The beginnings
The British transatlantic slave trade operated in a organised way for approximately 150 years – from 1660, until its abolition by an act of Parliament in 1807. During that period the British transported around 2.6 million natives of Africa across the Atlantic; to sell to plantation owners in the Caribbean and southern parts of North America (1). This post reviews its beginnings, the involvement of the British – in particular the Royal African Company – and early reactions to its abolition.
The Atlantic slave trade began in West Africa when the Portuguese discovered and exploited the coast in the fifteenth century. The trade accelerated with the discovery of the New World later in the same century and grew further following the union of Spain and Portugal in 1580 under Philip II, when Portugal supplied slaves to the Spanish colonies in South America (2).
The English probably started trading with Africa in the 1550s (3). By 1555, the early (English) Guinea adventurers were primarily looking for gold. In 1562, John Hawkins is known to have bought Africans from Sierra Leone to sell in Spanish Hispaniola (in the Caribbean) (4). In 1567, Hawkins took part in a native war in Sierra Leone, for which he accepted payment in captured Africans. After Hawkins’ adventures, English interest in the slave trade ‘languished for nearly three-quarters of a century’ (5). Without tropical colonies of her own, there was little incentive for Britain to continue trading in slaves (6).
The discovery of the New World, by Europeans in the mid-to later sixteenth century, was soon followed by the ‘expropriation and annihilation of the natives’. In the Caribbean they were ‘too poor to hold out any prospect of trade, too fierce to accept the status of serfs, and too backward to resist conquest’ (7). Conversely, West Africa could be ‘forged into a market’ for European goods and commodities traded for the African staples of gold, slaves and ivory (8). By so doing, gainful exploitation was achieved without war or conquest – which, anyway, would have been impossible since European influence extended little beyond the coast (due to the high mortality from tropical diseases).
By the beginning of the seventeenth century, ‘a rough modus vivendi was reached between white and black’. For the next 250 years, among the European trading powers; the Portuguese gave way to French, who in turn gave way to the Dutch and finally the English – but the scene itself remained substantially the same (9).
British interest grows
In 1618 ‘The Company of Adventurers of London trading to Guinea and Benin’ was formed. It was the first explicitly incorporated English company in the African trade and granted a royal monopoly. By 1631 it had established the first known English settlement at Kormantin (in modern day Ghana) (10). Coasts in West Africa were named from the commodities that could be sourced, introducing the Gold, Ivory, Slave, Gum and Grain Coasts – but most commodities were obtainable at many points between Senegal and Angola (11).
In 1640, a dramatic transformation was set in train by the arrival of sugar-cane. First in Barbados, (conquered from the Portuguese in 1625), then to the Leeward Islands and Jamaica (conquered from the Spanish in 1655) and to Antigua. Little more than 20 years since its first introduction into English Colonies ‘sugar had overtaken tobacco and accounted for nearly half, by value, of London’s imports from the plantations’ (12).
Plantation owners had originally favoured English bound workers. This was a system of husbandry that enabled potential English emigrants to pay for their passage, ‘selling their labour for a fixed term of usually four years’. Zahedieh relates the shocking methods used to ‘entice prospects to sign-up for servitude in the Caribbean’, using a mixture of promises, drink and violence to ‘spirit the naïve or desperate into agreeing to service’. Many would experience ‘harsh treatment and short lifespans’, especially in the Caribbean (13).
The English Civil Wars (1640-45) had interrupted the supply of white servants and this, along with the higher costs of English bound workers after the Restoration in 1660, encouraged a shift towards black labour (14). Prisoners made up a large, if not the greater, part of the slaves sold to the Europeans (15).
By 1655, Britain’s colonial possessions in West Africa and the West Indies, meant that trade was favourable for her when compared to other European nations. In the Caribbean, Britain owned the so called ‘mother of the West Indian sugar islands’; Barbados. In contrast, neither the Portuguese nor the Dutch owned sugar-producing islands in the Caribbean; France was embroiled into ‘fighting the natives on Martinique and Guadeloupe for twenty years’ and Spain had ‘neglected to concentrate on sugar growing until the eighteenth century’ (16). Trading rivalry reached its climax when West Africa became a theatre of war between English and Dutch from 1664 to 1667.
From about 1655, the value of sugar always exceeded that of all other colonial products. An ‘unceasing cry’ for Africans would be made by British plantation owners in Barbados, St Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat and Antigua. Once Jamaica entered production (1655) it drove even more traffic in slaves and the growing of tobacco in North America added yet more demand (17).
