(Read Part One of Britain and the Transatlantic Slave Trade HERE:
Having been disembarked in the New World, each shipment of African slaves were thought to have been taken to a holding area, typically a stockade, until such time as an auction was arranged for them to be sold. It was probably during this period that slaves were “seasoned” by the slave traders, acclimatised to the foreign climate and taught their place in the New World, often at the end of a whip or a cane. Commonly the slaves would have been displayed naked, or perhaps with sufficient clothing to save offending the sensitivities of those European ladies who might be present. In order to ensure that the potential workers were of good quality and not suffering from any sort of disease or physical weakness, they would have been carefully inspected by each of their would-be purchasers before the auction began. It has also been reported that most slaves were regularly ordered to prove their fitness, by running and jumping about, so that their future owners might check them for any unseen infirmity.
Having been disembarked in the New World, each shipment of African slaves were thought to have been taken to a holding area, typically a stockade, until such time as an auction was arranged for them to be sold. It was probably during this period that slaves were “seasoned” by the slave traders, acclimatised to the foreign climate and taught their place in the New World, often at the end of a whip or a cane. Commonly the slaves would have been displayed naked, or perhaps with sufficient clothing to save offending the sensitivities of those European ladies who might be present. In order to ensure that the potential workers were of good quality and not suffering from any sort of disease or physical weakness, they would have been carefully inspected by each of their would-be purchasers before the auction began. It has also been reported that most slaves were regularly ordered to prove their fitness, by running and jumping about, so that their future owners might check them for any unseen infirmity.
Even though entire families were often transported
across the Atlantic, little consideration was thought to have been given to
keeping friends and relatives together, although for some slave owners it was
said to have been common practice to deliberately separate companions, so that
the individual slave was thoroughly isolated from their family, language and
culture; and therefore more likely to adapt to his or her new circumstances.
This generally indifferent approach to maintaining the integrity of African
family units was thought to have been carried out, even where slaves had become
settled on a particular plantation and had raised new families together. Many
stories exist, of young slave children, fathers, and mothers being separated
from one another, either because the owner had died; and their estates were
subsequently divided up amongst their relatives, or simply because the owner
had received an offer, on one or another of the family members.
Even after having suffered the confusion and
indignity of the slave auction, where they were paraded before a crowd of
strangers and sold in the same way as a prize steer or horse might be, their
humiliation and bewilderment often continued. Having been purchased by an
owner, who had absolutely no regard for them as a human being, they were then
said to have been transported to their new plantation home, often walking tied
to the back of their new master’s horse or cart. Having reached the plantation
they would then have been put in the hands of the plantation’s head overseer or
one of his lieutenants, who would have been able to converse with the slave and
explain the routines of the plantation and their particular duties there. They
would have been given European clothing to wear, which was often replaced
annually, although slave children were generally not provided with any sort of
clothing by their owners, until such time as they became economically viable
for the owner, or if their parents could somehow acquire clothing from
elsewhere. It also seems likely that many of the slaves who would already be
carrying a brand on their skin, a reminder of their initial capture in Africa;
would be marked once again, this time in order to identify them if they ran
away from their new owners.
Slave accommodations on most plantations were
thought to have been generally poor quality affairs, often built of wood, mud,
or wattle and daub walls and covered by a rudimentary thatched roof. Most of
these quarters would have contained no furniture to speak of and in most cases
slaves were required to provide their own furniture and fittings, either by
making them themselves, or by bartering the food that they were allowed to grow
on their individual plots of land. Although most slaves were given a basic food
allowance each day, this had to be supplemented by the individual slaves
growing their own additional products, seeds for which, were often provided by
their owner and tended to on a Sunday, the one day a week that slaves would
generally be allowed to have off, largely due to the Christian ideal of
“resting on the seventh day”. Although there was little time given over to leisure
and relaxation, occasional Christian feasts throughout the year, sometimes
allowed slaves to rest and celebrate, with some more reasonable plantation
owners even providing additional rations to their slaves in order to mark the
event.
Day to day control of the slave workforce on most
plantations was thought to have been left in the hands of the owners head
overseer and his lieutenants, the slave drivers. These men were often slaves
themselves, but those who were willing to control and discipline their fellow
slaves, in order to make a better life for themselves. The head overseer or
plantation manager, was almost always a white European, who was employed by and
answerable to the plantation owner directly; and in his turn had complete
day-to-day control over the lives of the entire slave population, only
deferring to the owner in the most serious circumstances, such as when a slave
committed a serious offence or ran away from the plantation.
Even within the plantations slave community itself
though, a hierarchy was reported to have existed, with domestic slaves being
far more important and influential, than those that were employed on the
outside of the master’s house. This was largely due to the fact that they were
often in day-to-day contact with the slave owner and his family, which allowed
them to form relationships with the master himself, his wife and very often his
children, who sometimes regarded their slaves as members of the immediate
family and made little distinction between people that were black or those that
were white. Outside in the fields however, there were thought to have been even
further classification of slaves, with field slaves, those that worked at
harvesting the sugar cane or cotton crops, deemed to be the lowest of the low.
Above them, were the slaves who worked in the sugar factories, those who helped
process the raw sugar crop and turned it into molasses, the basic product that
helped to fund their master’s lifestyle. Because they possessed these specific
production skills, they were considered to be of a slightly higher value than
their field-working counterparts; and as such were only inferior to the artisan
slaves, who were reported to have been a much prized assets by most slave
owners.
Skilled wood and metal workers, these slaves
generally represented the best sort of investment by any slave owner, as they
could often be hired out to other farmers and plantation owners for a fee,
generating an additional income for the master, as well as saving him the cost
of having to employ expensive outside tradesmen. According to some historians,
these highly skilled slaves were often allowed to take on their own work and to
earn money from their own labour, offering some of them the opportunity to
eventually buy their freedom from their own individual slave owners.
From a British perspective, the first recorded
English explorer to acquire African slaves was thought to have been a man
called John Lok, who was said to have brought five black Africans back to
Britain in 1555. However, these captives were not thought to have been acquired
for sale, but rather to be taught English, so that they could then act as
interpreters for future English expeditions to Africa, where Lok and his fellow
traders were trying to source gold, ivory and pepper. Traders like John Lok
were said to have been joined by the likes of William Towerson, a British
trader who was reported to have traded relatively small numbers of African
slaves during his voyages of 1556 and 1557.
Interestingly though, Queen Elizabeth I, who was
said to have helped facilitate a number of these expeditions, does not appear
to have supported the taking and selling of African slaves as commodities,
publicly admonishing those that did and ordering that all “Negroes and
Blackamores” be arrested and sent out of her kingdom. The main reason for the
Queen’s actions was thought to be a growing concern amongst her own citizens of
places like London, about the increasing numbers of black people, both free and
enslaved who were being seen in and around the capital city. However, the
monarch was also known to have granted a Royal Charter to the African Company
of Merchant Adventurers in 1588, ostensibly allowing its merchants to trade for
anything but slaves, although in all likelihood, the trade in black African
slaves probably continued unabated, but without it actually being brought to
the Queens personal attention. The first English Sea Captain to actually engage
in the Transatlantic Slave trade proper was said to have been Sir John Hawkins,
who is credited with this dubious honour, having managed to make a profit from
the three voyages he undertook over a six year period. According to most
sources, Hawkins was said to have transported around twelve hundred African
slaves to the Caribbean, where he subsequently sold them to the Spanish
authorities there. The first of these voyages was said to have been marked by
the capture of a Portuguese slaving ship in 1562, which Hawkins caught
transporting some three hundred African slaves to the New World. Adopting the
view that this human cargo should be treated in exactly the same as any other
enemy prize, the English sea captain was thought to have completed the
transportation of the unfortunate captives across the Atlantic, where he
subsequently sold them to Spanish slave merchants in San Domingo in the
Americas.
