Anglonautes > History > British empire

Les anglonautes

History > 16th century

UK, British empire, England > England > Slavery

Timeline

in articles, pictures, videos and podcasts

TITLE: Stowage of the British slave ship Brookes

under the regulated slave trade act of 1788

REPRODUCTION NUMBER:

LC-USZ62-44000 (b&w film copy neg.)

LC-USZ62-34160 (b&w film copy neg.)

SUMMARY:

Illustration showing deck plans and cross sections

of British slave ship Brookes.

MEDIUM: 1 print: etching.

CREATED/PUBLISHED: [1788(?)]

REPOSITORY:

Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division

Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

DIGITAL ID:

(b&w film copy neg. LC-USZ62-44000) cph 3a44236

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a44236

(b&w film copy neg. LC-USZ62-34160) cph 3a34658

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a34658

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/ils:@FIELD(NUMBER(3a44236))

TIFF > JPEG > Anglonautes

Library of Congress

Images of African-American Slavery and Freedom

From the Collections of the Library of Congress

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html

A plan of the layout of a slave ship.

Bristol’s wealth was due in no small part

to profits from the slave trade.

Photograph: Christopher Jones/Alamy

The day Bristol dumped its hated slave trader in the docks

and a nation began to search its soul

Sun 14 Jun 2020 09.14 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/14/
the-day-bristol-dumped-its-hated-slave-trader-in-the-docks-and-a-nation-began-to-search-its-soul

Abolition of Slavery Act 1833

Slavery (...) was abolished

in much of the British empire

in 1833

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/23/
eighty-years-late-groundbreaking-work-on-slave-economy-is-finally-published-in-uk

William Wilberforce 1759-1833

Wilberforce was a deeply religious

English member of parliament

and social reformer

who was very influential

in the abolition of the slave trade

and eventually slavery itself

in the British empire.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wilberforce_william.shtml

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/
wilberforce_william.shtml

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/
william-wilberforce

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/
british-history-slavery-buried-scale-revealed

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/19/
is-amazing-grace-film-historically-accurate-william-wilberforce-abolition-slavery

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/05/
william-wilberforce-apprenticeship-sierra-leone

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/aug/03/
wilberforce-slavery-sierra-leone

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/02/
wilberforce-condoned-slavery-files-claim

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/feb/27/
leadersandreply.mainsection3

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/oct/05/
past.comment

1823

Demerara, Caribbean

70 abolitionists (are) convicted

for their role in the historic 1823 Demerara rebellion

by enslaved people against British colonialists

in the Caribbean.

(...)

Although unsuccessful at the time,

the event contributed

to the abolition of slavery

10 years later, in 1833.

(...)

Demerara was one of Britain’s

most lucrative colonies,

being rich in sugar plantations

at a time when the British economy

was heavily dependent on the crop.

It was known

for the harsh treatment of enslaved people,

designed to discourage them

from rebelling against the white colonialists

they heavily outnumbered.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/13/
david-lammy-requests-pardon-for-1823-slave-rebellion-convicts

Olaudah Equiano c.1745-1797

Olaudah Equiano

(...)

also known as Gustavus Vassa,

was an African writer,

born in what is now

the Eboe province of Nigeria,

and sold into slavery aged 11.

Equiano subsequently worked

as the slave of a British naval officer,

purchased his freedom in 1766

and went on to write

his popular slave memoir.