Crews would approach the African coast with trepidation, knowing that hundreds of white slaves were held in North Africa (18). But these fears were nothing when compared with the plight of slaves en route to the New World. An eighteenth-century committee concluded the death rate on the ‘middle passage’ for the years 1680 to 1688 to be 23 per cent. To mitigate death and disease, Captain John Doegood advised to ‘wash the decks with vinegar and divert the blacks as much as you can with some sorts of music and play’ (19). Rawley concurs with the losses, estimating deaths on the sea passage at nearly 25% (20).
The growth of the British Atlantic slave trade was enabled by a strong national government that promoted trade, a large merchant class which ‘wielded influence in public affairs’ and England had industrial products to export (21). It was a ‘mercantilist’s ideal’: providing ‘labour for the plantations and profitable manufacturing employment at home’ (22). And as the ‘secrets of sugar cultivation’ were learned, the costs and risks of sugar planting fell along with slaves prices, owing to greater supply and efficiency (slave prices reached a low point in the 1680s) (23). From a negligible level in 1650, English slave exports from Africa rose to around 9000 per year by 1700 – to reach 45000 per year by 1800 (24).
The Royal African Company
King Charles II, keen to bolster the Crown’s finances from the expanding colonial trade, issued a large number of licences and patents soon after the Restoration in 1660. Among these, in December 1660, was a Crown chartered monopoly to The Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa. Its main objective was the search for gold, although ‘the whole venture was more reminiscent of an aristocratic treasure hunt than of an organised business’ (25). Royal interest in the venture could have been stimulated by Prince Rupert, who had visited the Gambia in 1652.
The original company failed, mainly after violent clashes with the Dutch (26). But now, better informed on the trade and with greater capital, King Charles II issued a new charter in August 1663 to The Company of Royal Adventurers of England Relating to Trade in Africa, with the duke of York as its head. The company enjoyed a monopoly on the west coast of Africa; from Cape Blanc (southern Morocco) to the Cape of Good Hope. After seven months of trading it had taken 3075 natives to Barbados (27) and had grown from seven establishments in 1663 to eighteen by 1665 with a network of agents across the Caribbean (28).
The presence of the Company’s factories (i.e., forts) on the coast was accepted by the natives. Davies notes that ‘at any time the native population could have taken any but the strongest forts’. That they did not is an indication ‘less of white strength but the advantages which the Africans themselves thought they derived from the presence of European traders’ (29). If there was any desertion, the company could count on help from local chiefs and kings to round up the deserters – whose livelihood depended on the smooth operation of the slave trade (30).
As the dominant English player, the company had made itself unpopular (with other non-chartered English companies) also trying to cash-in on the trade in natives to the Spanish colonies. It also had great difficulty in getting payment for slaves supplied on credit to plantation owners (31). And by 1667, the Dutch war of 1665-67 had ‘virtually extinguished trade’ (32).
In 1672, the company was re-organised again, surrendering its charter for a new organisation; The Royal African Company (RAC). The RAC was established, to buy and sell ‘gold, silver, slaves and other commodities’. Once again, royalty, aristocracy and even John Locke, a philosopher of liberty and equality, were subscribers (33). ‘Guinea’ coins were minted in recognition of the enterprise – a currency that remained a ‘money of account’ until after decimalisation in 1971 (34). Simmons notes that the granting of parliamentary subsidies for the building and maintenance of forts and trading posts ‘mirrored the involvement, if not direct participation, of all classes of British society’ (35). In its first two years of operation it despatched seven ships, growing to 249 ships throughout the 1680’s (36).
The company mainly acquired its slaves east of the River Volta (in Ghana) and the Bight of Benin and distributed them among ‘Barbados, Jamaica, Nevis, St Christopher’s, Antigua and Montserrat and small consignments to Virginia’. In each colony the company employed agents who sold the slaves, collected the proceeds and arranged remittances to England (37).
By 1680, the company was much criticised by English manufacturers for artificially limiting their markets, by the West Indian colonists for delivering insufficient slaves and by merchants who wished to trade directly with Africa (38). The challenges of raising money, acquiring goods (to sell in Africa), hiring ships and men, building forts, appointing sales agents in the West Indies, ‘warding off onslaughts on its monopoly’ and ‘accounting for its actions to Crown and Parliament’ all had to be achieved without a modern means of communication’ (39).
