Britain and the Slave Trade
Britain and the Slave Trade: A Short Lecture
In this UTAS Open Day public lecture, Dr Anthony Page discusses the importance of studying history and then, in a short example lecture, he explores Britain’s role in the Atlantic slave trade and the end of the slave trade. This lecture is presented by the UTAS Faculty of Arts.
Text from slideshow:
Why study history?
- Skills – critical thinking and communication
- Beings in time – empathy and understanding
- Change, continuity and comparison
The slave trade
- More than 12 million from Africa to Americas
- 18th century = growth of British Empire
- British ships carried approx 3.4m. (Portugal approx. 5m)
- ‘Consumer revolution’ – sugar, coffee, tobacco etc.
- British ‘sweet tooth’
The Enlightenment
- 18th century: ‘Age of Reason’
- Liberty and natural rights + Science and categorisation > ‘natural order’
- Ambivalent on slavery
Abolition of the slave trade
- 1787: Abolition Society founded in London by Thomas Clarkson and Quakers
- 1792: House of Commons voted to abolish slave trade – blocked by House of Lords
- 1790s: French Revolution and wars
- 1807: British parliament abolished their slave trade
Why did the British abolish their slave trade?
- Evangelical Christianity?
- Reaction against Enlightenment rationalism
- Slavery is sinful
- William Wilberforce
Economic interests?
- Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944)
- Industrial Revolution & free trade ideology
- No > slavery remained profitable
- ‘Unfree labour’ remained important in 19th century
Slave resistance?
- Many forms
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- Haiti – African republic
- Why did other empires not develop strong and successful antislavery movements?
- British ex-slaves such as Equiano and Cugoano
‘Modern Britain’
- Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery (1987)
- urbanisation > culture of humanitarianism and individual rights
- J.R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery (1998)
- Christopher Brown, Moral Capital (2006) – impact of American Revolution
- ‘Reformation of manners’ and
- ‘British Liberty’
Abolition and religion revisited …
- Britain not secular – Evangelical + ‘Enlightened Christianity’
- Tension between abolitionism and other interests
- Anthony Page, ‘"A Species of Slavery": Richard Price’s Rational Dissent and Antislavery’, Slavery and Abolition, 32:1 (2011), pp. 53-73.
- Anthony Page, ‘Rational Dissent, Enlightenment and Abolition of the British Slave Trade’, The Historical Journal, 54 (2011), pp. 741-72.
- Comparison with us debating live animal export or pricing pollution