No fewer than 17 editions and reprints,

and several translations,

appeared between 1798 and 1827.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/07/
the-interesting-narrative-of-the-life-of-olaudah-equiano-100-best-nonfiction-books-robert-mccrum

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/07/
the-interesting-narrative-of-the-life-of-olaudah-equiano-
100-best-nonfiction-books-robert-mccrum

William Wilberforce's 1789 Abolition Speech

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/
wilberforce_william.shtml

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIqKTodrZSM - 24 March 2015

https://brycchancarey.com/abolition/wilberforce2.htm

Edward Colston 1636-1721

notorious slave trader

https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2022/jan/10/
what-colston-four-acquittal-means-future-protests-podcast

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/10/
colston-four-britain-apology-for-past

Sir Francis Drake c. 1540-1596

Drake,

the famed Elizabethan explorer,

and a vice-admiral in the fleet

that defeated the Spanish Armada,

was also a slave trader,

making three voyages

to Guinea and Sierra Leone

that enslaved between

1,200 and 1,400 Africans

between 1562 and 1567

– a figure that probably meant

the deaths of around

three times as many,

according to contemporary estimates.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/10/
after-colston-figures-such-as-drake-and-peel-could-be-next

Author casts shadow

over slave hero

Wednesday September 14, 2005

The Guardian

Gary Younge

in New York

One of black Britain's earliest known authors and most prominent historical figures may have fabricated his accounts of being transported on a slave ship from Africa to the Caribbean, according to a prominent American academic.

In his autobiography Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who bought his freedom and then became a leading voice in the movement to abolish slavery, claimed he was born in Essaka, Igboland in what is now southeastern Nigeria in 1745. Equiano (who also went by the name Gustava Vassa) described how he was taken by slave traders and shipped to the Caribbean. It was the first written account by an African in English of the slave journey.

But in a book to be published next month, University of Maryland professor Vincent Carretta claims there is more evidence to suggest that Mr Equiano was born in South Carolina and concocted the tale of the slave journey from other people's accounts.

Mr Carretta, a world authority on Equiano's life, has unearthed a baptismal record from 1759 and a 1773 ship's muster both of which list South Carolina as Equiano's birthplace.

"It's not a smoking gun but it is strong circumstantial evidence," he says, insisting that there are no doubts about the authenticity of the rest of Equiano's accounts. "If you read the first three chapters they read like anthropology. The rest reads like autobiography. Once he enters history he is amazingly accurate."

Mr Carretta's findings have divided academics on both sides of the Atlantic. The atmosphere at a conference at Kingston University in 2003 became "a tad overwrought" as he presented them.

"They asked me why I was doing this to Equiano. I said: 'You can question my motives all you want. Equiano's my hero. I'm crazy about him. But even if I wasn't the data are still there'."

Professor Paul Lovejoy of York university in Toronto argues that the overwhelming body of evidence suggests Equiano was born in Africa and that his whole life story should not be distorted to account for two documents of debatable veracity. "The thing that doesn't fit is the document that says he was born in South Carolina," says Mr. Lovejoy. "Everything else fits. The one thing that's odd - that's the one that has to be questioned, not the other way around."

Equiano's significance to transatlantic history has grown precipitously over the last few decades. History professor James Walvin bought a first edition of his book in 1967 for 5 shillings; today it is worth $12,000.

"So many people have a stake in Equiano that it is bound to upset a lot of people," says Prof Walvin, from York university in England. "These are two documents among many. You can't ignore them. But if it's true then it's a dynamite issue."

Others, like Paul Gilroy, of the London School of Economics, believe the dispute has been overblown. "Does the issue of Olaudah's birthplace undermine the ... historical meaning of catastrophic mass death?" asks Professor Gilroy.

Equiano's descriptions of the journey are graphic. "The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us," he writes in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. "The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable."

Mr Carretta says Equiano may have fabricated the accounts for reasons of political expediency. "The priority for abolitionist cause at the time was abolishing the slave trade rather than slavery. If he had said he was born in South Carolina he would have been much less useful. There was a need for the voice. He was aware of the need and in a position to give his voice."

Author casts shadow over slave hero,
G,
14.9.2005,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/14/
books.usa

Death on the Grain Coast

In 1787 a small fleet set sail
from London to Sierra Leone.

For the hopeful black passengers
and their white abolitionist benefactors,
it was an extraordinary, utopian venture -
to establish the first colony of freed slaves
in Africa.