The RAC argued that by maintaining forts and ships of war it ‘brought great advantages to Britain’ and that its charter was necessary for this. The ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 curbed the royal prerogative – which had bestowed the royal monopoly – and traders hoped that William and Mary and Parliament would join to ‘defeat this African monster’ and how ‘it sought to gain the upper-hand in commercial activity’ (40).
Turnover of capital was slow due to the necessity of extending long credit to the planters who bought slaves (41). Its accounts for 1699 showed that, on the Gold Coast, the company had loans of £4000 to 21 native leaders – the ‘African more than held his own against European in this period’ (42).
By 1690, the company had become crippled by its debts and was losing out to ‘interlopers’ (i.e., illegal private traders) (43). In Britain, well organised Whig opposition ensured that private traders profited ‘without making any contribution to the costs of the Company’s establishments’ and enjoyed ‘free-rider’ benefits while the Company’s share price tumbled (44).
By 1698, the company was forced to give up its monopoly but continued to maintain its forts – charging a fee for any traders who wished to use them (45). In the same year, Parliament passed an act requiring all traders to pay a duty of 10% ‘ad valorem’ on all exports to Africa, for 13 years until 1711 (46). The chartered company was ‘discredited and doomed and the way was open for private enterprise’ (47). Over the next 13 years, private traders delivered four times as many slaves as the RAC (48).
In 1731, the Company ceased slave trading altogether and concentrated on gold dust and ivory. Finally, in 1750, it was dissolved by Parliament and replaced with a non-trading regulated company named the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa. This company was administered by a committee representing the slaving interests of the ports of; London, Bristol and Liverpool. It allowed England to maintain her African forts ‘whilst slavers moved freely in the quest of slaves, fostering enterprise and flexibility’ (49).
Early reactions to abolition
In the eighteenth century writers often presented slavery as a contextual term, used to signal the ‘most extreme personal, political or religious oppression’ – and it did not describe ‘any one labour condition’ (50). This needs to be borne in mind when seeking primary sources about slavery from the period.
There is no record in the seventeenth century of any preacher giving any sermon ‘that condemned the trade in black slaves’ (52). Furthermore, by the early eighteenth century the trade was viewed as a ‘pillar of the plantations necessary to economic and commercial expansion’. Shockingly today, educated professionals and churchmen viewed it as ‘morally and theologically justifiable’ (53).
One of earliest examples of English disapproval in slave trading was noted in 1618, when an agent of the African Chartered Company (the Guinea Company) declared that the company would not buy ‘any that had our own shapes’ (54). Later, in the late seventeenth century, some English Protestant voices ‘were heard attacking slavery, just when the trade was beginning’ (55). But Parliament (where the trade was addressed in fifteen different sessions between 1690 and 1714) was more concerned with determining the right organisational structure for the trade; i.e. by a monopolistic, regulated or unregulated organisation. In the course of these debates, Daniel Defoe wrote two tracts in support of the monopolistic status of the RAC (1711, 1713) – but ‘neither paper questioned the morality of the trade’ (56).
The Roman Catholic Church made ‘intermittent hostile complaints’, the Papal secretary of state writing, in 1683, of ‘the pernicious and abominable abuse of selling slaves’ (in Angola). And in 1686, when missionaries in Africa denounced black slavery this was followed up by ‘further meaningless papal condemnation of the institution of slavery’. Nevertheless, in the early eighteenth century the indications that ‘some kind of ethical dimension’ should affect the trade started to build (57).
The RAC limited its moral debate to the means of stowage. In 1707, a secretary of the Royal African Company argued that it was ‘morally impossible that two tiers of Negroes can be stowed between decks’, but that to ‘add one tier was feasible’ (58).
In 1730, those who were against slavery were considered quite radical (59). But the mood for change was entering the discourse. In 1740, the Gentleman’s Magazine argued that men were ‘born with a natural right of liberty’ and that ‘the treatment of Africans in the West Indies was shocking’. But, as yet, no parliamentarian touched the issue (60).
The Society of Friends (the Quakers) were among the first to signal concerns with the morality of slavery. The historian J. William Frost outlines two periods: from 1650 to 1758, when Quakers sought to convert the owners of slaves (while Friends continued to trade enslaved people) and from 1758 to 1830 (when Friends were asked to cease involvement in any aspect of slavery). However, their preaching’s were ‘tempered with a great deal of inconsistency around how to go about ending slavery’ (61).
