abolition;and to demand to know why today,in
carrying by British ships in the British Empire. some parts of the world,including the UK,forms of
slavery still exist.
Although slavery itself was not abolished until
1833,with the Emancipation Act,1807 marked the The Government wants to ensure that the best
beginning of the end for the transatlantic slave trade. possible legacy from the bicentenary is achieved by
200 years on,the bicentenary is an important tackling contemporary slavery,inequality and racism
opportunity to reflect on the struggles of the past: in the UK today;poverty and inequality on the
to remember those who suffered;to pay tribute African continent and in the Caribbean.
How the transatlantic slave trade started
Slavery itself has existed since The British were not the first to get involved,but
recorded history.The transatlantic they came to dominate the trade.The first English slave
trade began in the early 16th trader was Sir John Hawkins,comptroller of the
century,when Europeans began Queen’s navy.From 1562-68,he made three voyages
to settle in America.They started to to Sierra Leone,taking hundreds of Africans across the
enslave Africans to work in their Atlantic to sell to Spanish America.Britain was heavily
mines and plantations.As European settlements grew, involved from the mid-17th century.
so did the demand for slaves.Over the next 350
By the mid-18th century,Britain had become
years,over 12 million Africans – no-one knows
the leading slaving nation.
exactly how many for sure – were transported to the
Americas.They included men,women and children.
Racism and slavery
Slavery was – and is – closely bound up Africans were kidnapped and captured,
with racism,both a cause of it and an effect. marched to the coast and sold to
At the start of the slave trade in the 1520s Europeans.From there,they were shipped
Europeans believed Africans were racially to colonies in the Americas,in conditions
inferior – this is how they justified the of almost unimaginable cruelty.
inhuman conditions of the trade.
Over 12 million people One in five slaves died in British ships made about
forcibly taken from Africa. the holds of ships. 11,000 slaving voyages.
Liverpool, London and Bristol
accounted for 95 per cent of
these voyages.
2 | The transatlantic slave trade
Words by Tony Tibbles and Howard Brown.© Royal Mail Group plc 2007.
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and disregard for their lives.
The ships came back to
The voyage across the Atlantic,the Middle Passage,generally
Europe with tropical goods
took six weeks.Conditions were appalling in the packed and
which helped supporta
unhealthy holds,and up to one in five died.Uprisings were
growing consumer society.
common but were violently suppressed.
The triangular trade route
The British slave trade was a three-legged plantations - cotton,coffee,tobacco and
journey.British traders sailed to Africa with sugar - to ship back to Europe.
textiles,copperwares,iron,guns and spirits to
Sometimes vast profits were made from the
exchange for slaves.The second leg of the
trade.Merchants grew rich,shipping,ports,
journey was the dreaded ‘middle passage’:
docks,manufacture,finance and services all
enslaved Africans were shipped in suffocating
flourished,and port cities boomed.The slave
holds in voyages taking up to six weeks,to
trade also provided vital capital for the new
North America and the West Indies,where
enterprises of the industrial revolution,
they were sold to work in the plantations.
helping many countries across Europe,
Traders then bought raw materials from the
including Britain,to gain wealth and prosper.
Abolition – the historical background
Against a background of revolution on both to Britain and Nova Scotia at the war’s end.
sides of the Atlantic,the transatlantic slave Freetown,in Sierra Leone,West Africa was
trade,which had gone on for 350 years, also founded in 1792 as a home for those
peaked and perished in another 100 years. who had fought for the British in the
American War of Independence.
George III was king in Britain but working
class men and women didn’t yet have the Within a few years,the French Revolution
right to vote. followed.The 1789 uprising developed
revolutionary ideas of brotherhood,justice
In America,the war to gain independence
and equality for all,providing further
from British rule was fought from
inspiration for slave revolts in the colonies
1776-1783,with freedom as its driving
and sparking debate about the legality and
ideology.Thousands of enslaved Africans
morality of the slave trade all over Europe.
fought for the British in return for the
promise of freedom,eventually coming
The transatlantic slave trade | 3
The millions of enslaved Africans included
A life in chains domestics, farmers, merchants, priests, soldiers,
artisans and musicians.Yet the brutality of the
The reality of life for
slave trade reduced them to no more than
enslaved Africans cargo and chattels.
Kidnap and capture
Men,women and children who had
been seized in battles or wars were sold
to African traders or ‘Black Brokers’.
