anti - slavery movement

• What is abolition

  The act or removing spmething and making it illegal
• What was the slave trade

  - Britain had been involved since 15th century

  - picked crops of cotton and sugar plantations

  - collected from west coast of Africa where many tribal leaders were happy to sell people in exchange for cloth, guns, glass and iron
• Conditions of an enslaved person

  - 2 million slaves died along middle passage

  - women, men and children crammed on top of each other

  - 113 died every passage

  - treated like animals in auctions and bedded on

  - average life expectancy was 27
• What encouraged the abolition movement

  - comparison to working conditions in factories

  - workers referred to as 'white slavers'

  - slavery was not Christian
• Who was William wilberforce?

  - spoke for abolition in parliament and presented a petition in 1797 but took 20 years to pass

  - motivated by Christianity

  - created anti-slavery society
• Who was Olaudah Equiano?


  - former slave who wrote widely read book about his life

  - prominent abolitionist
• Who was Granville Sharp?


  - civil servant who argued in law courts to free slaves and clarify law on slave ownership

  - bough attention to slave ship zong, where 133 slaves were thrown overboard
• Thomas clarkson


  - publicist who collected information and produced pamphlets and drawing about conditions on slave ships
• What method was used by the anti slavery society

  Widely read publishing media - newspaper cartoons, pamphlets, books
• Anti abolitionists

  - many MPs and lords made money from slavery

  - if slavery ended plantation owners would have to pay workers

  - created propaganda supporting the view black people were inferior

  - Britain had a responsibility to keep enslaved block people locked up ('white mans burden
• The maroons

  - Jamaica 1655

  - escaped plantations and fled to mountains and celebrated native culture

  - British new this would cause rebellion so negotiated
• St Dominique

  - French colony rebelled 2 years after French Revolution

  - killed white slave owners and burned sugar crops

  - tousant louveture led st Dominique to abolishment in 1804

  - island declared independent and renamed Haiti
• Economic factors of abolition movement

  - less to do with social conscience but because of decline in economic benefits

  - sugar could be cheaply imported from Brazil and Cuba
• Was the abolition movement successful?

  - abolition act in 1837 only freed those under 6, others freed in 1841

  - wilberforce criticised staged abolition and argued slaves had to be trained to live a normal life

  - slaves were smacked if they refused to live in old quarters

  - smuggling was common and conditions weren't monitored

  - led to a decline in living conditions as they competed for wages
• When was abolition


  1807- trading of slaves banned in British empire

  1837 - became illegal to own slaves