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The English Involvement in the
Slave Trade Slavery is a term most of us are familiar with. Most people are aware of the part America had to play in the business of buying and selling black people into forced labour, but the United Kingdom also had their part in this twisted scheme that yielded an enormous amount of money for certain people in the aristocracy and otherwise. Way back in the day England was well known for it's ships and the advantages this gave them in terms of defending their seas and also transportation. The two main commercial activities that gave England their maritime advantage were sugar and slaves. The two factors actually worked together very closely as slaves were needed to harvest the sugar crops in what the British Empire called the 'New World'. Ships would leave Britain with cargo of cheap manufactured goods from Liverpool and Bristol and travel to West Africa where they would be exchanged for slaves. The slaves were then taken to the Caribbean where they were exchanged for sugar that was then brought back to Europe and sold for a very large profit. The huge monetary gain made sure people were not overly concerned with the humanitarian aspect of the slave trade or even the ethical issues. They were making money that would enable them to buy more ships and as such give Britain the advantage of being the world's most forceful naval power. 1562 saw the first English slave trader, John Hawkins, leave England with 100 men and 3 ships. He captured 300 slaves in Sierra Leone and sold them in Hispaniola. He was a resident of Deptford, South-East London and on his return with his ships filled with goods such as hides, ginger and sugar, he found a new business partner in Queen Elizabeth I. By 1567, Hawkins was onto his 3rd slaving expedition and this time he took along Sir Francis Drake. He was yet another pioneer of the slave trade and also a Deptford resident. His family were well connected with slave trading as was Sir Walter Raleigh. The English Royal family had a great connection with slavery starting from Elizabeth I. The Duke of York used to get his initials, 'DY', branded onto the left buttock or breast of each of the 3000 slaves who were his. He shipped them out to the Caribbean. In 1624 the English colonised Barbados and St. Kitts and approximately 23 years later, the first sugar from Barbados was sent to England. England captured Jamaica from the Spanish and the slave trade had yet another place in which to thrive. An estimate of the population of slaves in the British Caribbean during the period of 1776 to 1848 is approximately 428,000 out of a population of 500,000. As most people know, the British are a very particular set of people and as such they decided to create a company that would control the British slave trade. This company was called the Royal African Company and was established in 1672. Between the years of 1680 and 1686, the Royal African Company transported an average of 5,000 slaves per year. They received annual grants from parliament totalling around £90,000 overall and even had King Charles II as a shareholder, maintaining the Royal involvement with slavery. Soon enough private traders wanted in on the lucrative trading of 'human cattle' and in 1698 parliament approved private traders to participate in the slave trade on payment of 10% duty on English goods exported to Africa. The Royal African Company was abolished at this time. Business started booming and in 1700 Liverpool's first slave ship called the 'Liverpool Merchant' transported 220 slaves to Barbados and sold them for £4,239 (pounds sterling). That's less than £20 per slave. Liverpool had 8 major slave traders who together could transport 25,820. That worked out around 50-550 per ship. In 1733 England signed a treaty with Spain called the 'Treaty of Utrecht'. This treaty basically granted England monopoly of the Spanish slave trade for 30 years. England promised at least 144,000 slaves at the rate of 4,800 slaves per year. It wasn't until 1772 that Lord Mansfield came to a decision and proclaimed it illegal to remove any person forcibly from England. The slave trade still continued due to the fact that so many of the major political players in Liverpool and such were heavily involved with slavery. One prime example was Richard Pennant who was Liverpool's MP. He owned 8,000 acres of sugar plantations and over 600 slaves in Jamaica. He was in office between 1777 and 1780 then re-elected in 1784 to 1790. Three out of 41 councillors in Liverpool were slave ship owners or major investors in the slave trade and during the years of 1787 and 1807, all 20 mayors who held office in Liverpool financed or owned slave ships. In 1808, over 100 years since the British Empire became involved in slave trading, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was abolished within the Empire and also in the United States. It wasn't until 1827 however that Britain declares the slave trade as piracy making it punishable by death. In 1833 slavery was abolished throughout Europe and the Emancipation Act went through British parliament. It still took another 11 years until 1838 before slavery was fully abolished within the British Empire. Sadly the unequal system continued with the first indicator being an award of some £20,000,000 (20 million pounds) to the planters by way of compensation and nothing was awarded to any former slaves. The way the system then started to work made things even more difficult for former slaves. They were forced to continue working in arduous conditions on the plantations due to the system introducing high taxes on smallholdings, high rates for licenses or small traders and contracts to shackle the labourers to the large plantations. In 1844 the shortage of labour led to the introduction of indentured labour from another of Britain's colonies, India. The Indian labourers made conditions worse for former slaves as they undermined any attempts to achieve improve conditions through strikes. By 1917 145,000 Indians had been transported to Trinidad and 238,000 to Guyana. Jamaica was also affected with around 39,000 immigrants. The only island not affected was Barbados. England's involvement in the slave trade can be seen to this very day in that the National Gallery in London was funded on it as was Lloyd's of London and the Bank of England. During the 17th and 18th centuries, involvement in the slave trade was actually seen to be a respectable occupation! Many of the London merchants who were taking almost 3/4 of the sugar imported from the West Indies lived in South London in Blackheath. Suffice to say we're living in a country built on money gained through the sale of our ancestors. They laboured on plantations all over the Caribbean and their toil funded many of the banks we put our hard-earned money into today. Don't be fooled into thinking the mental enslavement of black people is over. Many of us know it isn't. Geraint Smith said 'Slavery is at the heart of the wealth of London' (1993). Let's not forget that fact. Sources: http://www.britishempire.co.uk/ http://212.212.12.5/arm/CronOfColonialism.html http://www.qub.ac.uk/english/imperial/carib/slavery.htm http://www.flamemag.dircon.co.uk/slavery_in_london.html |
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