They also bought debtors and criminals
(anyone who was unfortunate enough to
be convicted locally of adultery could be
“
I was early snatched away sold into slavery) and Africans who had been kidnapped for
from my native country, sale into slavery.
with about eighteen or
Many of those taken lived far inland,and the first of their
twenty more boys and sufferings was a forced march in chains to the coast,where they
girls, as we were playing were sometimes held at forts or factories before boarding ships.
in a field. Some of us These ships might spend months collecting hundreds of enslaved
attempted, in vain, to run Africans.As they filled up with captives,living conditions on board
away, but pistols and became increasingly intolerable.
cutlasses were soon
introduced, threatening, The dreaded ‘middle passage’
that if we“ offered to stir,
we should all lie dead on The infamous ‘middle passage’
“
the spot. describes the second leg of the The deck, that is the
triangular journey,from Africa to floor of their rooms, was
Ottobah Cugoano,Narrative of the the Americas.Enslaved Africans so covered with the blood
Enslavement of a Native of Africa (1787)
and mucus which had
were packed as tightly as
proceeded from“ them in
possible on specially constructed
consequence of the flux,
shelves below deck in the hold. that it resembled a
The air was suffocatingly hot, slaughterhouse.
especially when the portholes
Ship’s surgeon
were shut in rough weather.
Some ships had basic lavatories that allowed slaves to relieve
themselves directly into the sea;others had slop buckets that
would frequently overflow.Outbreaks of dysentery (then known
as ‘the bloody flux’) frequently broke out.
4 | A life in chains
Life in the plantations
For those who made it alive to the British
colonies in the southern states of America,and
the West Indies,conditions scarcely improved.
They worked punishing hours under threat of
the overseer’s whip,mainly in sugar fields,but
also in tobacco,rice and cotton plantations.
Others worked as craftspeople,or servants.
Punishments were harsh.
Enslaved Africans were considered to be
property,not people.Stripping them of their
own names and forcing them to take new
“
names,often those of their owners,was designed
The iron muzzle,
to dehumanise Africans and underline their
thumb-screws,... are
status as property.The fact that they could be
so well known as not
sold and taken from the plantation at any time
to need a description,
made it very difficult to maintain any normal
and were sometimes
family life.Some of the Africans hunted as
applied for the
runaways may have just been trying to visit
friends or family in another plantation. slightest faults. I have
seen a Negro beaten
Women were not spared inhuman treatment.
till some of his bones
Some were raped,and many were beaten as
were brok“en, for
they worked alongside men in gangs.Life was
only letting a pot
intolerable for some field workers:they found
escape by hanging themselves in the woods. boil over.
Olaudah Equiano
A life in chains | 5
Resistance
Enslaved Africans resisted at every point of the
The struggle
slave trade, becoming powerful agents of their
for freedom own liberation.
Throughout hundreds of years of the slave trade,enslaved
Africans resisted;from small acts like damaging machinery
and feigning illness to large-scale revolts that led to the first
independent Black republic outside Africa.While Whites and
Africans campaigned against slavery in Britain,the persistent
protest of enslaved Africans 5,000 miles away in the
Caribbean played a direct role in abolition.
Insurrection and escape
Even being chained and under armed Few shipboard insurrections resulted in
guard aboard slave ships did not stop Africans regaining their liberty,but there
enslaved Africans seizing any chance are cases of captives taking control of their
to reclaim their freedom. ships.In 1753 Africans on board the
“ Adventure seized the ship,ran it aground
…they ran to the forepart of the Ship in a and destroyed it.
body, and endeavoured to force the Barricado
on the Quarter-Deck, not regarding the Some preferred suicide to slavery.When the
Musquets or Half Pikes that were presented Bristol slaver The Prince of Orange arrived
to their Breasts by the white Men through the at St Kitts in 1737,about 100 captives
Loop-holes… which Occasioned a t“errible
jumped overboard:most were recaptured,
Destruction: For there were near eighty
but 33 drowned.Acts of resistance like this
Negroes kill’d and drowned, many jumping
overboard when the Gun was fired. meant slave masters could never be sure of
delivering their cargo of enslaved Africans to
Insurrection on the Ferrers Galley described by
William Snelgrave.A New Account of Some Parts work the plantations.
of Guinea and the Slave Trade (1734).
Uprisings and Rebellions
Once in the Caribbean and America, out sporadically in St Vincent,Grenada,
Africans resisted the brutal regime they Tobago,Barbados and St Lucia.While the
lived under in many different ways.Some campaign against slavery was really getting
simply ran away – newspapers of the time underway in Britain in the late 18th century,
frequently advertised rewards for returning several rebellions in the British Caribbean
slaves.Others had a policy of non- contributed significantly to the momentum
cooperation or even secret sabotage,but for abolition.
there was open unrest and violent
The revolts tested British military and
resistance against planters,too.Jamaica
imperial rule and raised a question about
proved a huge problem for colonial rulers
whether the colonies in the Caribbean
trying to control it,but unrest also broke
were ungovernable.
6 | Resistance