On 20 June 1897 around 2,000 people paraded outside the colonial Government house in the Seychelles. Like many throughout the British Empire, they were celebrating Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The crowd held large Union Jacks printed with the words, ‘The Flag that sets us free.’ All had been rescued by the Royal Navy from the East African Slave Trade. Once gathered, a message translated from Créole was given to the colonial administrator, Cockburn-Stewart. The message said:
‘We members of the different tribes of Africans living in the Seychelles, take the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria to express to you – Her Representative in these Islands our thanks for all that She and England have done for us… Kindly, Sir, express to the Queen our thanks for our freedom and to England our gratitude to those English Sailors who were killed and wounded, fighting that we might be free.’
This powerful message was representative of the fact that Great Britain was the driving force behind the global abolition of slavery. Britain was, of course, a large player in the slave trade as well, and this should not be forgotten. But our island nation also went against the global norm when it began recognising slavery as a moral evil that it must expunge not just from its colonies but from Earth itself.
In the second half of the 1700s, abolitionism began to rise in British culture and thought. Countless societies were formed to promote abolition, many by the Quakers. The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in 1787, with its medallion imprinted with words, ‘Am I not a man and a brother’. One of its founders, Granville Sharp, had funded the defence in a key legal case on the pathway to abolition, Somerset vs Stewart (1772), which found that a runaway slave, James Somerset, could not be sent to Jamaica to be sold. Though the judge, Lord Mansfield, wished for a settlement, the abolitionists refused to back down. Winning the case was the first major abolitionist victory and it set the precedent that any man on English soil was free.
From here the abolitionists didn’t rest and continued their campaign to change the hearts and minds of the British public. Politicians such as William Wilberforce pushed parliament relentlessly to end the wretched institution. Parliamentarians eventually passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire.
Eventually slavery itself was outlawed throughout the Empire under the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, effectively ending slavery by 1840 – until then, many slaves were kept as indentured labourers. However, the abolitionists had not quite won yet.
Throughout this period and for many centuries before, the institution of slavery was the global norm. European Americans bought slaves from the West African coast to sell and subjugate in their colonies and nations in the Americas. Simultaneously, Arab traders dominated the East African Coast, transporting slaves into the Middle East and Asia. This was facilitated by indigenous Africans who captured and sold their fellow men, reaping in gross profits in the process.
The hopes of abolitionists that the world would follow in Britain’s footsteps and end slavery too were quickly crushed. It became clear that Britain would have to force this change. Great Britain fundamentally utilised three methods for this: diplomatic pressure or soft power to push nations into signing anti-slavery treaties, military intervention and a mix of the two: gun boat diplomacy.
In 1808, the Royal Navy formed the West Africa Squadron. Its primary aim was to police the 2,000 mile African coast between Cape Verde and Luanda. Suspected slave ships were to be captured, slaves freed and the slavers tried in courts in British territory or in countries which Britain signed treaties with. By 1860, this squadron had captured about 1,600 slave ships, freed 150,000 slaves and lost about 2,000 Royal Navy sailors in this effort – who died from disease or in battle with slave ships.
Britain signed countless anti-slavery treaties with other nations and empires. For example, the Anglo-Portuguese Act 1817, which not only banned Portugal from slave trading above the equator, but allowed Britain to detain all Portuguese ships deemed to be slavers.
In Brazil, Britain demonstrated its gun boat diplomacy. In 1826, an Anglo-Brazil treaty was signed, banning the Brazilian slave trade by 1830. However, this did not stop Brazil importing 750,000 slaves between 1831-1850. In 1844, Brazil refused to renew its abolitionist treaty with Britain.
The British government was furious, so it passed a law the very next year allowing the Royal Navy to continue capturing Brazilian slave ships. Protests from the Brazilian establishment were simply ignored and ships from the Royal Navy were sent into Brazil’s waters in 1850.
This, of course, was a complete violation of international law and recognised territory. But the Royal Navy’s goal was to bully Brazil into abolition by creating a blockade. Soon the Navy’s ships were exchanging fire with Brazil’s coastal fortresses. At this point Brazil’s entire Empire was at stake, and it could not afford a war with Britain. So in September 1850 it passed a new anti-slavery bill with slavery effectively ending by 1855. Moreover, Britain kept in place the legal apparatus allowing it to seize Brazilian slave ships until 1869, in case it had to teach Brazil another lesson.
A key issue Britain faced in its abolitionist quest was within the African continent itself. Slavery was an integral part of several African economies, from the Aro-Niger Delta Confederacy to Zanzibar. In certain regions of the continent, slaves were used as a commodity and were sometimes directly bartered for other goods. In Unyamwezi, for example, slaves were frequently traded for ammunition. In Zambia, ivory was a significant and lucrative trade. But as the supply of ivory depleted, Bemba chiefs resorted to selling their fellow Africans to replace lost revenues – especially as ravaging villages for slaves was deemed easier than hunting elephants for ivory. Many slavers in Africa, for example around Kankan and Sinsani, also simply kept slaves to work in their own plantations.
Britain generally lacked the resources to delve deep into Africa to enforce abolition. Anti-slavery treaties were signed between Britain and African nations, such as the Anglo-Zanzibar treaty of 1873, and the Royal Navy continued its mission of capturing and freeing slaves. But this itself wasn’t enough.
A few British colonies in Africa at this time, such as in Sierra Leone, were founded with the goal of being abolitionist areas. The premise was that Africans could live in these areas without fear of being enslaved by their fellow man and sold. In fact, Sierra Leone was the headquarters of the West Africa Squadron.
Despite all this, some people have claimed that Britain’s desire to abolish slavery was done for self-serving or economic reasons. But this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. As the political scientists Kaufmann and Pape have estimated, it cost the British economy roughly 1.8 per cent of its yearly Gross National Income between 1808-1867 to enforce the Atlantic abolition. Britain was a maritime power, so giving up thousands of Royal Navy soldiers to patrol the seas for slavers took a considerable toll on its power and finances. Geopolitically it also led to Britain entering into conflicts, such as with Brazil, which would otherwise have been unnecessary. If it was not largely humanitarian, why bother to do any of this?
Britain has many evils in its history. But we should not forget that it was under the Union Jack that slavery was challenged globally for the first time in history.
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