In an exclusive extract from his new book,
Simon Schama reveals how that dream
of a new life turned into a nightmare

Wednesday August 31, 2005

The Guardian

In the late 18th century, between 5,000 and 7,000 black people lived in London. More than 20 years before the legislation of William Wilberforce finally ended slavery in Britain, the practice was still legal - but ambiguously so. Most blacks in London were free, but not all, and slave catchers operated widely in the capital, kidnapping runaways.

The abolitionist movement, meanwhile, was well under way, and in 1772 a landmark legal judgment had given rise to the widespread (but erroneous) impression that slavery was outlawed in England. As a consequence, black slaves everywhere - but especially in the American colonies - came to see England as a beacon of hope. Many served the loyalist cause in the American war of independence - and thus looked to King and Country to guarantee their liberty when the colonies were surrendered.

After 1783, many impoverished refugees made their way to London, where their plight led to the foundation of a Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor being established by a group of wealthy philanthropists. Soon, though, the coffee-house talk moved beyond mere relief, to a grander project altogether: the establishment of a colony of free black people, back to Africa.

To his friends, Henry Smeathman was "Mr Termite". No one knew more about ants. In 1771 he had been sent by the scientist and future president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks, to the Banana Islands off the coast of Sierra Leone to collect botanical specimens for Banks's collection at Kew. He had stayed there for three years, turning himself from botanist into entomologist.

In the 1780s he had pottered along giving his insect lectures, a harmless and slightly marginal figure in the scientific and philanthropic communities of which he considered himself a member. But then, in 1786, the cause of the black poor gave him a sudden, belated opportunity, and Smeathman set before the Lords of the Treasury his "Plan of Settlement" for the creation of a thriving free black colony in "one of the most pleasant and feasible countries in the known world" - Sierra Leone.

Given such natural blessings, each settler should "by common consent" be allowed to "possess as much land as he or she could cultivate". Surely the blacks would see that "an opportunity so advantageous may perhaps never be offer'd again for they and their posterity may enjoy perfect freedom settled in a country congenial to their constitution" and one where they "will find a certain and secure retreat from former suffering". And all for a mere £14 per capita.

There was something of a discrepancy between Smeathman's ebullient salesmanship and the truth. The "Land of Freedom", as Sierra Leone was to be called, also happened to be the province of slavery. The Royal Navy, which was to escort and possibly protect the infant colony of the free, was at the same time assigned to protect the busy British slave-trading depot on Bance Island, a little way upriver from the estuary. Still, the government signed on to the scheme. At a cost of £14 per person, the Treasury would bear the expense not just of free transport to Africa, but also of provisions, clothes and tools for four months.

To many historians, this entire operation has seemed more like social convenience than utopian idealism. In this view, what the government wanted was just to be rid of the blacks as irksome beggars, petty criminals and (since interracial sexual liaisons were becoming commonplace and noticed) a threat to the purity of white womanhood. The involvement of slave owners such as Angerstein and Thomas Boddington in the Sierra Leone plan, and the approval of slavery's most ardent apologist, Edward Long, who may indeed have thought of it as an experiment in social hygiene, does not, however, make it a conspiratorial racist deportation. For every Long, there were 10 dedicated abolitionists. George Rose, the Treasury man overseeing the plan, for example, was a heartfelt, militant abolitionist, committed to closing down the whole sinful institution. Then, as always, there was the veteran campaigner Granville Sharp, who was in no doubt at all - provided slaveholding of any kind was strictly forbidden - that Sierra Leone could indeed be made into "the Province of Freedom".

After some effort was expended to calm the fears of blacks in Britain about the scheme, over 600 signed an "Agreement" indicating their willingness to be "happily settled on the ... Grain Coast of Africa". The emigrants were all supposed to have embarked on three ships lying at Blackwall in London, the Atlantic, the Belisarius and the Vernon, by November. It was important, if the fledgling settlement was to have a chance, that it should arrive on the Grain Coast before the onset of the rainy season in the spring.