Having purchased a mixed cargo of pearls, animal
hides, sugar and ginger, Hawkins was then reported to have returned to England
and having sold these goods there was said to have made a 60% profit on the
expedition. With such profits to be made from the trading of human cargoes,
Hawkins and his partners were said to have immediately organised a second
expedition to the African continent, which was known to have sailed in 1564.
However, rather than simply relying on good fortune to deliver him yet another
Portuguese slaving ship, this time Hawkins was said to have dealt directly with
the native African slave traders, trading them English goods for another four
hundred slaves. With his ships holds stocked with his new cargo of enslaved
Africans, Hawkins then set sail once again, selling his valuable cargo once
again to the Spanish authorities in the New World and returning home to England
with yet another cargo of highly prized goods that could be sold in English
cities. His third voyage was thought to have taken place in 1567 and despite
being intercepted by the Spanish, Hawkins still managed to transport a further
four hundred Africans to the New World and make a handsome profit from the
expedition. Following this trip, Hawkins was said to have written an account of
his exploits, promoting the potential profitability of the slave trade and no
doubt laying the basis for the extensive trade that was to follow.
According to most reports Britain was thought to
have participated in the Transatlantic Slave Trade for a period of some 245
years, from 1562 through to 1807, when the trade was finally abolished by the
English Parliament. During that two and a half centuries British slave ships
were said to have made several thousand Triangular Trade journeys and
transported anything up to three million Africans into slavery. Aside from the
early expeditions made by the likes of Towerson, Hawkins, etc. the vast
majority of these thousands of slaving journeys were made, principally to
supply the new and emerging British colonies in the New World, rather than the
general slave trade at large. Between 1560 and 1590, British ships were thought
to have played no significant role in the Triangular Trade, mainly because
Britain had no colonial interests in the New World to speak of and British
mariners were said to have concentrated on delivering goods across the
Atlantic, between Africa and the Americas. In 1618, the Guinea Company was
reported to have been founded with the permission of King James I, to trade for
Gold, Ivory and Pepper with the native tribes of Africa. However, the surplus
of captive slaves and the profits that could be made from trading them in the
New World quickly persuaded a large number of merchants to trade almost
exclusively in human cargoes, rather than the more usual commodities. Even the
king himself, was said to have recognised the potential wealth that might be
made in the trade, reportedly founding the Company of Adventurers trading into
Africa at that time. In the following year, the first waves of African slaves
were reported to have been sent to the British colony of Jamestown in Virginia,
to work on the burgeoning tobacco plantations that had been established by the
English settlers there. In 1631, James’ royal successor, Charles I was reported
to have granted a monopoly to the Guinea Company to trade in Africa, which
included the wholesale trafficking of black African slaves into the Americas.
In order to be perfectly clear regarding the status
of slaves during this period, it is perhaps worth remembering that slavery as
we understand it today was only one type of slave ownership, which saw Black
African’s bought, sold and treated as chattels, the same as any other common
possession. In addition to this outright and commonly accepted form of slavery,
other various forms of enforced service were thought to have existed at the
time, albeit in a much more restricted and legally enforceable format.
Indentured service for example, was thought to be a type of contractual
enslavement, often made willingly between one individual person and another, by
which the first individual sold his labour to the second party for a specific
period of time and under certain previously agreed terms.
So for example, an individual unable to pay for the
cost of a voyage to the New World might agree a contract with a ships master
that saw the individual carried to the Americas, provided that he agreed to
several years of indentured service to the Master. Typically, such contracts
provided for the ships master, to then transfer or sell these “services” to
other people, such as mine owners or plantation owners who were always looking
for new sources of labour. Significantly, such contracts of indentured service
did not always guarantee how the servant was to be treated by their master,
only that they should be given adequate housing, food and clothing for the
period of their service. The obvious difference though, between this form of
indentured service and outright chattel slavery was that the person had some
sort of legal entitlement and that once their term of service was completed
then they were free to get on with the rest of their lives, often with a small
sum of money, or parcel of land, with which they could build their own fortune.
Indentured servants though, black or white, were not always immune from harsh
treatment that might be meted out by their employer and contemporary reports
from the time suggest that many were treated extremely badly. Being punished
through physical beatings, starvation and temporary imprisonment were all said
to have been common occurrences on a number of New World plantations, which
undoubtedly accounted for a marked decline in the numbers of white settlers who
were prepared to undertake such employment.
Perhaps surprisingly, it was typically this form of
service that was offered to both black and white workers prior to the middle of
the 17th century; and it was only after that time that African
slaves began to be treated differently, eventually simply turning them into
chattels, the status which we commonly associate with the Transatlantic Slave
Trade and its victims. Despite the fact that many tens of thousands of Africans
were reportedly stolen away from their homelands in the first century of the
trade, it has been suggested that many thousands more were actually employed on
a similar basis to that of indentured service, where they worked for a specific
period of time, before being given their freedom by their owners, along with a
small plot of land where they might spend the rest of their lives. It was said
to be because of this having to regularly replenish their worker numbers that
first introduced the idea of depriving African workers of their basic human
rights and fundamentally altering their status from indentured servant to that
of personal chattels.
The main change in African workers status’ was
reported to have originated in the British colony of Barbados in 1661, when a
Slave Code was first introduced by the authorities on the island. This
legislation was said to have established that African slaves were chattels,
rather than free people and as such had no more rights than any other
possession. Although this piece of legislation claimed to be a guide for slave
owners, designed to help them with the “proper” treatment of their servants, in
reality it merely helped to make most slaves lives even more miserable and
harsh. By failing to specify how slaves should be fed and housed, or to specify
the conditions under which slaves might be employed, it simply gave some slave
owners free rein to treat their slaves in the most inhumane fashion. The Slave
Code deliberately denied African slave’s rights that they might have expected
under English Common Law, including the right to life, which then allowed some
owners to simply kill their slaves with virtual impunity. Unfortunately for
future generations of Africans that were subsequently shipped across the
Atlantic, these Slave Codes were said to have been adopted by the colonial
authorities throughout much of the Caribbean, South America and the Northern
States, essentially condemning millions of black slaves to live out their lives
as the possessions of other people, rather than as human beings in their own
right and with all of the rules pertaining to that status.
Many of these punitive Slave Codes were reported to
have been introduced into North America during the second half of the 17th
century, just a few years after they had first been issued by the British
administrators in Barbados. In 1662 for example the colonial authorities in
Virginia issued a statute that declared “all children born in this country
shall be held to be bond or free, according to the condition of its mother”.
In other words, if the child’s mother was a slave, then so were all those
children born to her while she was enslaved, even if those children were
fathered by a white man, either willingly or unwillingly. Two years later, the
legislature of Maryland declared that “any white woman, who married a slave,
would herself be deemed to be a slave, until such time as her husband died. In
addition to this, if any children were born to the woman whilst she was
enslaved, then these children too would be deemed to be slaves” In 1667
Virginia added to its earlier statute by declaring “any slave children,
regardless of whether or not they were baptised into the Christian Church
remained a slave”, which fundamentally swept away any earlier ideas or
spiritual teachings that it was sinful for one Christian to hold another in
bondage. The same Assembly then declared in 1682 “that all Negroes, Moors,
Mulattoes or Indians that had not been Christians at the time of their
enslavement or purchase, were deemed to be slaves and therefore might be used
as such”. In 1705 the Virginia legislature was reported to have clarified
this previous stature by announcing a rider to it, which stated that “such
slaves were to be held as Real Estate”, presumably as opposed to being held
as human beings in their own right. The Virginian Assembly also stated that “if
any slave resists his master and if when correcting the slave the master shall
happen to kill him, then the master shall be free of all punishment, as if such
an accident had never happened”. Clearly, this particular piece of legislation
later became a common defence for those owners who maliciously injured or even
killed their slaves, relatively safe in the knowledge that there was little
that the law would do to punish them, if they did happen to accidentally or
deliberately kill a slave.