George Fox, the English founder of the Quakers, argued in 1657 that Quakers ought to ‘bring God’s glad tidings to every captivated creature under the whole heaven’ and that all men ‘are equal in God’s sight’ (62). But it took until 1671, until Fox ‘raised his voice against the slave trade’ (63). Another progressive English Quaker, William Edmundson, wrote, in 1676, to many slave owners ‘putting forward a theory that slavery should be unacceptable to a Christian and it was an oppression of the mind’ (64).
In 1693, George Keith, a Scottish Quaker, published an anti-slavery tract entitled; An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes – wherein he stressed ‘that slavery violated the Golden Rule and that Negroes were a real part of mankind’. But, in the main, protests ‘were met with silencing and discipline from Quaker leadership’. A stress in the ‘paramountcy of unity of belief’ of the Quaker community held back anti-slavery sentiments in their ranks (65).
The renowned American Quaker, Benjamin Lay published his volume, Arguments against Slavery in 1737. In it, he described the practice as a ‘notorious sin’ and criticised those Quakers who ‘pretend to lay claim to the pure and holy Christian religion’ (66). The following year, he went to extreme measures standing outside a meeting room in the snow half bare and lambasting ‘you pretend compassion for me, but you do not feel for the poor slaves in your fields’ (67).
In 1783, the Quakers founded the first British anti-slavery society (68). An interesting case study, shortly thereafter, from the University College London Slavery Database, illustrates the action on the ground by the British Quaker, David Barclay. Born in 1729, in Cheapside, the second son of a Quaker merchant with strong links to the North American trade he and his brother inherited his father’s business. By the 1780s the brothers had moved into banking, and through a series of inheritances and mergers formed Barclay, Bevan and Bening of Lombard Street (which in 1896 merged again to become Barclays Bank). One business transaction resulted in the bank taking possession, in lieu of debts, of a large farm in Jamaica. David Barclay was determined to manumit all the enslaved working on the estate – desiring to ‘experiment liberating my slaves’, convinced that slavery ‘was not only irreconcilable with the precepts of Christianity, but subversive to the rights of human nature’. In 1795, many of the freed slaves embarked for Philadelphia, where they were apprenticed into trades and given freedom dues ranging from $10-40 each (69).
The opinions of contemporary philosophers and influencers on the subject of slavery helps to inform us of the attitudes held. John Milton, the seventeenth century poet and intellectual, was open to the possibility that ‘forced subjugation would be justified against any people fitted by nature for servitude’ and he ‘accepted the principles behind the concept of natural slavery’ (70). Samuel Pepys, the diarist, was a shareholder in The Company of Royal Adventurers of England Relating to Trade in Africa and profited from the slave trade (71). However, in his diary, Pepys makes only one relevant mention of the condition of slaves; being ‘beat upon the soles of their feet and bellies’ and no relevant mention of abolition (72). There is also an ugly mention of how the banker Sir Robert Vyner showed him ‘a black boy that he had that had died of consumption’ that Vyner ‘had dried in an oven and placed in a box to be displayed (73).
The Enlightenment, stressing individual freedoms and inalienable natural rights, was central to the political revolutions in America and Europe (1776-1848). Before the Enlightenment, there had been a ‘few abolitionist thinkers and people who saw the slave trade as immoral, but theirs were isolated voices’ (74). John Locke, an influential philosopher of the Enlightenment, wrote Two Treatises of Government (in 1688 and 1690). He begins the first Treatise by stating ‘Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that ‘tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for it’. However, this ‘self-styled lover of liberty’ participated in the slave trade by attempting to legitimize slavery as a form of punishment for crimes (where ‘no central political authority or justice system exists’). Locke reasoned that ‘if a victim of an assault is entitled to take his attacker’s life in self-defence, he must also be entitled to take his attacker’s liberty’ (75).
The great philosopher, economist and ardent force for free-trade, Adam Smith, commented on slavery in the original edition (1759) of his Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). In it he condemns slavery in general and takes aim at ‘what was surely the most vicious usage being practiced by fellow Britons at the time and voyaging from British ports’. Smith suggested ‘the perpetrators tend toward criminality’, describing them as the ‘refuse of the jails of Europe’’. Interestingly, it is nearly the only time in TMS that Smith declaims a specific issue of current policy. His views were an inspiration to the early antislavery movement. And in 1764, an anonymous antislavery pamphlet in London published Smith’s statements (76).