But the delays were endless. By late November, of that 600-plus, no more than 259 had actually come aboard the two ships. And they were, evidently, freezing cold, cramped, dangerously sickly and generally unhappy. Some reported being treated by the white officers no better than if they had been "in the West Indies". As many as 60 may have died before the ships ever left England, most of them on the Belisarius, where a "malignant fever" was taking a deadly toll, especially of the children. By then, the scheme's chief salesman, Smeathman, had himself died, of a mystery illness perhaps acquired on his earlier voyages.

Interminable delays meant that the final departure did not take place until February - making an arrival during the rainy season in Sierra Leone inevitable. The ships were barely under way when they found themselves in trouble. The naval escort Nautilus ran on to a sandbank. The wind went from fresh to dangerous in a matter of hours as the fleet found itself in the teeth of the worst kind of gale the Channel can whip up. The Vernon's fore topmast came down; the ships lost sight of, and contact with, each other; and the unlucky Nautilus limped to Torbay. The next day the fleet's commanding officer, Captain Thomas Thompson, attempted to sail to Plymouth in the wake of the Atlantic and Belisarius, but was beaten back to Torbay by the foul weather.

Nor were the venture's troubles over. On April 9 the little fleet sailed away, dirty weather left behind with the British coast. As usual, fevers mounted; bodies, 14 of them, were slid overboard. But at Tenerife in the Atlantic spring, the ships took on cattle and fresh food and water, and the knell of mortality seemed to have abated. Patrick Fraser, the chaplain, described the expedition in a letter to the Public Advertiser as a happy ark, enjoying "the sweets of peace, lenity and almost uninterrupted harmony". Better yet, "the odious distinction of colours is no longer remembered". Black and white worshipped together. Jerusalem lay just over the horizon.

Would it have made any difference if they had known the native Temne name for their destination: Romarong - the place of the wailers, the place where men and women wept in the storms? All that Captain Thompson knew, as he spied the site from the deck of the anchored Nautilus on May 10 1787, was that it had been called "Frenchman's Bay" and he had it in mind to rename it St George's Bay. St George and England, along with some 380 free black Britons, had arrived at the mouth of the Sierra Leone river.

It had been noticed. The next day, wasting no time, the local Koya Temne chief, King Tom, appeared, big and affable, a glory in blue silk and ruffled shirt, the flap of his hat thick with gold lace. His wives, standing at a proper distance, were still bigger, in brilliant taffeta and turbans wound high. Punctiliously naval, Thompson made sure the Nautilus greeted them with a 13-gun salute.

Thompson announced his intention to buy from the king a territory of some 400 square miles; the land that would be the Province of Freedom. King Tom raised no objections. But he was no ingénu when it came to dealing with Europeans; what they were "buying" was not ownership of land (for no one truly owned it), but permission to stay.

From the crest of the "eminence", the prospect may not have been quite the terrestrial paradise described by the late Smeathman - or indeed as Granville Sharp rhapsodised to his brother James ("the hills are not steeper than Shooter's Hill [in Kent ] ... the woods and groves are beautiful beyond description"). But on that day in May the view may still have looked auspicious. Much of the coast was sunk low in muddy mangrove swamp, interlaced with creeks where sharks shared the shallows with crocodiles. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, the sea carried the coffee-coloured ooze over the low plain, making the estuary good for nothing except the extraction of salt.

And as far as they could see, there was damned little else to sustain life on the north shore, although a few saturated fields swayed with meagre yellow stalks of rice. Two weeks later came the deluge. The sky disappeared into a muffling grey void, the drowning pausing only with the sudden arrival of tornadoes for which the capes were notorious. Thus it was that the sounds of Romarong came to Captain Thompson's emerald hill.