Other states too began to adopt their own new laws
and regulations pertaining to the status and treatment of African slaves,
including the General Assembly of South Carolina, which declared in 1712 that “all
Negroes, Mulattoes or Indians that were bought, sold, or taken to be slaves,
were in fact slaves, as were their children”. At the same time the Assembly
also declared that “No master, mistress or overseer that has the care of any
Negro or Slave shall give their Negro or Slave leave to go out of their
plantation without a ticket. Any Negro or Slave found outside his master’s
plantation without a ticket shall be whipped”. Statutes such as this were
generally designed to limit and account for all slave movements within the
colony; and were undoubtedly the result of concerns expressed by the minority
white communities who felt threatened by the black African slaves who lived
amongst them. These concerns also led to much more repressive legislation being
enacted by a number of the southern colonies, including the likes of Louisiana,
which declared in 1724 that “any slave who strikes his master, mistress or
their children and causes a bruise or the shedding of blood on their face will
suffer capital punishment”.
Despite such discriminatory legislation however, it
would be wrong to believe that all blacks had absolutely no rights whatsoever,
because that is incorrect. Neither is it true to say that all black African
slaves were owned by white people, because that too is incorrect. Freed black
slaves were entitled to and often did buy, sell and own other African slaves,
who they employed on their own plantations and farms. A notable example,
although certainly not a rarity, was said to have been a freed black slave
called Anthony Johnson who was reportedly captured from his homeland of Angola
in around 1620. He was said to have been indentured to a white planter called
Bennett in 1621 and once his contract had been completed Anthony was reported
to have established his own farm, presumably with money or land that had been
provided by his former employer Mr Bennett. It was also reported that at the
same time that Johnson was freed by Bennett, the white slave owner also freed
Johnson’s wife, so that the two freed slaves could live and work on their own land
together. The reason that Johnson’s name and situation are so well known, is
largely due to the fact that Johnson then went to court to confirm his own
ownership of a black African slave called John Casor, who the court decided was
Anthony Johnson’s slave for life. It is also clear from the reports of the case
that Johnson owned a number of black slaves, who were all said to have been
imported directly from Africa.
As if to clarify and limit the numbers of slaves
that were then being held by black farmers and plantation owners, the Virginian
Assembly subsequently enacted statutes that expressly forbade any Negro or
Indian from owning any Christian, which presumably meant any white person.
However, these statutes did not prevent freed black farmers from buying,
selling or owning “any of their own nations”, in other words, other
black slaves. Unsurprisingly perhaps, most black slave holders were generally
thought to have been far more humane than their white counterparts, in their
treatment of Negro or Indian slaves and in some cases deliberately purchased
their friends and family members in order to save them from white ownership.
Often though, such purchases were thought to have been just a precursor to or
even a pretext for the black slave owner, to grant the purchased slave his or
her freedom, by allowing them to buy their liberty by working off the debt on
the black farmers lands. However, perhaps alarmed by these practices and the
increasing numbers of freed black slaves who were now inhabiting the various
white communities, a number of state legislatures were said to have introduced
statutes that specifically prevented freed Negroes from acquiring permanent
ownership of slaves, other than husbands, wives or children, unless they were
acquired by descent, that is, passed from one generation of the family to
another.
It is thought that large scale British colonisation
of the West Indies or Caribbean, only really began in the first half of the 17th
century, with the island of Barbados reportedly being settled by colonists in
1627. The following year, the island of Nevis was settled and four years later,
in 1632, Antigua and Montserrat were said to have received their first English
settlers. However, all of these islands were thought to have initially been
inhabited by a collection of small farmers, who were cultivating crops such as
tobacco and therefore had little need for large numbers of workers. It was only
in later years, when some of these same planters made the change to the much
more labour intensive sugar cane and cotton production that large numbers of
both white indentured and then African slave workers were said to have been
introduced into the various islands. Although the Portuguese were said to have
been the first people to introduce both the sugar beet and sugar cane to the
Americas in the 15th century, it was thought to have been the Dutch
who helped to make it such a popular crop throughout the 17th
century Caribbean, by persuading many tobacco and cotton farmers that there
were greater profits to be made from the planting, harvesting and processing of
sugar cane. In fact, they were said to have been so successful in changing
Caribbean planters minds regarding sugar that by the end of the 18th
century around 85% of the sugar consumed in Europe was said to have come from
the West Indies. However, it should also be noted that many tobacco and cotton
planters in the Caribbean were said to have made the switch to sugar
production, not only for the extra profits they could make, but also because of
the additional competition that they were beginning to face from the fast
emerging cotton and tobacco growers in the North American colonies.
By the latter half of the 17th century,
the numbers of white European indentured servants was reported to have declined
significantly, due in large part to improving living standards in Britain and
the increasingly harsh conditions that were said to have been prevalent on
these West Indies plantations. It was for these reasons that the numbers of
black Africans being forcibly imported into the islands, was said to have
increased so markedly during the same period. The sugar cane industry was
thought to have been particularly rigorous during the harvesting period, when
slaves were said to have had to work up to twenty hours a day, which inevitably
led to many living relatively short lives, often only between eight and ten
years, after which they had to be replaced by the plantation owners. Along with
other European held colonies, such as Antigua, Martinique and Guadalupe, the
British colony of Barbados was reported to have been one of the first major
slave holding societies throughout the Caribbean; and by the middle of the 18th
century both it and Jamaica were said to be two of the largest and most brutal
slave societies in the entire region.
As has been previously noted, the callous and often
inhumane treatment of African slaves meted out to them by the white European
plantation owners, managers and head overseers, was often thought to be a
symptom of a white Caribbean society that was operating on the very margins and
occasionally crossing the lines of generally accepted western civilised
behaviour. As in other far flung places, societies that operated at the very
fringes of the known world, were often extremely lawless places, where the idea
and practice of “might is right” tended to hold sway, over the lives of the
people that lived there. Long established legal controls and accepted social
conventions often only came to places like the Caribbean over time and in
response to the development of a traditional western society, which in places
like Barbados, Jamaica and the other British held Caribbean islands was
extremely hard to find. With a minimal white European population, controlling a
large enslaved black majority, usually through fear and abuse, it was never
likely that the communities of islands such as Barbados, Jamaica, etc could or
would ever be deemed to be conventional British societies and as a consequence
never developed the sort of legal and social protections that operated in
Britain itself. Rather, it appears that the British authorities in London chose
to hand overall control of the Caribbean, to military or civilian Governors,
who were very often complicit in producing these island societies, which were
purposely racist, inhumane and intolerant.
Ironically perhaps, it was thought to be these same
uncivilised attitudes and practices, which ultimately led to both the decline
and then the later abolition of the slave owning societies that had dominated
these British held islands since the beginning of the 17th century.