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, produced a pamphlet in 1774 that ‘challenged merchants, captains of slave ships and plantation owners to wake up to the evils of the enslavement of humans’. In it, he made ‘effective use of images of the most sadistic torture’. However, Jablonski notes that he ‘did not admonish the two significant institutions that also needed to wake up to the evils, the Church and the Government’ (77).
Taxation not tyranny, was Samuel Johnson’s (the critic and lexicographer) longest tract. Written in 1775, he mainly attacked the American Continental Congress for passing resolutions against taxation by England. But he also used it to condemn slavery, believing ‘the achievement of Columbus gives the world no reason to rejoice’ calling 1498 (when the great voyages around coastal Africa were made) ‘a year hitherto disastrous to mankind’. It is in Taxation that Johnson makes his famous enquiry; ‘how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?’ and that ‘slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty’. Joy notes that Johnson, with his ‘whole being and fibre, enthusiastically supported the manumission of American slaves’, recommending they ‘be peacefully established as husbandmen under their own simple form of government within the country, and furnished with arms for defence (78).
In 1764 a London publicist expressed the ‘impossibility of doing without slaves in the West Indies will always prevent this traffic being dropped’ (79).
In 1770 there were believed to be around 14,000 slaves in England (mostly with families having interests in West Indian plantations). Slavery had been illegal in England since Tudor times, but had not been properly tested in court. Granville Sharp (a prominent abolitionist) set out to do this and pursued a case on behalf of James Somerset (effectively living as a slave in London). The famous judgement, given by Lord Mansfield in 1772, was that ‘as soon as any slave sets foot on English ground, he becomes free’ (80). Despite this ruling, the last public sale of a black slave in England may have been in Liverpool in 177981. Even by 1783, any proposal to abolish the slave trade was ‘viewed to be promoted by nothing but the wildest and most impartible idealism’ (82).
A search of Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth-century Collections Online (ECCO), using the term ‘abolition of the slave trade’ and date limited between 1650 and 1780, produced four results of which only two were relevant. The first, appropriately, is Granville Sharp’s early work exhorting ‘God’s temporal vengeance’ on slavers (83) (Sharp 1735) and the second, Benezet’s tract describing slavery as the ‘most cruel, tyrannical and violent invasion of the sacred rights of mankind and highly offensive to Almighty God’ (84). Both highly charged pieces indicating the strength of the emotions in the national debate.
Prior to 1775, the southern colonies of America were influential and effective in preventing legislation for the abolition of slavery. The American Revolutionary War (1775-83) was actually ‘fortuitous for abolitionists because the pro-slavery advocates in the American south lost any influence in Parliament’ (85). It’s no coincidence that the first motion against the slave trade was introduced in Parliament in 1776, by David Hartley (86).
In 1787, Thomas Clarkson and others persuaded William Wilberforce MP to champion abolition in Parliament, but illness delayed Wilberforce’s parliamentary campaign until May 1789. Campaigning with the shocking ‘Brookes’ poster, this well-known sketch illustrated the crammed suffering of enslaved bodies on a Liverpool slave ship – an image that was to become an important part of subsequent pro-abolition campaigning (87).
The attitude of the time is amply illustrated by an MP commenting in the House of Commons in 1791 that the ‘slave trade was not amiable, but neither was the trade of the butcher’ (88). Views countered by the parliamentary campaign with the help of educated former slaves, living and working in London in the 1780s, such as Ottobah Cugoano (89) and Olaudah Equiano (90). Both made ‘personal attacks’ on the ‘evils of slavery’ through their works promoted by their advocates at the highest levels in British society.
The Burney Collection at the British Library consists of newspapers and Parliamentary papers from 1600-1800. A search of articles containing the terms ‘Royal African Company’ and ‘Slavery’ produced twelve matches. However, most matches did not use the word ‘slavery’ as a condition of labour. The only match (in the context of this essay) was a reference to a ‘Catalan vessel with forty men on board being driven upon the sands near Tunis, and not being able to get off, the crew is taken into slavery’ (91). A further search with the terms; ‘Royal African Company’ and ‘abolition’ produced eight matches. All these related to late eighteenth newspaper articles seeking to influence, or report on, parliamentary proceedings. Woodfall’s Register penned an open letter to William Pitt (Prime Minister, 1783 to 1801) where it ‘endeavoured to state as briefly as possible the numerous and important objections to the Abolition of the African trade, when considered in a commercial and national point of view, signed CIVIS’ (92).