Against this onslaught, elemental, zoological and epidemic (for fevers were taking their toll, too), what did the London blacks and the remaining six whites have? Self-sufficiency was out of the question. Survival depended on the stores that had been brought on the ships, and those were rapidly mouldering; in their desperation the settlers consumed them anyway. When these provisions were gone, the settlers of Granville Town - as their little colony of the free had been named, in honour of Sharp - began to trade their tools and, before long, their clothes in exchange for food from the only dependable source: the slavers on Bance Island and on the Bullom shore.

Before the Province of Freedom ever had a chance to establish itself, its people began to disappear. By September 16, when Thompson boarded the Nautilus for the voyage home, having ostensibly seen the settlement through its teething pains, 122 of those who had landed in May had perished. Most were victims of fevers of one kind or another, malaria being probably the most common.

The 268 survivors were then further thinned as deserters decamped to where shelter, food and wages were offered - the slave depots. Patrick Fraser, the man of God, was among those to make this pact with the devil. Increasingly sick and tubercular, he finally accepted the offer of more solid lodging on Bance Island, preaching to the white slavers and artisans and to bemused slaves, who understood nothing of his prayers and sermons.

Blacks, too, took paying jobs upriver on Bance Island, some of them turning from slaves to slavers. One of those was Harry de Mane, whom Granville Sharp had rescued just the previous year from a ship carrying him in chains to the West Indies. On hearing the news of this betrayal, Granville Sharp felt as though he had taken a sword-thrust. "Warn them, from me," the distressed Sharp wrote to the settlers in 1789, "of the horrors and remorse which must one day seize those authors and abettors of oppression who do not save themselves by a timely repentance. Remind Mr Henry Demane of his own feelings under the horrors of slavery ... tell him that the species of slave-dealing and slave-holding are inimical to the whole species of man by subverting charity, equity and every social and virtuous principle on which the peace and happiness of mankind depend, that they may fairly be deemed unnatural crimes and ought to be ranked with the horrible unnatural depravity of man devouring man." In other words, De Mane turned slaver was no better than a cannibal.

More bad news reached Sharp from Abraham Elliott Griffith, the manservant and protégé whose education he had provided for. Griffith wrote to Sharp in the throes of the rains and did not spare him:

"Honoured Sir,

"I am sorry, and very sorry indeed, to inform you, dear Sir, that this country does not agree with us at all and without a very sudden change, I do not think there will be one of us left at the end of 12 month. Neither can the people be brought to any rule or regulation, they are so very obstinate in their tempers. It was really a very great pity ever we came to this country after the death of Mr Smeathman; for we are settled upon the very worst part. There is not a thing put into the ground, will grow more than a foot out of it . . . quite a plague seems to reign here among us. I have been dangerously ill myself but it pleased the Almighty to restore me to health again and the first opportunity I have I shall embark for the West Indies."

This, too, was deeply shocking; that Griffith would rather hazard his liberty and his life in the Caribbean than try to endure in Granville Town. In the event, Griffith did not take ship but, asked by the Naimbana tribe to open a school at the nearby village of Robana, became a personal secretary, interpreter, emissary and, when he married Princess Clara, son-in-law to the old king.

His story in Africa was not yet ended, but for the rest was there any hope to be salvaged from the wreckage of Sharp's utopia?

In 1789 Sharp must have felt that, if only his province could somehow hang on, the success that the campaign against the trade was enjoying in Britain would sooner or later enlist the powerful to its protection. In a stroke of brutal irony, it was precisely that power, in the imposing shape of His Majesty's Ship Pomona, that brought about the ruin of Granville Town.

No one could have foreseen it. The enactment of Sir William Dolben's bill regulating the physical conditions of the trade meant that, for the first time in modern history, state power was being used to intervene in the traffic of "live cargo". And the Pomona, with Captain Henry Savage commanding, had been ordered to sail to the African coast, distribute copies of the Dolben regulations among the slave factories and the agents of the Liverpool and Bristol concerns, and see that its provisions were complied with.

