ABOLITION

Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (549-553). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Robert Tombs is a professor of history at Cambridge University.

 

...Parliament responded in 1834 by emancipating 800,000 slaves in the empire, paying a huge £20m in compensation to the owners—equal to a third of the state budget—and requiring a four-year “apprenticeship” by slaves. This was thus a compromise measure, but still its anniversary was publicly celebrated annually by American abolitionists as a great achievement. In 1843 British subjects were forbidden to own slaves anywhere in the world. The abolition of slavery in the empire in practice applied to slave ownership by whites. Greatly affected was the Cape Colony, one of the most rigid and oppressive slave societies in history. The “Boers” (Dutch-speaking settlers) responded by trekking out of British territory, outraged that black people were “placed on an equal footing with Christians, contrary to the laws of God.” 

Traditional forms of servitude remained endemic in Africa and Asia, however, and in places still remain; and colonial authorities were very cautious about tackling them. Even when other states agreed to outlaw slave trafficking—sometimes (as with Spain and Portugal) with compensation paid by Britain—they commonly winked at evasion. So the Royal Navy placed a permanent squadron from 1808 to 1870, at times equal to a sixth of its ships, to try to intercept slavers off West Africa. It was based at Freetown, the capital of the colony for freed slaves at Sierra Leone, which had the first African Anglican bishop, Samuel Crowther, rescued as a boy from a slave ship by the Royal Navy. Patrolling was a thankless and gruelling effort, exposing crews to yellow fever, hardship and even personal legal liability for damages; it also cost a large amount of taxpayers’ money. 

 

France and the United States refused to allow the Royal Navy to search ships flying their flags. There was continual diplomatic friction with slave-trading states. British officials there were often threatened with violence. During the 1830s and 1840s several American ships forced by bad weather into British colonial territory had the slaves they were carrying released. 

In 1839 in the famous case of the slave ship Amistad, when captives rebelled and killed the captain, British testimony proving illegal action by American officials helped to secure their freedom. A serious dispute with the United States occurred in 1841 when American slaves on the ship Creole, being taken from Virginia to be sold in New Orleans, seized the ship and killed a slave-trader. They were given asylum in the British-ruled Bahamas, where they were acquitted of any crime and declared free. 

Britain signed forty-five treaties with African rulers to stop the traffic at source. They were very reluctant to give it up, even threatening to kill all their slaves if they were prevented from selling them. In several cases, Britain paid them to abandon the traffic. Abolitionists urged that Britain should maintain a territorial presence in West Africa, to combat illegal trafficking and promote legitimate commerce, such as palm oil, to wean African rulers and Liverpool merchants away from slaving and towards soap manufacture—a good example of cleanliness being next to godliness. By 1830 palm oil exports were worth more than the slave trade. 

But the trade continued, and the Royal Navy adopted more aggressive tactics, including blockading rivers and destroying slave pens on shore, even when these were foreign property. In 1861 it occupied Lagos, deposing the ruler who refused to stop the trade, and thus blocked one of the main slave routes. Over sixty years the navy captured hundreds of slave ships off the African coast and freed some 160,000 captives...