The British and slavery
A follow-up to a weekend conversation with Kelsey Piper, then a Stanford undergraduate organizing the local effective altruism group (and later a journalist at Vox), about the moral ledger of European colonialism. Alyssa wanted to push back on what she sees as a Cold War–era simplification — the view that “colonialism” is a near-synonym for evil — by laying out the historical record on the British empire’s long, expensive, and largely successful nineteenth-century campaign to abolish the slave trade worldwide.
Obviously, there were many atrocities committed by all the major European powers, but one of the legacies of the Cold War and Soviet propaganda has been a trail of bad history and (frankly) collective hysteria, where “colonialism” becomes the root of all evil, and any European person or idea or institution can be vilified as “colonialist”. Eg., in Zimbabwe, farmers of British descent have been forcibly expropriated and “encouraged” to emigrate through racist laws, state intimidation, and state-encouraged mob violence, and this was justified on grounds of “anti-colonialism” .
In particular, most people have now forgotten that it was British moral beliefs and British naval dominance during the 19th century that was responsible for ending slavery worldwide. In my view, that was incredibly impressive, considering how universal slavery was and how strong the economic incentives for it were. The British had much of the initial responsibility for plantation slavery in the Americas, through colonization of (what became) the American South and the Caribbean during the 17th and 18th centuries. But by the 1780s, the Quakers in England and (what is now) the northeast US started campaigning to reverse this, and this reversal snowballed and snowballed until it became a major part of British foreign policy.
Slavery within Britain itself had largely faded away by the 18th century, but was formally declared illegal by a judge in 1772: “The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law [statute], which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.” ( Somerset v Stewart ) The British were the first major European power to ban the international slave trade, in 1807: “The Bill was first introduced to Parliament in January 1807. It went to the House of Commons on 10 February 1807. On 23 February 1807, twenty years after he first began his crusade, Wilberforce and his team were rewarded with victory. By an overwhelming 283 votes for to 16 against, the motion to abolish the Atlantic slave trade was carried in the House of Commons.” ( Slave Trade Act 1807 ) Victory in the Napoleonic wars, which handed Britain overwhelming naval dominance, gave them the military weight to push the rest of Europe into outlawing trading in slaves: “Britain continued to press other nations to end their trade with a series of treaties: the 1810 Anglo-Portuguese treaty whereby Portugal agreed to restrict its trade into its colonies; the 1813 Anglo-Swedish treaty whereby Sweden outlawed its slave trade; the 1814 Treaty of Paris whereby France agreed with Britain that the slave trade was ‘repugnant to the principles of natural justice’ and agreed to abolish the slave trade in five years; the 1814 Anglo-Dutch treaty whereby the Netherlands outlawed its slave trade and the 1817 Anglo-Spanish treaty that Spain agreed to suppress its trade by 1820.” ( Slave Trade Act 1807 ) Before slavery itself was outlawed in the Americas, the British sent ships to West Africa to patrol off the coast and capture slavers, who could make huge profits by sneaking slaves out and selling them to plantations: “As the Royal Navy began interdicting slave ships, the slavers responded by abandoning their merchant ships in favour of faster ships, particularly Baltimore clippers. At first, the Royal Navy was often unable to catch these ships, however with the capture of slaver clippers and new faster ships from Britain the Royal Navy regained the upper hand. One of the most successful ships of the West Africa Squadron was one such captured ship, renamed HMS Black Joke. She successfully caught 11 slavers in one year.” ( West Africa Squadron ) Although Africa was mostly uncolonized at the time, the British would force African rulers into outlawing and restricting slavery. Slaves were rarely captured by Europeans themselves, and were more often purchased from coastal Africans, so this helped to cut back on the trade: “By the 1850s, around 25 vessels and 2,000 officers and men were on the station, supported by some ships from the small United States Navy, and nearly 1,000 ‘Kroomen’—experienced fishermen recruited as sailors from what is now the coast of modern Liberia. Service on the West Africa Squadron was a thankless and overwhelming task, full of risk and posing a constant threat to the health of the crews involved. Contending with pestilential swamps and violent encounters, the mortality rate was 55 per 1,000 men, compared with 10 for fleets in the Mediterranean or in home waters. Between 1807 and 1860, the Royal Navy’s Squadron seized approximately 1,600 ships involved in the slave trade and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard these vessels. Several hundred slaves a year were transported by the navy to the British colony of Sierra Leone, where they were made to serve as ‘apprentices’ in the colonial economy until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. Action was taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against ‘the usurping King of Lagos’, deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.” ( End of the Atlantic slave trade ) The modern West African country of Sierra Leone was founded by the British, as a colony for escaped slaves to return to Africa. The capital was, and still is, named “Freetown”: “Beginning in 1808 (following the abolition of the slave trade in 1807), British crews delivered thousands of formerly enslaved Africans to Freetown, after liberating them from illegal slave ships. Most of these Liberated Africans or ‘Recaptives’ chose to remain in Sierra Leone. Cut off from their various homelands and traditions, the Liberated Africans assimilated the Western styles of Settlers and Maroons. They built a flourishing trade in flowers and beads on the West African coast.” ( Sierra Leone — Early colonies ) The British outlawed slavery altogether in all of their colonies during the 1830s, with compensation paid in exchange for the “property”: “In all, the government paid out over 2 separate awards. The £20 million fund was 