After anchoring in St George's Bay in November 1789 Savage did his duty, but was instantly beset by complaints from representatives of the free settlers and the slavers, both of whom looked to the captain to uphold their grievances. Abraham Ashmore, the current governor of Granville Town, complained bitterly about his settlers being abducted and sold. James Bowie and John Tilley, on behalf of Messrs Anderson, counter-groused that the settlers were thieves and lawless rogues who had threatened their own establishment.

On one issue, however, Ashmore and Bowie made common cause. King Tom's successor, King Jimmy, had become a menace, violating the agreements he had made with both parties, attacking the settlement, and taking and selling slaves that were not his to sell. He needed to be brought to book and reminded of his solemn undertakings, and the captain of the Pomona should see to it.

Savage obliged. On November 20 a gun was fired and a flag of truce hoisted to signal that the king might safely come aboard for a parley.

No Jimmy appeared. That same afternoon a party of men, including armed marines, four settlers and Bowie himself, was sent to find him. Savage watched from the deck as the boats were beached and Lt Wood and his companions disappeared into the trees. Quiet. Then the crack of musket fire, a sudden plume of flame behind the shoreline and smoke rising over the palms. Someone, probably a young midshipman, had got jumpy as boys do, fired into a village - Jimmy's village - and set a thatched roof on fire. It was the dry season, and it took only minutes for the entire compound to be reduced to charred sticks.

This was just the start of what was to turn into a very bad day for the brand-new British Empire of freedom. From the deck of the Pomona sailors and marines were seen running back in hasty confusion to the shore. Alarmed, Savage sent a second boat to pick them up. As the men were swinging their legs over the gunwales, a volley of fire broke from the line of trees fringeing the beach. A marine sergeant, the lieutenant of the relief boat, and a black settler were killed.

Now that the skirmish had gone colonial, Savage trained the guns of his ship on the shore, "clearing" the bush. Over the next few days he repeated the exercise. In response, Jimmy's men shot at anyone attempting to land for water. Only the well-disposed Naimbana could arbitrate, and one of the settlers was sent to Robana to call for his intervention. When he came back with the message, as he stepped out of his boat he too was felled by a shot.

A week later, on November 27 1789, the Naimbana's deputies came to order Jimmy to desist, and for the moment he did so, albeit grudgingly. Savage agreed to sail away with the Pomona, but only after a general palaver had been arranged, which was supposed to settle grievances peacefully. Once the warship had set sail on December 3, however, King Jimmy was free to impose his notion of what a just settlement should be, and issued an ultimatum to the settlers to leave Granville Town within three days. Then he burned the village down to the ground.

· Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution by Simon Schama is published by BBC Books £20. To order a copy for £18 with free UK p&p, call the Guardian Book Service on 0870 836 0875, or go to www.guardian.co.uk/bookshop

Death on the Grain Coast:
In 1787 a small fleet set sail from London to Sierra Leone. For the hopeful black passengers and their white abolitionist benefactors, it was an extraordinary, utopian venture - to establish the first colony of freed slaves in Africa. In an exclusive extract from his new book, Simon Schama reveals how that dream of a new life turned into a nightmare,
G,
31.8.2005,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/aug/31/
race.bookextracts

Slavery

Cruellest trade

How a minority of abolitionists
won over the majority

Feb 3rd 2005

From The Economist print edition

DESPITE its gruelling subject matter, Adam Hochschild's study of colonial atrocities in the Belgian Congo of the late-19th century, “King Leopold's Ghost”, won praise and prizes. It was a story of official connivance at slavery and genocide, relieved by the presence of remarkable people who campaigned against it, notably Roger Casement and Edmund Morel. Now, in “Bury the Chains”, Mr Hochschild turns to an earlier and broader crusade for social justice, the movement to end the slave trade in the British empire. He spares us nothing of the awfulness of the Atlantic traffic and the cruelties that awaited slaves in the sugar plantations of the West Indies. But, as before, the book's true focus is the courage and moral clarity of the anti-slave campaigners. It is not an enjoyable read, but it is stirring and unforgettable.

