Australia and the World Past and Present

By the late 1700s and early 1800s the anti-slavery movement was gaining traction in Britain.

The initial focus was on stopping British involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and then on abolishing slavery within the British Empire more widely.

It is no surprise that much of a focus was on the Atlantic slave trade, as that was where so much of the activity was taking place.

Quakers were influential in the abolitionist movement.

For this Protestant denomination, opposition to slavery arose from their religious convictions.

In the mid-late 1700s, multiple legal cases were heard in Britain, testing whether slavery was legally valid there.

No legislation had established slavery in Britain.

Even by the 1770s, thousands of slaves had been granted their freedom in Britain.

By the 1780s, the abolitionist movement in Britain was spawning what might be termed its own art or marketing material. In 1787 Wedgwood produced the anti-slavery medallion.

The movement was pursued along various fronts simultaneously.

Beginning in 1789, William Wilberforce began introducing bills to parliament. Between this year and 1833, he introduced 13 bills dealing with the abolition.

In 1787 the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed.

We can see multiple streams coming together across society, pushing for change.

There were public awareness campaigns, organisational mobilisation and legislative action.

It took time, but some change began to be realised.

In 1807 Britain passed the Slave Trade Act. Its aim was to end Britain’s participation in the slave trade.

In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. This was much wider than the 1807 Act. It abolished slavery throughout most of the British Empire.

Consumer boycotts were part of the abolitionist movement. Sugar was a key commodity and much of which was produced in the West Indies with the aid of slave labour.

Petitions held a prominent role in the campaign.

Some activists displayed a certain practicality. Thomas Clarkson focused on gathering data and evidence by travelling around and interviewing people with first-hand experience of the slave trade. He would visit British ports and interview sailors and ex-slaves.

One former slave, Olaudah Equiano, wrote a powerful autobiographical account of slavery.

Freetown, the capital of present-day Sierra Leone, was founded in 1792 by formerly slaves who had been resettled from Britain and North America.

Freetown would became an important base for the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron, which was established to suppress the transatlantic slave trade.

The late 1700s and early 1800s saw the rise of an abolitionist movement within Britain.

The movement was broad in scope and pursued along many different fronts.

Bills were introduced by well-connected individuals in parliament.

At a more grass-roots level, many groups were set up to fight for abolition.

Both non-slaves and former slaves could be counted among those pushing for change.

A large enough cross-section of civil society came together for long enough to see the slave trade and slavery itself transformed.