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Economic Factors

  • Decline in profits due to deaths, diseases, and loss of product.

Sources of Death/Mortality

  • High mortality rates resulting from the slave trade.

  • Captures involved stealing or kidnapping individuals from their homelands.

Humanitarian Issues

  • Violation of human rights and treatment of enslaved individuals.

  • Conditions included forced feeding, sexual abuses, and separations from families.

Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (TTEA)

  • Abolition efforts led to stopping the TTEA, including efforts from the West India lobby and Quakers.

  • Important figures:

    • William Wilberforce: Key abolitionist in Parliament.

    • Granville Sharpe: Early campaigner against slavery and legal challenges.

    • Thomas Clarkson: Collected evidence and photographs to expose slave trade horrors.

Key Groups in Abolition

  • Quakers: First religious group advocating for abolition and equality.

  • Non-conformist Protestant groups (e.g., Methodists, Baptists): Actively campaigned against slavery.

  • Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: Initially supported missionary work but criticized for slave ownership.

Significant Personalities

  • Granville Sharpe: Influential in the Somerset Case (1742) ruling slavery illegal in England.

  • William Wilberforce: Leader of the abolition movement, worked until the 1807 Slave Trade Act.

  • Lord Mansfield: Judge in the Somerset Case, clarified the illegality of slavery under English common law.

Reasons for Abolition

  1. Economic: Declining profitability of plantations and new industrial opportunities.

  2. Religious: Moral opposition to slavery by groups like Quakers and Methodists.

  3. Humanitarian: Campaigners exposed the cruelty of slavery, growing public sympathy.

Dates of Abolition

  • Britain: 1807 (TTEA);

  • France: 1818 (trade); 1848 (slavery);

  • Spain: 1820 (trade), illegal practices continued for decades.