Because of their reputations for hardship and cruelty towards workers, planters
and farm owners in places such as Barbados, Jamaica, etc found it increasingly
difficult to attract new European settlers, preventing the more widespread
development of the islands economy. Added to this was the increasing influence
of and competition from other European Caribbean colonies, which not only
undermined British planter’s ability to source workers, thereby increasing such
costs, but also helped to reduce the potential profits that could be made by
these same planters and their associated London merchants. According to most
reputable sources, the number of African slaves employed on Britain’s Caribbean
possessions decreased significantly over time, ostensibly because of their
relatively short lives, which was undoubtedly a result of the extreme
conditions under which they laboured.
In normal circumstances and with more liberal
employment, it has been suggested that the British slave communities on these
islands would have regularly replenished themselves through usual reproductive
methods, but this does not appear to have been the case. Long hours, along with
arduous work, minimal food and regular acts of infanticide were all thought to
have contributed to a steadily falling birth rate amongst the slave community,
requiring more and more to be spent on replacing those Africans that almost
inevitably succumbed to the rigorous conditions under which they worked. Still
born babies were thought to have been common feature amongst slave women, as
were failed pregnancies and a high rate of infant mortality generally, all of
which were thought to have been caused by a combination of poor diet, extremely
hard work, long hours in the fields and often squalid living conditions.
Although numerous British ships were undoubtedly
involved in the enforced transportation of black Africans during the early part
of the 17th century, they were not thought to be one of the
principal slave trading nations at that particular time. Rather, it seems that
most of the African workforce supplied to Britain’s early Caribbean holdings,
were actually supplied by the Dutch, who had taken over large parts of the
Portuguese holdings on the African continent. According to some reporters, it
was these same Dutch interests that had helped to develop Britain’s evolving
sugar and cotton industries in the West Indies, having well established markets
for these new commodities on the European mainland, as well as in Britain
itself. However, in both 1651 and 1660 the English Parliament introduced
legislation to fundamentally reduce the involvement of other European nations
in supplying slaves to the emerging Caribbean colonies that Britain was
acquiring.
Two different Navigation Acts passed in those years
specifically forbade other European slave trading nations from supplying black
African labour to the new English colonies, thereby granting British ships a
monopoly on that particular area of trade. Bermuda was said to have first been
settled by the British in 1612, although the island was thought to have first
been discovered by a group of shipwrecked English sailors in around 1609. It
was also reported to have been a small number of these early British settlers
who left Bermuda to colonise a small group of islands that later became known
as the Bahamas. Prior to the widespread Western European exploration of the
Americas, the island of Bermuda was also said to have been home to an indigenous
people called the Arawak, but most of their population was thought to have been
removed by Spanish explorers in the 15th and 16th
centuries to work in their mines scattered throughout the region of Hispaniola,
where most of them were thought to have subsequently perished.
The first African slaves landed in the mainland
United States were thought to have been brought to Jamestown in Virginia in
1619, although demand for cheap labour was said to have escalated dramatically
during the next few years as Britain settled the West Indies and Barbados
during the first half of the 17th century. These first two hundred
enslaved Africans were thought to have been introduced into the colony by a
Dutch sea captain, who had captured a Portuguese slave ship crossing the
Atlantic and relieved it of its human cargo. Having seen his ship damaged by
storms, this Dutch trader was then said to have arrived in the Americas with a
damaged ship, but with a valuable cargo to sell, which is exactly what he did,
selling the slaves in order to have his ship repaired. Although the fate of the
two hundred African slaves in unknown, it has been suggested that most of them
were subsequently sold into indentured service, as opposed to outright slavery;
and were later freed, having served the usual terms of service for their new
American owners.
Barbados was known to have been captured in 1624-5,
with the first slaves being introduced within a couple of years; and St Kitts
was said to have received its first African slaves in 1626, the island having
first been settled in 1623. It has also been reported that a large number of
African slaves were brought to Charlestown in South Carolina in 1670, having
been transported there by their owners, a group of colonists who had originated
in Barbados and had brought their slaves as a labour force to help establish
their new plantations in mainland America. Although no large numbers of African
slaves were reported to have been brought into England at any time, small
numbers were said to have been transported back to Britain on a fairly ad-hoc
basis, most notably during the 17th century. In 1621 the first black
Africans were said to have been traded in Britain, when a William Bragge was
reported to have claimed monies from the East India Company for thirteen
Negroes or Indian people, although whether or not these people were actually
sold into slavery in Britain itself is unclear.
However, it would be wrong to believe that the
demand for slaves was entirely met from the forced importation of people from
Africa alone, as that was not the case. Between 1610 and 1660 an estimated
100,000 white servants, primarily from Britain and Ireland, were said to have
been transported both to the Caribbean and North America by the British
authorities, having been sentenced to varying terms of indentured service and
imprisonment. These numbers were thought to have largely comprised of Irish
nationalist rebels and Royalist supporters, who were transported to the New
World both by the English Crown and the Parliamentary authorities, before,
during and after the English Civil War. It was thought to be as a result of the
labours of both black and white servants that helped Barbados harvest its first
successful sugar crop in 1640, a cash crop on which much of the Caribbean would
come to rely in the future. According to some sources Oliver Cromwell’s
military campaigns in Ireland during the late 1640’s was reported to have
resulted in some 500,000 Irishmen being transported to the British held
Caribbean islands to serve out their sentences, with very few of them ever
making it back to their native homeland. It has also been suggested that in
addition to the hundreds of thousands of British, Irish and Scottish citizens
who were transported into penal servitude, there were thought to have been an
even greater number of British people who volunteered to undertake indentured
service in order to escape the poverty and religious persecutions that were
rife in Britain during the 16th, 17th and 18th
centuries. A number of other groups were thought to have been transported out
of Britain in order to serve as indentured servants on the plantations in the
New World, including convicted criminals, the nations indigent, as well as
those that were “pressed” into service by gangs of men, specifically employed
to shanghai unwitting and unwilling volunteers, who in most cases woke up to
find themselves aboard a ship destined for the Americas.
Although white European labour was thought to have
formed a significant part of the wider slave trade during the 16th
and 17th centuries, by the second half of the 18th
century the numbers of white European’s available for such work was thought to
have fallen quite dramatically, as civil and religious conflicts within Europe
reduced and standards of living improved. It is also likely that many of the
indentured servants and prisoners who had originally formed part of the
plantation labour force had subsequently been released from their service and
now became landholders and slave owners in their own rights, creating an even
greater demand for cheap labour. Even for those former indentured servants that
chose to remain in the New World as simple workers, with their enforced service
at an end they still expected to be treated better than the black Africans who
had taken their place.
It was possibly because of the higher wage demands
of the white Europeans, the increasing numbers of land owners and the
increasing demands for their products that led many plantation owners to look
for new sources of cheap manual labour. Rather than pay higher wages and have
to invest in improved accommodations for their labour force, who were generally
employed on legally enforceable contracts, most plantation owners chose to
exploit the human resources of places like Africa, buying slaves at a one-off
price and then owning them for ever more, or at least until they died. For the
plantation owners, a change in the legal status of the African slave’s own
children also made them a far more attractive long-term investment. Commonly a
child’s legal status would be determined by the father’s status, meaning that
children born out of a sexual relationship between a white European freeman and
a black slave woman, even in the case of rape, would have resulted in the child
being regarded as free. However, by altering the law to make the child’s status
dependent on the mother, then children born out of such relationships
automatically became enslaved themselves and thus increased the slave owners
own holdings. Sex crimes such as rape were thought to have been common events
on certain plantations, where white European males exploited their authority
over female slaves, safe in the knowledge that they were generally immune from
prosecution and in some cases had the added benefit of increasing the numbers
of slaves that they owned, without owing any sort of legal responsibility to
the resulting child.
