For over four hundred years, from the mid-fifteenth century, millions of Africans were enslaved through the transatlantic slave trade. It is thought that over 12 million Africans were loaded onto slave ships and that over three million died.
Until the 19th century, slavery was considered an acceptable part of the economic system, enabling many countries in Europe and beyond to profit and prosper from the trade of goods produced by enslaved labour.
Two hundred years ago the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed in Parliament. William Wilberforce has received much of the credit for its abolition, but there are many unsung heroes and heroines whose voices have been lost in the mists of time.
William Wilberforce, born in 1759 into a wealthy family played a central in the abolition of slavery and was galvanised to do something about the trade in human lives.
Wilberforce was not a skilful legislative tactician and despite introducing an abolition bill every year and getting the House of Commons to vote to abolish the slave trade in 1792, he failed to get the support of the House of Lords so the bill was not passed until 1807.
Others who contributed to the abolition of slavery included Thomas Clarkson, who travelled around the country, generating petitions to parliament and Lord Grenville who got the measure through the House of Lords. James Stephen also urged Wilberforce to get parliament to ban British ships carrying slaves to the colonies of France and its allies.
Women also played a vital role despite their own lack of emancipation and political power. Instead, they used moral action as well as indirect action to cajole and influential friends and those in with political clout.
More than 300,000 people, for example, were encouraged to join a boycott of sugar grown on plantations which used slave labour.
The campaign worked and the Act was passed in 1807. It was enforced gradually, however and in 1824, Elizabeth Heyrick, was still working to oppose Wilberforce’s ‘gradual’ approach and published a pamphlet entitled 'Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition'. The call was taken up by women's societies in 1830 putting the Anti-Slavery Society in a position where they had to agree to the change.
Other abolitionists include Quobna Ottobah Cugoano , Anthony Benezet, Joseph Sturge , John Woolman, Mary Prince , James Stephen , James Ramsay , Toussaint L'Ouverture and many more
There were also many other nameless and faceless men women and children who we know nothing about who played a vital role in this movement.
It is by no coincidence that the 200th anniversary is the year which organisations such as
Anti Slavery have chosen to mark the phenomenon called modern slavery. They know that, despite the fact that abolition of slavery is an historical event, there are at least 12 million people around the world who live and work in
contemporary forms of slavery.
It’s these forms of modern slavery which have galvanised nameless and faceless men, women and children up and down this country 200 years after the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act to fight against the continuing trade in human lives.
More information on the abolition of slavery visit
The National Archives,
The BBC Website or the
Parliamentary WebsiteWhat ever you do to mark the anniversary, visit the exhibition at
Hackney Museum.
