The Slave Trade

• The commercial expansion and prosperity were sustained in part by the booming slave trade. While slavery was illegal within Britain itself, by the 18th century, it was a fully established overseas industry dominated by Britain and the American colonies.
• Slaves came primarily from West Africa. Travelling on British ships in horrible conditions, they were taken to America and the Caribbean, where they were made to work on tobacco and sugar plantations.
• The Quakers set up the first formal anti-slavery groups in the late 1700s, and they petitioned Parliament to ban the practice. 
• William Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian and a member of Parliament, also played an important part in changing the law. Along with other abolitionists (people who supported the abolition of slavery), he succeeded in turning public opinion against the slave trade.
• In 1807, it became illegal to trade slaves in British ships or from British ports, and in 1833, the Emancipation Act abolished slavery throughout the British Empire.
• After 1833, 2 million Indian and Chinese workers were employed to replace the freed slaves.