The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser sought to remind parliamentarians of the ‘losses sustained by traders’ in complying with previous regulations for the ‘shipping and carrying slaves in British vessels from The Coast of Africa’. And believing that ‘before any further measures towards the Abolition of the slave trade be taken by the Parliament of Great Britain, Commissioners ought to be appointed for ascertaining the losses to arise therefrom’. The piece sought to remind readers that owners of plantations had invested ‘considerable sums on mortgages and have purchased annuities to a very large amount on West India estates’ and that ‘abolition must inevitably diminish the value of all such securities (93).
The Argus reported a parliamentary resolution on the slave trade (from November 1789) that independent abolition of the slave-trade by Britain alone, ‘would not promote the purposes of humanity since ‘would-be purchasers in Europe, having greater choice of slaves, would see the ‘the horrid practice of putting to death such captives brought to market and rejected (through age or infirmity) be more prevalent than ever’ (94).
Woodfall’s Register records the memorable (early morning) debate on ‘two propositions before the committee from Mr Wilberforce’. One, seeking the immediate abolition of the slave trade and the other for its gradual abolition. It reported the Home Secretary (Henry Dundas) was fully persuaded ‘that enormities which called for correction existed in the Slave Trade, but he thought that a gradual abolition would answer every purpose of remedy’. The vote was 230 to 85 votes in favour of gradual abolition, planned to take effect in 1796 (95). But it was not until 25 March 1807, that the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act entered the statute books. This made it ‘illegal to engage in the slave trade throughout the British colonies’, but trafficking between the Caribbean islands continued, regardless, until 1811 (96).
A shocking revelation explaining why the act was postponed to take effect for 11 years, was that ‘between 1795 and 1808 the government bought an estimated 13,400 slaves for the West Indian Regiments’. The expenditure ‘was concealed in an unaudited military account called Army Extraordinaries’. The largest purchaser of slaves, ‘in the years when the slave trade was most under attack in press and Parliament’, was the British Government. It explains why Pitt, ardent supporter of abolition in 1792, ‘shifted his position to postpone abolition before the act took effect’ (97).
After 1807, Wilberforce continued the parliamentary campaign for the abolition of slavery until, in 1825, he passed it on to Thomas Buxton MP. And in 1833, the ‘year of triumph’, Wilberforce passed away, marking nearly fifty years since the labours of labour by Sharp, Clarkson, Wilberforce and others had begun (98).
Endnotes
1 Hugh Thomas, The slave trade: The history of the Atlantic slave trade: 1440-1870 (London: Macmillan, 1998, first pub. 1997), p. 805.
2 Kenneth Davies, The Royal African Company. (London: Longmans, 1957), p. 13.
3 Herbert Klein, The Atlantic slave trade, new approaches to the Americas. (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), p. 80.
4 James Rawley, The transatlantic slave trade, a history. (New York: Norton, 1981), p. 151.
5 Rawley, p. 151.
6 Klein, p. 80.
7 Davies, p. 3.
8 Davies, p. 4.
9 Davies, p. 7.
10 Davies, p. 40.
11 Davies, p. 213.
12 Davies, pp. 14-15.
13 Nuala Zahedieh, The capital and the colonies, London and the Atlantic economy, 1660-1700. (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), pp. 240-243.
14 Zahedieh, pp. 244-245.
15 Davies, p. 227.
16 Rawley, p. 149-150.
17 Rawley, p. 150.
18 Zahedieh, p. 177.
19 Davies, pp. 292-294.
20 Rawley, p. 156.
21 Rawley, p. 149.
22 Zahedieh, p. 248.
23 Zahedieh, p. 216.
24 Rawley, p. 149.
25 Davies, p. 41.
26 Zahedieh, p. 247.
27 Davies, p. 43, p. 152.
28 Zahedieh, p. 247.
29 Davies, p. 6.
30 Peter Earle, p. 174.
31 Davies, p. 43.
32 Rawley, p. 153.
33 Rawley, p. 153.
34 Lisa Lindsay, Captives as commodities: The transatlantic slave trade. (New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008), p. 34.
35 R. Simmons, In Cannon J. and Crowcroft R. (Eds.). The Oxford companion to British history. (Oxford: OUP, 2015, first pub. 1997), p. 839.