Why an ancient practice, condemned neither by the New Testament nor by Christian tradition, was recognised as unacceptable by growing numbers of men and women in the second half of the 18th century has long puzzled historians. Mr Hochschild avoids big-picture answers and concentrates on the extraordinary characters involved.

His mainly British cast is a large one. It includes John Newton, a slave captain who found God, rejected the trade and wrote, among many others, the hymn “Amazing Grace”; Granville Sharp, a musician and sponsor of lawsuits to free slaves in England; Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave and author of an autobiography that became the “Uncle Tom's Cabin” of the movement; Thomas Clarkson, an Oxford prize-winning Latinist and deacon of the Church of England who rode the country preaching abolition; and William Wilberforce, the tiny, evangelical member of parliament with a booming voice who piloted a slave-trade abolition bill through the House of Commons in 1807-08.

The objects of their concern were by no means all helpless victims. Slave rebellions rocked the West Indies throughout the 1790s and beyond. After the French abandoned Santo Domingo to the British in 1793, the army's attempt to put down Toussaint L'Ouverture's slave revolt cost more soldiers than it lost in the American war of independence. At Westminster, even MPs who approved of slavery questioned its expense.

Mr Hochschild has a chilling explanation for why British abolitionists concentrated on the slave trade. Unlike in the United States, where the slave population grew by natural increase, it would have fast vanished in British possessions but for “imports”. The sugar fields and refineries of the West Indies were so harsh that slaves died young and many female slaves were too weak to bear children. End the trade, the abolitionists reasoned, and slavery itself would die.

They were right about the tactic, wrong about timing. It was not until 1833 that slavery was finally outlawed in the British empire, although that was 30 years before the United States and more than 50 before the Spanish colonies. Abolitionists were needed to the end.

It once was fashionable to explain the ending of slavery as an economic consequence, and to treat changing attitudes as secondary. Slavery, it was argued, was ceasing to be profitable. With industrialisation, investors in slave ships and plantations had better places to put their money. Reformers, in effect, were pushing at an open door. Even if the dates worked better—and there was money in slavery well into the 19th century—mechanical stories of this kind would explain at best lack of resistance, not anti-slavery pressure.

Opponents of the slave trade agitated not only for new laws. They badgered courts to look at old law in fresh light. “Though the Heavens May Fall” by Steven Wise, an American lawyer concerned with animal and human rights, neatly complements Mr Hochschild's book. It gives a detailed account of legal challenges to slavery in Britain (but not the colonies), which culminated in the Somerset trial in 1772. James Somerset was a slave who had absconded while in England and whose master went to court to repossess him. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, ruled in Somerset's favour, denying the master's claims on the ground that in England, by established legal principle, everyone was free. Though Mansfield, somewhat contradictorily, sought to deny wider scope to his ruling, Granville Sharp and other abolitionists hailed it as the test case they had wanted. Masters of some 15,000 slaves in Britain seemed to agree: unsure of their owners' rights, many made slaves sign lifelong “apprenticeships”.

Both authors remind us how a committed minority can persuade a majority to see what at first they cannot or do not want to see. In one of many vivid passages, Mr Hochschild describes a simple but electrifying piece of evidence that Clarkson placed before an enquiry into the slave trade by the Privy Council in 1788. It was a diagram of a slave ship, the Brookes, showing slaves tightly packed and chained in rows. For many people, this was perhaps the first time that the reality of the slave trade had impinged upon them: with their own eyes, they could see its cruelty.

Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels
in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves.
By Adam Hochschild.
Houghton Mifflin; 468 pages; $26.95.
Macmillan; £20

Though the Heavens May Fall:
The Landmark Trial
that Led to the End of Human Slavery.
By Steven Wise.
Da Capo Press; 282 pages; $25.
To be published in Britain
by The Harvill Press in April 2006

Source:
The Economist,
3.2.2005,
https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2005/02/03/
cruellest-trade