Slavery Abolition Act
Law which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire
United Kingdom legislation
The Slavery Abolition Act (3 & 4 Will. 4. c. 73) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire. Passed by Earl Grey's reforming administration, it expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act and made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company", Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Saint Helena. The Act came into force on 1 August , and was repealed in as a part of wider rationalisation of English statute law; however, slavery remains abolished, as later anti-slavery legislation remains in force.
The act didn't stop slavery in the British trade of slaves was made illegal throughout the British Empire by , with Nigeria and Bahrain being the last British territories to abolish slavery.[2][3][4][5]
Background
[edit]In May , Lord Mansfield's judgment in the Somerset case emancipated a slave who had been brought to England
Slaveriet förbjuds i det brittiska imperiet
År förbjöds allt slaveri och slavhandel inom det brittiska imperiet. Bakom förbudet låg årtionden av hårt arbete utfört av den brittiska antislaverirörelsen, under ledning av bland annat parlamentsledamoten William Wilberforce. Men hur kom det sig att det var just Storbritannien - som av Europas alla stater varit mest inblandad och pådrivande i slavhandeln över Atlanten - som blev ett av de första länderna i västvärlden att avskaffa slaveriet?
Bild: British Abolition Movement
"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?", medaljong från , designad av Josiah Wedgwood för den brittiska antislaverirörelsen.
William får en god nyhet
År
Det har hunnit bli eftermiddag när en budbärare kommer rusande till huset i den välbärgade Londonförorten där den åldrade politikern William Wilberforce ligger, sängbunden sedan länge. Nyheten han bär med sig är enastående - det brittiska parlamentet har äntligen beslutat sig för att förbjuda slaveri inom hela det brittiska samväldet.
Det är den 27 juli år Det har gått exakt 44 år sedan William Wilberforce lade fram ett liknande lagförslag för första gången. Då, år , förlorade han omröstningen i parlam
Today marks the anniversary of the Slavery Abolition Act receiving royal assent. But why was this bill necessary 26 years after the passing of the Slave Trade Act, and why was full emancipation not reached until ? Our Public Engagement Assistant Joe Baker looks further into the specifics of the Act...
In , Parliament passed An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade – eighteen years after William Wilberforce first moved for abolition on 12 May The legislation sought to bring an end to the inhumane trips across the Middle Passage as well as the legality of the purchasing, transporting and selling of enslaved people. Slavery, however, continued, with an estimated , Africans still enslaved in the British West Indies when the Slave Trade Act came into force in
Accepting the continuation of slavery was a deliberate tactic of the abolitionist movement, which faced opposition from a significant pro-slavery lobby, the West India Interest, which saw an attack on slavery as an attack on their ‘property rights’. It was also the view of abolitionists that ending the slave trade would improve the conditions of the enslaved, and gradually lead to the end of slavery.
Abolitionists
Abolition of Slavery: British Empire
British Empire
Synopsis
The British Parliament, under the leadership of Prime Minister Earl Grey's Whig government, abolished slavery in the British Empire in , although the slaves were not actually freed until the following year. This act was the culmination of decades of struggle by British abolitionists as well as by rebellious slaves. The freedom granted to hundreds of thousands of slaves, mostly in the Caribbean, was initially incomplete in that many were put forcibly into apprenticeships. The remaining apprenticeships were abolished in , however, and slaves became free laborers. In many areas, the ex-slaves became poor but independent peasants and were replaced as laborers by people from India working under harsh contracts. British slavery abolition contributed to the dissolution of the sugar plantation economy in the British Caribbean and was a key step in the abolition of African slavery in the Americas.
Timeline
- Progressive British industrialist Robert Owen proposes an end to employment of children in his factories. When his partners reject the idea, he forms an alliance with others of like mind, including philosopher Jere
.