Formal royal recognition of the African Slave
Trade, as opposed to the generally ad-hoc trading expeditions for gold, ivory,
spices, etc. was thought to date from April 1671, when the Royal Africa Company
was first established under a Royal Charter, granting a monopoly to a number of
London merchants, by the then English monarch King Charles II. This charter
authorised the company “to set to sea, as many ships, pinnacles and barks as
thought necessary, for the buying, selling, bartering and exchanging of, for or
with any gold or silver, Negroes, slaves, goods and wares”. Between 1672
and 1698, the period of the company’s actual trading monopoly; the Royal Africa
Company was reported to have shipped around 100,000 African slaves to Britain’s
Caribbean and North American colonies.
Many of these native people were thought to have
been transported from the forts and ports located along the coastlines of the
modern day African states of Senegambia and Angola. The previously noted Bunce
Island Slave Castle was thought to have been just one of these English built
forts, which were not only constructed as defensive redoubts, but also included
a holding area, for those slaves who had been captured throughout the region.
Built somewhere around 1670, this particular trading post was thought to have
operated right through to the turn of the 19th century, when the
abolition of the slave trade essentially made the fortress virtually obsolete.
The Royal Africa Company was said to have been almost entirely established to
deal in the purchase, transportation and selling of African slaves, solely for
the purpose of making a profit off the trade; and was thought to be an
enterprise almost entirely instituted and operated by members of the Stuart
family, who sat on the English throne during most the 17th century.
Originally known as the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading in Africa, the
business was said to have first been established in 1660, under a charter
granted by King Charles II, but generally led by his brother, the Duke of York,
who later ascended the throne as James II.
Despite the loss of the company’s trading monopoly
in 1698, the new English monarch’s William and Mary having ended it in that
year, the Royal African Company continued to trade in these same human cargoes
and by 1700 was reported to have shipped around 175,000 Africans to a number of
England’s overseas possessions. Some 25,000 of the slaves taken out of Africa
were said to have been destined for the Caribbean island of Barbados alone,
where most of them were said to have employed in the extremely arduous sugar
cane industry, often in the most inhumane circumstances. The enormous profits
generated by the slave trade were said to have been further increased by the
Royal African Company’s exploitation of the native gold deposits found within
the continent, much of which was thought to have found its way into the Royal
Mint. Interestingly, this African gold was reported to have been identified by
the image of an elephant being inscribed below the usual monarch’s head on the
individual coins; and is also thought to be the source for the now generally
defunct English guinea coin.
Although the withdrawal of the trade monopoly was
largely thought to have been as the result of political lobbying by influential
merchants in both Liverpool and Bristol, the fact that the Royal African
Company had been founded, headed and operated by a highly unpopular Roman
Catholic monarch, who had subsequently been forced to abandon his throne, was
undoubtedly a factor in the decision made by King William and Queen Mary.
Although the London merchants who were involved in the slave trade, no doubt
suffered as a result of the trade being opened up to rival ports, the trade
itself was said to have escalated dramatically after 1698, as both Liverpool
and Bristol hosted their own fleets of slave ships, which were destined for the
African continent. As even greater numbers of merchants became involved in the
trading of African slaves, to meet the increasing demand on the emerging
Caribbean and American plantations, so greater demands were thought to have
been made on the native population of Africa itself, forcing the slavers to
venture deeper and further into the African interior. For the most part, these
slaving expeditions would have been carried out by African tribesmen, rather
than white Europeans, who were generally susceptible to native diseases,
unfamiliar with the terrain and more likely to be viewed with suspicion and
distrust by the indigenous peoples of the African interior. Having conducted a
successful slaving campaign though, African captives would still be brought
back to the European held forts and ports on the west coast of the continent,
where they would be forcibly embarked on the ships destined to transport them
to foreign lands and an unknown future.
With the opening up of trade in 1698, the numbers
of English ships involved with the Transatlantic Slave Trade was said to have
significantly increased and by 1740 some thirty-odd slave ships were reported
to be operating from the English port of Liverpool, which was beginning to
dominate the trade in Britain. However, it has also been suggested by some
commentators that British ships were making many thousands of journeys every
year to trade slaves between Africa and the New World, which seems highly
unlikely given that each voyage often took the best part of a year to complete;
and would therefore have taken several hundred, or thousand of ships to achieve
that largely unsubstantiated target.
According to more reliable sources, between 1695
and 1807 the number of slave trading voyages made by British ships, from each
of the three main slaving ports in England was; 5300 from Liverpool, 3100 from
London and 2200 from Bristol. Totalling some 10,600 voyages, over a period of
112 years, which gives an average number of some ninety five voyages each year,
although Liverpool ships were said to have been making significantly more
journeys than their counterparts elsewhere. Liverpool’s growing slave trading
activity was indicated by the increase in the numbers of voyages being
undertaken by ships based at the port, with a reported fifteen ships sailing
out in the 1730’s, fifty ships in the 1750’s and over one hundred vessels in
the 1770’s. As a result, it has been suggested that Liverpool based ships
actually transported around one million African slaves to the New World during
the period that the Slave Trade operated, which based on the previously noted
5300 voyages from the port, would have actually worked out at some 208 slaves
per ship’s voyage; and is thought to be a more generally accurate figure for
the port as a whole.
Mersey based vessels such as the “Lively”, the
“Blessing” and the “Liverpool Merchant” were all thought to have been employed
in the transportation of black Africans across the Atlantic and Liverpool
merchants such as James Gregson, Thomas Golightly and James Penny, were thought
to be just three of those, who made their fortunes from the trade in human
cargoes. The last of these three men, James Penny, was said to have
subsequently achieved even greater fame, not only in his home city, but
throughout the world, when the Beatles wrote the song “Penny Lane”, although in
recent years there have been calls for the street to be renamed, ostensibly
because of Penny’s participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Another major English seaport that was thought to
have been involved with the Transatlantic Slave Trade, albeit in a much smaller
way, was the port of Plymouth, which was said to have played host to a
relatively small number of slave ships after 1698. Plymouth based ships such as
the “Michael” and the “Rochester” were reported to have carried a mixed cargo
of various commodities, such as tobacco and metal goods to trade with the
tribes of Africa. Both of these vessels were thought to have carried up to 280
slaves on each of their voyages to the New World, making handsome profits for both
their owners and the captains who commanded them. Other trade goods carried by
the ships, included drugs that could be used to treat common illnesses amongst
the African tribesmen, as well as seeds that might be used for planting and the
more common items such as guns, ammunition and textiles. Although the trade
through Plymouth was always thought to have been a fairly minimal part of the
city’s commercial business, by around 1750, only one ship, was said to be
operating out of the port, so any benefits gained by the Transatlantic Slave
Trade were thought to have been negligible.
It was said to be between 1740 and 1807 that the
Transatlantic Slave Trade was at its greatest height, with an estimated 60,000
Africans being brought into the Americas, for work on the expanding rice,
tobacco, sugar and cotton plantations that were the financial hub of the
Caribbean and European colonies. Even prior to this, Britain’s status as one of
the slave trades leading participants was thought to have been reinforced by
the Treaty of Utrecht, signed in 1713, between the governments of Great Britain
and Spain, which gave British slavers exclusive rights to supply African labour
to the Spanish colonies in the Americas for a period of 30 years. It was
largely as a result of such treaties; and the continuing development of the
British plantation system throughout the Americas that helped Great Britain
gain the unenviable reputation of being the biggest slave trading nation from
1730 onwards.
This position was thought to have been strengthened
after 1763, when Britain acquired even more Caribbean possessions, in the form
of Grenada, Tobago, St Vincent, Dominica, Cuba, Demerara and Trinidad, most of
which were already occupied by other European plantations; and that regularly
required new slave workers to replace those that had died. However, it should
also be pointed out that according to some reporters, between 1698 and 1775,
the North American colonies were also importing large numbers of African slaves
on their own account and on their own ships, directly from Africa, rather than
from the British West Indies, which had been the usual practice prior to that
time. Operating from ports such as New York, Boston and Newport, Rhode Island,
these entirely American slave ships, were reported to have carried slaves
directly from Africa to the American colonies, where they were auctioned off
and put to work on the burgeoning tobacco, rice and cotton plantations.
Although direct imports of slaves did not end in 1775, following the American
War of Independence, a number of new slave ports were reported to have sprung
up, with Newport, Boston and Charleston becoming the principal points of entry
for African slave labour. Interestingly however, after 1783, the newly
established United States of America was also said reported to have been
importing its own African slaves, largely through the use of its own slaving
ship, as opposed to the former colonial powers, such as England. It has also
been noted that by 1860 most of the four million black slaves, still in
enslavement within the US, had actually been born within the borders of that
country and were therefore American citizens rather than true native Africans.
Despite its pre-eminence amongst the by now well
established trade and the military might which Britain employed throughout its
emerging Empire, the slave trade was also thought to have presented many
problems to the British authorities, most notably through a series of Slave
Rebellions, which were said to have occurred on the main Caribbean island of
Jamaica. Between 1730 and 1739 a series of armed revolts, led by a “Cameroon”
leader called Cudjoe were reported to have erupted throughout the island,
leading to the deaths of a number of European plantation owners and English administrators.
As England found herself unable to fully suppress these revolts through
entirely military means, eventually a Peace Treaty was agreed between the two
sides, although it obviously failed to address many of the slaves basic
demands, as reoccurrences of the revolt were known to have taken place during
the 1760’s and again between 1794 and 1796.
Between 1655 and 1807 there were reported to have
been a total of around thirty slave revolts on the island of Jamaica alone; and
there were thought to have been numerous other slave uprisings and rebellions
throughout the Caribbean in succeeding years. The Maroons of Jamaica were a
colony of runaway slaves, who had either escaped from or been abandoned by,
their former Spanish masters prior to Britain seizing the island in 1655.
Rather than risk being enslaved by the new British occupiers, the Maroon’s
chose to establish their own free community in the mountains of Jamaica, under
the leadership of the self styled Captain Cudjoe, who was said to have been aided
in his work by a supposedly magical matriarch called Queen Nanny. Although
their mountain hideaway was said to have provided these freed slaves with most
of their basic needs, generally they were thought to have relied on guerrilla
raids against British plantations, to supply them everything else, including
new black recruits. Although the British authorities had initially been fairly
tolerant towards the Maroon’s, their increasing habit of attacking British
owned plantations, stealing foodstuffs, money and weapons, as well as
encouraging other slaves to abscond from their owners, eventually became too
much for the local authorities, who decided to put a stop to the Maroons once
and for all.
Unfortunately for those British military commanders
who were ordered to suppress the rebels, the Maroons were said to have been a
highly mobile guerrilla force, which was adept at disappearing into the islands
interior, only to reappear somewhere else, to begin attacking British interests
once the military had withdrawn. In fact, the rebels were thought to have been
so successful in their campaigns that British plantation owners, such as George
Manning and Colonel Thomas Brooks, continually lost property and more perhaps
importantly, workers to the Maroons over a period of years, leading them to
eventually abandon their plantations for fear of losing their own lives. Things
were said to have become so serious on the island that the British authorities
even employed native Indian trackers and regular British troops from Gibraltar,
to try and chase down the elusive rebels, but all to no avail. Finally though,
British political pragmatism was used to deal with the situation; and a Peace
Treaty was eventually agreed between the two sides in 1739. This Peace Treaty
was reported to have granted the Maroons land and financial incentives,
provided that they returned British owned runaway slaves to their masters,
which the rebels agreed to do, but only as and when they chose to do so. For
the British authorities though, their commonly employed tactic of divide and
conquer, had once again provided a temporary solution to their immediate
problems.
In the first few decades of the transatlantic
trade, African slaves were thought to have been treated fairly badly; and
following the introduction of the Barbados Slave Code in 1661, they were
thought to have been treated little better than animals. Because of their lowly
status, slaves who transgressed the rules and regulations of the individual
plantation, could expect to be punished severely, often by being whipped
mercilessly by one of the many overseers. For the slave owner, this form of
punishment was intended to reinforce his power over the slaves, inflict a
painful lesson on the individual transgressor, but without restricting their
ability to work on the plantation. Occasionally, an overzealous overseer might
inadvertently beat a slave to death, but from the owner’s perspective, this
simply reflected the loss of a possession, rather than representing any sort of
illegal act, as at the time, slaves had few if any legal rights. For more
serious infringements of the rules, such as absconding from the plantation,
other far more serious punishments might well have been meted out to the
individual offender.
It was not uncommon for runaway slaves to have part
of their limbs amputated by the owner, or to have their hamstrings deliberately
cut, in order to ensure that the slave did not run away for a second time. It
has also been reported that both starvation and solitary confinement, were
regularly used to teach erstwhile slaves a lesson, which along with the
implicit threat of being whipped or losing part of a limb, tended to keep each
plantation’s slaves in a permanent state of passive servility. However, as time
passed some plantation owners were said to have adopted a much more humane
attitude to the slaves that they owned, even regarding them as fellow human
beings, with inherent rights, feelings and aspirations. By the latter part of
the 18th century, many slaves were being regarded as trusted
retainers by their owners, who often took on the task of educating and advising
their slaves, so that their lives were as pleasant and as contented as they
could be, albeit within an enslaved environment. Unfortunately, despite the
best intentions of these much more forward thinking plantation owners,
resentment and antagonism still existed within many slave communities and
outbreaks of rebellion and violence were still thought to have been commonplace
during the period, requiring increasingly stronger measures to be taken by the
authorities, in order to suppress them.
The latter part of the 18th century, was
also thought to have marked the beginning of the Abolitionist movement within
both the United States and in Britain, an anti-slavery lobby which was thought
to have significant support amongst the Quakers communities of both countries.
In 1765, the first in a series of cases, were reported to have been brought
before the English Courts in order to challenge the legality of the Slave Trade
and in 1772 a landmark ruling in the English Courts, declared slavery in Great
Britain and Ireland illegal. Also, in 1774, the Quaker leader, John Wesley, was
said to have published an anti-slavery booklet that was widely distributed and
supported by the Society of Friends. However, the outbreak of the American War
of Independence in 1775 ensured that the subject of the Transatlantic Slave
Trade was largely forgotten over the next two years, as Great Britain and its
revolutionary colonists fought for control of the North American states. By
1787 and with control of the North American colonies settled, in favour of the
newly founded United States of America, the subject of slavery once again
became a subject for discussion within Britain. That same year was said to have
seen the establishment of a committee, dedicated to the ending of the Slave
Trade, which was founded in London, by a number of Britain’s leading social and
religious groups, including the Society of Friends, although it would be
another twenty years before any real change was made to the trade, when in
1789, the abolitionist movement did see improvements under the terms of the
Dolben Act. This particular piece of British legislation was said to have laid
down strict rules and regulations, pertaining to the transportation of African
slaves, stating how many could be carried on ships of a particular size and
helping to reduce some of the worst conditions which had been common prior to
that.
A related issue that stemmed from the conflict
between Britain and its rebellious American colonists was that of the thousands
of black Afro-American slaves who had chosen to support the Imperial cause
during the military dispute. Serving with both the British army and navy, most
of these former slaves were said to have chosen to take up arms against the
American settlers in return for the Crown’s guarantees for their future
freedom. Unfortunately for everyone on the British side, the American colonists
ultimately proved victorious in the American War of Independence and many of
these same black soldiers and sailors were left little option but to resettle
themselves elsewhere. Although some were reported to have made their way back
to Africa or stayed on to make new lives in the northern states of America, large
numbers were reported to have chosen to relocate themselves to other Caribbean
islands, or to mainland Britain. The great maritime ports of Britain were often
the final destinations for many of these former black soldiers and sailors,
including the likes of London, Liverpool and Bristol, although many of them
were reported to have failed to thrive in these largely urbanised areas. Since
1722, all black men and women entering Britain were deemed to be free persons,
following the landmark ruling made by Chief Justice Mansfield in the case of a
black fugitive slave called Somerset. Even though Mansfield’s legal opinion
failed to uphold the rights of the millions of black slaves, who were being
held on British owned plantations in the Caribbean, the judgement did clarify
the legal position of those former slaves that were resident within Britain’s
national borders and defined their rights as individuals under English law.
Although only dealing with the case of the slave known as Somerset, Mansfield’s
decision is also thought to have set a precedent that would ultimately lead to
the abolition of the slave trade some thirty-odd years later. Sadly, such legal
determinations failed to address many of the issues and prejudices that
continued to affect most black people who lived and worked in late 18th
century Britain. Although some managed to find both employment and
accommodations in the great urban centres, many more found that they were
largely unwelcome in some parts of the country and unable to find work, so were
subsequently forced to beg in the streets to keep themselves alive. Such
discrimination was also thought to have been the reason why so many immigrants,
including many of these former slaves found themselves forced into racial
ghettoes, where conditions were often not only appalling, but lives were short
and poverty was rife.
It was thought to be as a result of such obvious
black poverty that numbers of local benefactors, charitable foundations and
supporters for the abolition of slavery came together to form the Committee for
the Relief of the Black Poor. Dedicated to finding a long term solution to the
problems faced by the black poor in cities such as London, although the
committee dedicated themselves to feeding and accommodating many of the poorest
black citizens, its primary aim seems to have been to establish a colony, where
these former slaves might build a new life. Initially though, such proposals
were said to have met with very little support amongst members of Britain’s
black communities and it was only after a number of assurances had been given,
relating to their continued British citizenship and future security that a
number of these former black soldiers and sailors agreed to be relocated to the
region of modern day Sierre Leone. Taking with them a number of white women,
who were reported to be the wives and girlfriends of these black settlers, the
first contingent of London’s black poor were reported to have been transported
to the site of a former slave market in Sierre Leone in 1787.
Joining a group of freed black American slaves who
had established their own colony there some years earlier, initially everything
seemed to have gone very well for the new community. However, following a
series of disputes with the indigenous tribes of West Africa, the original
settlement was said to have been burned down in 1789, with a large number of
the black British settlers being killed as a result of the ongoing conflict. In
1792 a second wave of immigrants were brought to the area, but this time the
new settlement was thought to have been rebuilt in an entirely different, but
much more defendable position, with the surviving members of the first colony
forming part of this new community. Although this second British settlement
still faced considerable hardships and the risk of native attacks, it future
was said to have been virtually guaranteed after 1807, when the Royal Navy
units which were employed to suppress the Transatlantic Slave Trade, were
reported to have used the site of the British black settlement, later to be
called Freetown, as its main base of operations.
The British MP William Wilberforce was said to have
been one of the main advocates for ending the Transatlantic Slave Trade and was
reported to have dedicated much of his working life to see the trade
suppressed. It was in 1790 that Wilberforce first attempted to guide a bill for
the Abolition of Slavery through the English Parliament, but the bill was
subsequently defeated, largely it is said, because of the vested interests
within the House of Commons and the House of Lords, particularly those members
who were themselves Plantation and slave owners. Two years later, in 1792, the
British authorities were said to have first founded the colony of Sierre Leone
in Africa, principally for those black slaves who had fought alongside Britain
during the American War of Independence. Two years later, in 1794, France
became the first western European nation to formally abolish slavery within its
Empire, largely as a result of the revolutionary zeal that was said to have
been spreading throughout the country. However, slavery was also said to have
been reinstated by the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, although its
widespread reintroduction was thought to have been fairly limited, due to a lack
of support within the general populace and the inability of Napoleon to enforce
the law in a number of France’s overseas colonies. In 1804, the former Spanish
colony of St Domingue was said to have become the first independent black state
outside of continental Africa, having been established by the successors of the
original African slaves who had been brought there by the Spanish and continues
to exist today as the nation of Haiti.
Finally, beginning on 1st May 1807 the
British Parliament eventually passed the Abolition of Slavery Act into law,
thereby outlawing the trade in slaves and preventing British merchants and
their ships from participating in the enforced abduction, transportation and
sale of indigenous peoples from anywhere in the world. Initially the terms of
the Act was designed to abolish slavery within the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, as well as any of the colonies, islands, dominions, or
territories belonging to, or in his majesties possession, or occupation.
Although this particular piece of legislation did not outlaw slavery
completely, it was said to have helped to establish the basis for future
legislation, passed in 1833, which would finally put an end to slavery within
the British Empire and in much of the wider world. Having generally introduced
the idea of bringing an end to the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the British
authorities then began to take practical steps to physically enforce the new
legislation on the High Seas, through the use of Britain’s formidable Royal
Navy.
A dedicated naval taskforce, the West Africa
Squadron, was reported to have been established to patrol the traditional slave
trading routes along the west coast of Africa and use their military might to
stop and seize any suspected slave ships, arrest the captain, along with his
crew and free those slaves found aboard. Working within some of the most
perilous and disease ridden conditions, these Royal Navy crews were reported to
have suffered heavy losses whilst performing this particular duty, but
ultimately carried on with their mission, in helping to bring an end to the
gruesome international trade. According to some reports, the West Africa
Squadron was said to have stopped and seized several hundred ships that were
transporting captured Africans and in total were thought to have freed several
thousand slaves from captivity.
British sanctions against slave traders were said
to have been significantly increased after 1827, when the British Parliament
followed the lead of the US authorities, who in 1820, had made slave trading an
act of piracy, punishable by death. The Royal Navy was said to have been
particularly successful in the seizure of ships destined for the Portuguese
colony of Brazil, reportedly the largest importers of African slaves since the
trade had been inaugurated. Not only did the Royal Navy stop and search many
hundreds of ships, but was thought to have freed many thousands of imprisoned
Africans, who were destined to be enslaved throughout the Americas. It was also
reported that the British authorities tried to suppress the trade at source, by
persuading local tribal leaders within Africa itself, to desist from
participating in the trade, threatening them with sanctions if they failed to
comply. It has also been suggested that where incentives, or the threat of
trade sanctions, failed to stop individual tribesmen from engaging in the slave
trade, then the British authorities were not averse to using direct military
action to achieve their goals.
Even though most of the western slave trading
nations came to see the slave trade as a highly immoral and fundamentally
inhumane business practice, some of the most serious objections to its
cessation were thought to have come from the slave trading kingdoms of Africa
itself. At least one of these slave suppliers was reported to have complained
bitterly about the end of the trade, proclaiming publicly his outrage that a
trade “ordained by God” was being stopped by the British. Along with a number
of other tribal leaders, this chieftain had obviously become rich, through the
enslavement of his fellow Africans and now saw his principal source of income
being inextricably brought to an end. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was
said to have been the second piece of formal legislation passed by British
Parliament, designed to end the enforced enslavement of native peoples within
the Empire, although the law itself was thought to have only come into force in
the following year.
Perhaps because of the presence of significant
numbers of slave owners and traders within the legislature itself, the Act was
thought to have contained a number of legal “fudges”, which ultimately
prevented the widespread and immediate release of the hundreds of thousands of
African slaves still held on British owned plantations. Rather than simply
releasing them straight away, an “apprenticeship” clause was said to have been
inserted into the Act, forcing the former slaves to remain on their owners
plantation for a period of years, which caused a great of resentment amongst
those being held, who often had little trust in their British masters.
Consequently, the vast majority of the slaves being held on the British
Caribbean islands were not actually released until 1838. It was also in
response to the 1833 Act that the British Government tried to ensure compliance
on the part of the Caribbean plantation owners and slave holders, by appointing
local magistrates to oversee the treatment of slaves, most of whom had now
become apprentices to their former owners. Instructed to regulate local
conditions and the planter’s treatment of their workers, in reality these
magistrates tended to be largely ineffective and planters continued to treat
their former possessions much the same way as they had always done. With some
of these newly appointed officials either under the influence or even in the
pay of local landowners, most former slaves still found their lives as
miserable and harsh as before, although the customary and arbitrary levels of
ill-treatment imposed on workers was said to have been partially reduced,
simply because of the planters real fears of being prosecuted for seriously
injuring or even killing a worker.
Even after much of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
had been rigorously suppressed by the British and American Navies, this did not
end the trafficking of Africans within the region, as the Arab Slave Trade was
said to have continued for many years after the legislation had first come into
force. In fact, according to some sources, the trade was said to have expanded
substantially in the first few years after the Atlantic trade had been stopped,
largely because there was thought to be a surplus of black Africans being held
by the slave takers. However, this trade too, was reported to have eventually
been brought under control as a result of the increasing European colonisation
of Africa during the 19th century by a number of Western Europe’s
leading powers, who employed their own armed forces to suppress the trade.
Unfortunately for many hundreds of thousands of Africans, the trade was almost
impossible to eradicate completely and despite the best efforts of numerous
countries and agencies, human slavery is still thought to exist in Africa to
this present day. Significantly, the practice of human slavery is still thought
to be most common in those native states and countries, which are deemed to
have generally failed, where central government and law enforcement agencies
either do not exist, or are largely ineffective.
Although most modern historians and reporters unanimously
agree that the Transatlantic Slave Trade had a highly detrimental effect on the
African continent generally, the same sources tend to differ, when it comes to
how much effect the trade had on the subsequent development of those nations
that were the victims of slavery. Clearly for most of the Europeans, who were
directly involved in the practice, the slave trade proved to be a highly
lucrative business, but one that was incredibly dangerous for those involved in
the practical aspects of it, such as the agents and ships crews, who ventured
onto the unknown coasts of West Africa and traversed the Atlantic Ocean.
Even today, many experts are thought to remain
divided over the actual long term effects of the slave trade, particularly
those that were felt by the smaller and weaker African tribes, who saw many
millions of their youngest and most vital men and women snatched away by the
stronger slave traders of Africa. Some critics of the trade, point to the fact
that it was precisely the loss of these young, vibrant people, from the regions
“gene-pool” that has been the greatest loss to continental Africa, although
whether or not these losses have proved to be catastrophic to the African
continent as a whole, is still very much open to conjecture. The most serious
charge made by some critics of the Atlantic Slave Trade though, is that the
trade and those involved with it, are guilty of the wholesale destruction of
African culture, language and religion within certain areas of the continent,
acts that might be seen to represent early forms of both genocide and ethnic
cleansing by the western nations, which were involved in the trade.
However, any such claims can only ever be regarded
a being spurious at best, as history tends to indicate that those who were
involved with the slave trade at source, had no such deliberate aims in mind,
but were simply dedicated to making money out of the trade, rather than shaping
the social, economic or belief systems of the native tribes of Africa.
Finally, it is also worth noting that although
slavery per se is generally regarded as a historic practice and one that was
best consigned to the history books, in reality versions of such a barbaric
trade are still thought to exist throughout the world to this present day. In
virtually all parts of the globe, slavery exists in most forms, from outright
chattel slavery to bonded service, from domestic bondage to the sex slaves of
Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Even in Africa, the continent which
has undoubtedly suffered more than most from the depravities of wholesale human
enslavement, chattel, bonded, sex and child slavery still exist within various
supposedly modern societies, often with complicity of the law enforcement and
civil government agencies that are supposed to oppose them.
In places like Mauritania, Sudan, Benin and Ghana,
where poverty and unemployment are widespread, modern day enslavement is still
reported to exist and is still practiced by African traffickers, who
specifically target young children, who are much more easily transported
throughout the continent to be sold to those rich African families, who still
value the ownership of another human being. Often these children are sold by
their own parents, who wrongly believe that they are selling their child into a
better life, one where they will be fed, clothed and educated, but where, in
reality, they will often be subjected to domestic drudgery and sexual abuse.
Common destinations for these trafficked children are reported to include the
Ivory Coast and Gabon, although in all likelihood many can end up in any number
of countries, both inside and out of continental Africa.
It is also worth noting perhaps that in many of
Africa’s numerous post-colonial civil wars and disputes, tens of thousands of
children and young people have been forcibly abducted by one or other side of a
national dispute and used either as child soldiers or as sex slaves. A number
of these same conflicts have also thought to have been marked by levels of
barbarity that could hardly have been matched by any period or any person
related to the Transatlantic Slave Trade itself. Horrific tales of pregnant
women and their unborn babies being bayoneted to death, people’s limbs being
hacked off by machete’s, or whole villages being massacred, are just three of
the atrocious methods that have been employed by various militant forces, which
have vied for control of a particular region of Africa.
Likewise, thousands of indigenous Africans are
reported to have been forced to labour under the most intolerable conditions to
excavate diamonds, or other precious elements, which can then be traded for
more guns, or arms, as well as to simply enrich the African leaders of some or
other tribal rebellion. Some modern day African leaders tend to blame the great
colonial powers for such appalling incidents and the state of the continent
generally, pointing to the white colonisation and settlement of Africa, as well
as the much earlier Transatlantic Slave Trade, for modern day Africa’s many troubles.
The argument generally runs that the great colonial powers have prevented
African society from developing in a much more traditional manner, first by
forcibly removing so many of its youngest, fittest and most promising young
people through the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The second factor is said to have
been the imposition of colonial rule throughout much of Africa, by the great
European powers, including, Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium and of course
Britain.
These same leaders suggest that by depriving the
native peoples of Africa of their right to self determination and self
government, the great powers have produced societies, which are not only
entirely dependent, but one’s that are largely devoid of native traditions and
customs. However, as is reported in other chapters of this book, even though
most of the African continent was and has been colonised at one time or another
by the leading European states, for the most part, Africa has been under
African leadership for well over fifty years and yet much of the continent
continues to remain under the shadow of poverty, disease and perhaps more
significantly, inter-tribal violence, exactly the same sorts of circumstances
which had allowed the slave trade to exist in the first place.
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