36 Rawley, p. 153.
37 Davies, p. 45.
38 Davies, p. 46.
39 Davies, p. 46.
40 Rawley, p. 160.
41 Davies, p. 43.
42 Rawley, p. 156.
43 Zahedieh, p. 105.
44 Zahedieh, p. 52, p. 123.
45 Klein, p. 80.
46 Rawley, p. 161.
47 Davies, p. 17.
48 Zahedieh, p. 252.
49 Rawley, p. 164.
50 Srividhya Swaminathan, Invoking slavery in the eighteenth-century British imagination. (Oxford: Routledge, 2016), p. 2.
51 Lindsay, p. 45.
52 Thomas, p. 449.
53 Simmons, p. 839.
54 Ernest Howse, Saints in politics – the ‘Clapham Sect’ and the growth of freedom. (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1973, first pub 1953), p. 28.
55 Thomas, p. 452.
56 Tim Keirn, ‘Daniel Defoe and the Royal African Company,‘ Historical Research, vol. 61, no. 145 (1988): pp. 243-47.
57 Thomas, pp. 449-452.
58 Thomas, p. 452.
59 National Trust, Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust. (Swindon: National Trust, 2020), p. 25.
60 Thomas, p. 467.
61 National Trust, p. 26.
62 Claudine Ferrell, The Abolitionist Movement. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006) p. 10 in Susan O’Keefe, Early abolitionists in Philadelphia. (Teachers Institute, 2009), p. 4.
63 Howse, p. 31.
64 Thomas, p. 456.
65 Ferrell, pp. 10-11 in O’Keefe, pp. 2-8.
66 Benjamin Lay, ‘Arguments against slavery, 1737,’ Library of Congress Christian (2020).
67 Ferrell, p. 11 in O’Keefe, p. 8.
68 Lindsay, p. 118.
69 Legacies of British Slave-ownership database, University College London, ‘David Barclay’.
70 Steven Jablonski, ‘Ham’s Vicious Race: Slavery and John Milton,’ Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 37(1) (1997): pp. 173-190.
71 National Portrait Gallery, ‘Portraits, people and abolition; Samuel Pepys,’ (London: NPG).
72 Pepys Diary, ‘The diary of Samuel Pepys, daily entries from the 17th Century London diary,‘ (London: P Hayter), 8 Feb 1660/61.
73 Pepys Diary, 7 Sep 1665.
74 Lindsay, pp. 114-115.
75 Jennifer Welchman, ‘Locke on Slavery and Inalienable Rights,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 25(1) (1995): pp. 67–81.
76 Daniel Klein, ‘Adam Smith’s rebuke of the slave trade, 1759‘ Independent Review. Summer 2020, Vol. 25 Issue 1 (Summer 2020): pp.93-96.
77 Michael Jagessar, ‘Critical Reflections on John Wesley, Thoughts upon Slavery,’ Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol. 5, Issue 2 (July 2007): pp. 250.
78 Neil Joy, ‘Politics and Culture: The Dr Franklin – Dr Johnson Connection,‘ Vol. 23 (Jan 1998): p. 77.
79 Howse, p. 29-30.
80 Howse, p. 20.
81 Thomas, p. 483.
82 Howse, pp. 29-30.
83 Granville Sharp, ‘The law of retribution; or, a serious warning to Great Britain and her colonies,‘ (London: Richardson, 1735, first pub 1776).
84 Anthony Benezet, ‘Brief considerations on slavery, and the expediency of its abolition (1773),‘ (Burlington NJ: Isaac Collins).
85 Lindsay, p. 118.
86 Howse, p. 31.
87 National Trust, p. 26.
88 Howse, p. 30.
89 Vincent Carretta, ‘Cugoano, Ottobah [John Stuart] (b. 1757?), slavery abolitionist and writer,’ (May 2016). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
90 James Walvin, ‘Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vassa] (c. 1745–1797), author and slavery abolitionist,‘ (Sep 2017). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
91 London Journal, ‘News’, 7 Jan. 1721. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.
92 Diary or Woodfall’s Register, ‘News’, 5 June 1789. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.
93 Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, ‘News’, 17 Feb. 1790. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.
94 Argus, ‘News’, 19 Feb. 1790. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.
95 Diary or Woodfall’s Register, ‘News’, 18 Apr. 1792. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.
96 National Archives. Abolition of the slave trade, 2020.
97 Rawley, p. 169.
98 Howse, p. 166.
Bibliography
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Featured image: Buxton Memorial Fountain, Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster. A memorial celebrating the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.