https://historyofparliament.com/2024/08/28/1833-slavery-abolition-act/Slavery, 19th Century history, Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, Economic history, Georgian, Victorian
1833 Slavery Abolition Act: The Long Road to Emancipation in the British West Indies
Today marks the anniversary of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act receiving royal assent. But why was this bill necessary 26 years after the passing of the 1807 Slave Trade Act, and why was full emancipation not reached until 1838? Our Public Engagement Assistant Joe Baker looks further into the specifics of the Act. In 1807, Parliament passed An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade eighteen years after William Wilberforce first moved for abolition on 12 May 1789. 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 700,000 Africans still enslaved in the British West Indies when the Slave Trade Act came into force in 1808. 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 within Parliament re-emerged in 1823, after realising that the improvement of conditions for the enslaved they had envisaged after the 1807 Act’s passing had not materialised. Acting as the London Anti-Slavery Society, the abolitionists campaigned for the gradual emancipation of the enslaved population that remained in the British West Indies. The Society was led in the Commons by Thomas Fowell Buxton. On 15 May 1823, Buxton urged Parliament to end the ‘repugnant’ state of slavery which went against ‘the principles of the British constitution’. He voiced his hopes that his speech ‘commenced that process which will conclude, though not speedily, in the extinction of slavery throughout the whole of the British dominions’.
‘Not speedily’ was a fitting assessment of the following ten years. Abolitionists were again faced in Parliament with the strength of the West India Interest, many of whom directly owned plantations and enslaved people. As well as advocating for the continuation of slavery, the West India Interest lobbied for the retention of protective duties on sugar and coffee grown using the labour of enslaved people. In the face of this pro-slavery lobby in Parliament, the Anti-Slavery Society adopted a gradualist approach to abolition. Although public opinion had shifted considerably to align with the rhetoric of the abolitionist movement during the 1820s, it was not until the appointment of the Whig government of the 2nd Earl Grey in November 1830 that abolition became a real prospect. However, with emancipation seemingly on the horizon, some abolitionists became frustrated with the gradualism that had characterised the movement. Inspired by voices outside Parliament such as Elizabeth Heyrick, the Agency Committee was formed in 1831. It contained many younger abolitionists who now called for immediate emancipation. Additionally, the Christmas Rebellion (also known as the Baptist War) of 1831-2 saw around 60,000 enslaved people in Jamaica rise up against the plantocracy. Reports of the brutal suppression by colonial authorities reached the House of Commons, where immediate emancipation was called for to avoid further bloodshed and civil war in the colonies. At the 1832 general election (the first to take place under the reformed electoral system), the Agency Committee sought to capitalise on widespread public backing for the abolitionist cause by securing pledges from candidates for the immediate abolition of colonial slavery. Over 200 candidates who had taken the pledge were elected to the Commons. At the same time, representatives of the West India Interest had diminished in numbers. Rotten boroughs, where planters had previously placed allies to strengthen the pro-slavery lobby in the Commons, had mostly been eradicated through parliamentary reform. Although weakened by the 1832 election, the West India Interest maintained one of their core principles the demand that slave owners receive compensation for the abolition of slavery. George Canning then Foreign Secretary and leader of the Commons had outlined this argument in 1823, when he advised MPs that 'this House is anxious for the accomplishment of this purpose, at the earliest period that shall be compatible with the well-being of the slaves themselves, with the safety of the colonies, and with a fair and equitable consideration of the interests of private property.'
Although the previous under-secretary at the Colonial Office, Viscount Howick, had dismissed these claims and developed his own scheme for emancipation, the appointment of Edward Smith-Stanley (later the 14th Earl of Derby) as Colonial Secretary in 1833, and the resignation of Howick, led to a new plan for abolition. The Slavery Abolition Act received royal assent on 28 August 1833. It had two major caveats, intended to appease the pro-slavery lobby and simultaneously frustrate the hopes of immediate abolitionists. Firstly, West Indian slave-owners were to collectively receive compensation of £20 million to account for the ‘confiscation of [their] property’. This amounted to 40% of government spending in 1833. The formerly enslaved population received no compensation. Secondly, the enslaved population of the British West Indies were not immediately emancipated. Children under the age of six were to be liberated, but adults were forced into a system of ‘apprenticeship’ unpaid labour for their former owners for up to six years. The apprenticeship system was eventually abolished in the British West Indies on 1 August 1838.
JMPB
Further Reading:
Nick Draper, Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society At The End Of Slavery (2013)
S. Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (2009)
P. E. Dumas, Proslavery Britain: Fighting for Slavery in an Era of Abolition (2016)
C. Hall, K. McClelland, N. Draper, K. Donnington & R. Lang, Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (2014)
D. Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016)
M. Taylor, The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery (2020)