40% of the government’s total annual expenditure. In the Cape Colony, where farmers had loans estimated at a total £400,000 (£1.4 billion in 2013 pounds) secured against their slaves, the Dutch-language newspaper De Zuid-Afrikaan first campaigned against abolition and then for a compensation package to enable farmers to pay their debts.” ( Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ) In 1840, the World Anti-Slavery Convention was organized in London. Despite the name, the members were mostly British, with a few northern Americans: “Given the perceived need for a society to campaign for anti-slavery worldwide, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) was accordingly founded in 1839. One of its first significant deeds was to organize the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840: ‘The Convention assembled in London at the Free-mason’s Hall, on Friday, 12th June. Our expectations, we confess, were high, and the reality did not disappoint them.’ The preparations for this event had begun in 1839, when the Society circulated an advertisement inviting delegates to participate in the convention. Over 200 of the official delegates were British. The next largest group was the Americans, with around 50 delegates. Only small numbers of delegates from other nations attended.” ( World Anti-Slavery Convention ) When the American Civil War started in 1861, the Union blockade cut off supplies of southern cotton to Europe. Mills shut down, and many factory workers were left unemployed. The Confederacy planned to use this shortage as a diplomatic tool, to force Europe to recognize their new government. In 1862, to help forestall this, the factory workers of Manchester, England wrote a letter to President Lincoln, urging him to continue the fight against the South: “…the vast progress which you have made in the short space of twenty months fills us with hope that every stain on your freedom will shortly be removed, and that the erasure of that foul blot on civilisation and Christianity — chattel slavery — during your presidency, will cause the name of Abraham Lincoln to be honoured and revered by posterity. We are certain that such a glorious consummation will cement Great Britain and the United States in close and enduring regards.”
Lincoln replied: “…I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working people of Manchester and in all Europe are called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this Government which was built on the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of slavery, was likely to obtain the favour of Europe.
Through the action of disloyal citizens, the working people of Europe have been subjected to a severe trial for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances I cannot but regard your decisive utterances on the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity and freedom.”
With slavery in the Western Hemisphere largely abolished, the British turned their attention to abolishing the Arab slave trade, which at times might have actually been larger than the American one. The British started to exert influence over Zanzibar, which as an island off the coast of East Africa had been a central slave market: “Zanzibar was famous worldwide for its spices and its slaves. It was the Africa Great Lakes’ main slave-trading port, and in the 19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the slave markets of Zanzibar each year. (David Livingstone estimated that 80,000 Africans died each year before ever reaching the island.) Tippu Tip was the most notorious slaver, under several sultans, and also a trader, plantation owner and governor. Zanzibar’s spices attracted ships from as far away as the United States, which established a consulate in 1837. The United Kingdom’s early interest in Zanzibar was motivated by both commerce and the determination to end the slave trade. In 1822, the British signed the first of a series of treaties with Sultan Said to curb this trade, but not until 1876 was the sale of slaves finally prohibited.” ( History of Zanzibar ) When some of the locals resisted, Britain signed a treaty which essentially bribed the Germans to not interfere, and then forced puppet rulers into power who would support the anti-slavery campaign. A non-puppet sultan tried to take power, and the British responded by bringing up the artillery of the Royal Navy, blasting the palace to smithereens and killing hundreds of defenders. It was the shortest war in history, lasting 38 minutes. The British peacefully ruled Zanzibar for the next seventy years.
“Sultan Ali’s successor was Hamad bin Thuwaini, who became sultan in 1893. Hamad maintained a close relationship with the British but there was dissent among his subjects over the increasing British control over the country, the British-led army and the abolition of the valuable slave trade. In order to control this dissent, the British authorities authorised the sultan to raise a Zanzibari palace bodyguard of 1,000 men, but these troops were soon involved in clashes with the British-led police. Complaints about the bodyguards’ activities were also received from the European residents in Zanzibar Town.” ( Anglo-Zanzibar War ) Saudi Arabia, one of a handful of countries to never be colonized by Europeans, continued to have a large slave population until slavery was abolished under Western pressure in 1962 (that’s 1962, not 1862). From 1983 to 2005, the Saudi ambassador to the United States was Prince Bandar bin Sultan, nicknamed “Bandar Bush” for his close ties to George W. Bush. His father was a Saudi royal, but his mother was a teenage Ethiopian sex slave: “Bandar’s mother, Khiziran, was a slave from Ethiopia, and the concubine of his father, Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz. Both of Bandar’s parents were very young at the time of his birth; indeed, Khiziran was hardly sixteen, and was working as a maid in the palace when she first came in contact with the Prince. The royal family provided Khiziran with a generous monthly pension after Bandar was born, but told her to take her child and live with her own family.” ( Bandar bin Sultan ) “It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage of their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified, by the ever-illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children — those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own — being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.” — Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle