Slavetrade and colonialism

The English Involvement

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

The Commerce Of Shame

• Millions of people in America and other countries, live in the condemnation not to learn ever elements about their descents, their ancestors past, their history and their racial origin. They are the descendants of slaves who lived in their skins the commerce of shame.
• The first man with African origin who went to America at 1492, was a member of Columbus crew. He was a free man from Spain. In 1494 at the second Columbus mission to America, at list two other black men were landing at the island Espaniol. When Spanish started to colonize Caribbean obliged the nativers, who called them "Idians", to do all the labor that Spanish disdained to do. Very soon most of Indian population died from the illnesses and the bad treatment and the colonists looked in Africa for exploitation. The colonists found more easier and cheaper to import Africans as slaves. Slavery was familiar to Spanish because they used African and Jews slaves and while their law aloud slavery, at the same time declared that slavery is "the most detestable thing".
• From the island Espaniol, slavery of African people spreaded to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru. From there to the rest of South America. In 1619 a Dutch merchant imported "twenty and something" African people, in chains, forcibly to work at Jamestown of Virginia inaugurated with that way the slavery in English colonies of north America.
• Merchants from Boston at 1644 chartered the first ship with the name "Rainbow" to transport systematically Africans to North America. The period between 1740 and 1810 constituted the prosperity of slavetrade because the number of slaves who transported each year in America approached the 60.000. The aims of slave-trade were to make money for the ship owners who, having bought slaves very cheaply in Africa, sold them again in the Americas as a large profit to slave owners, who would use them to do all the hard labor on farms and cotton plantations. Since making money was the only objective, no consideration was given to the Africans as human beings. Many slave owners treated slaves just like common animals, often whipping them and even tying them up.
• The right number of all African people who transported to America is not possible to be calculate. Today we can say that this number approached the 10 or 12 million. Lots of them died in African coasts waiting for the ships to go or drowned in the mindle of the trip to America. From the survivors most of them, 95%, went to Latin America. Brazil received the most of African people, about 5 million, Spanish colonies received 2 million and the rest of them went to English, France, Dutch and Danish colonies in Caribbean.
• In time, slave-traders developed preferences about the origin of slaves. "Akin" from Gold Coast was very agitator race, or "Ebo" from Nigeria was very teachable and slaves from Angola was very warlike. Some of the races of slaves who went to America were the "Bolof", "Mandinka", "Barbara" from Gambia, "Akin" and "Fetu" from Sierra Leone and Gold Coast, "Fo", "Ebo" and "Yuroba" from Togo, Nigeria and Cameroon, "Voudou", "Bango" from Congo and Angola. For the today's descendants of those slaves is not possible to find any element that can connect them with those races and those nations. The only successful try, but not 100% reliable for some people, was from the author of the book "Roots" Alex Haley, who through narration from the both sides of Atlantic connect his origin with the race of "Mandinka" from Gambia. For the most of people like Haley who want to know about their origin, that kind of connection with the past is a dream. The slave-traders didn't mention the slaves' nationality or their names to the people who bought them, that's why the genealogical research be came not possible.
• The women slaves had to be young and beautiful and they were often sexualy abused by the owners. The men slaves though, had to be strong and healthy.
• The price of a slave followed the law of offer and demand. In 1750 with the development of plantations in Brazil, India and America, the price of the slaves was very high. The slave dealers made so much money that soon Africans came to be known as "black gold". Slaves were sold in the Americans for about 150 dollars a head! Later when the slave-trade declared illegal Africans brought much higher price. The slaves didn't know about their future when the merchants bought them. The English merchant William Snalgave said : "these poor people, they think that we want to eat them"...
• The transportation of slaves to America was tragical. The ships were dramatically full and the slave ship captains were making less space for a slave in the ship then a man in the coffin... The ships captains could not resist cramming their slaves into every foot of space, even though they might lose up to 25% of the lot on the way across the ocean. For the conditions of transportation and the bad treatment to slaves from the owners, the English historian David Scald said: "The slave traders should be called Devils rather than Christian and that it is a heinous crime to buy them. The slave owning performed a crime against humanity because they simply knew better"... Only in the beginning of 1800 the conditions of slavery transportation were improved. Then the mortality of slaves was very low and from the 25% in 1700 dropped to 15% after the 1730 and only to 5% or 10% in early 1900.  
• Many of the slaves of course were tried to escape. Those who were tried to escape while the ships were still in African coasts had big chances of success. Those who didn't make it so, the trip to America was a trip with no way back... The slaves in America continued the fight for freedom. Despite the risks some slaves tried to undermine the slavery system. Some slaves chose to destroy properties or fake illness to avoid having the work. Some of them chose the way of rousing, in many places, like Espaniol, Mexico, Jamaica, Barbados Islands. The final big rousing in U.S.A. at 1831 had leader the black preach of slaves Nat Turner who was killed because his men killed 40 white people in north-eastern Virginia. The most successful rousing was from the slaves in Haiti, who finally won their freedom at 1804.
• As humans the slaves drew up elements from their African background and the relations among them to create a number of bright and characteristics civilizations. These civilizations helped them to maintain a sense of control and dignity and resist the humiliation of slavery. Today in modern societies of America these civilizations distinguished. Caribbean today with the black majority, characterised with the African way in religion, culture, language, music, dance and tradition. "Voudou" from Haiti has characterised from the professor of History of Art in Yale University, Robert Thompson, as "one attainment of symbolic intercource of people with African origin in the west globe: a vibrating composition of traditional religions from Kongo and Yurobal with influences from catholic church".
• The book "Flash of the Spirit" of the professor Robert Thompson, shows that five African civilizations--Yuroba, Kongo, Ejagham, Mande and Cross River--have informed and are reflected in the aesthetic, social and metaphysical traditions (music, sculpture, textiles, architecture, religion) of black people in the United States, Cuba, Haiti, Trinidad, Mexico, Brazil, and other places in the New World.
• Brazil today has the majority of people with African origin in America: has 70 million, witch is the half of the country's population. A visitor in north-eastern states of Brazil will agree with the missionary Antonio Veairra who said: "Brazil has the body of America and the soul of Africa". In Salvador, the capital of Brazilian state of Bia, most of the population have African origin and the visitor can see the old castle of slaves, the church with the black Saints where prayed and the houses where served. Food, art, music and dance have the collor of Africa.
• During the revolutionary war in America ( 1775-1783) many Americans turned against slavery. These Americans came to believe that slavery had no place in a nation that had been formed to protect the natural human rights. The first anti-slavery article was written in 1774 and published in March 81775 in the news paper "Pennsylvania journal and the weekly advertiser", and include the "Sentiments of Justice and Humanity". Few weeks later in April 14, 1775 the first anti-slavery society was formed in Philadelphia.
• In those years the abolitionist movement was formed. Slaves were suspicions of whites who told them about the "Underground Railroad" that would take them to the freedom. The "Underground Railroad" was composed of volunteers who would hide slaves traveling North to Canada. Slaves were hidden durring daylight hours at stops along the route and using the North Star, they moved in the dark to the next location 10 or 15 miles north. Until they reached Canada, they were never complete safe. If they were caught by a slave catcher or United States marshal, they would be returned to their master, who would probably make a great display of flogging them. It was very risky for whites to be involved, but it was even more dangerous for blacks who helped slaves to escape. Facing a death sentence if they were captured, it took great courage for them to help slaves to escape. Almost every year after 1800 the "Underground Railroad" assisted hundreds of slaves to escape to places in North.
• Slave trade abolished with law at 1807 in Caribbean, 1808 in U.S.A. and at 1850 in Brazil, yet slavery and aspects of the slave trade continued well into the 19th century and today slavery still exist in the children of Africa who live in North and South America and some times they are the majority of the population. Refuse to be defeated those people and their ancestors, they have participate with their sweat, their gins and their civilisations to the creation of societies. Their history is the hard history of the endless ability of human spirit to face the difficulties and survive.

©Kostas Christakis - January '99

Abolition heroes

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) For 18 years, from 1788, Wilberforce annually tabled anti-slavery motions in Parliament. In August 1833 - a month after his death - the
slave trade was abolished.


Oladuah Equiano (c.1745-c.1797) Born in the West African kingdom of Benin in 1745, Equiano was sold into slavery at the age of 11. He became a key member of the
Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the principal spokesman of Britain's black community.


Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) Sold into slavery, Sancho, the first African writer published in Britain, became a symbol of eloquence to the abolitionist movement. He was the first African to vote in a British election.

Notice: This article was for the largest part written by Kostas Christakis.
Thank you Kostas.