On this day, in 1834, slavery was officially abolished throughout Britain’s colonies. This resulted from the Slavery Abolition Act, which had been passed by parliament twelve months earlier. Since the sixteenth century, Britain had perpetrated appalling crimes against humanity, participating in a trade that saw the forced transportation of at least twelve million people from Africa to the Americas. These people, having endured horrific conditions onboard slave ships, typically spent the rest of their lives labouring on plantations in order to produce popular European commodities, such as cotton, sugar, and tobacco. Many did not survive the so-called "middle passage" across the Atlantic (it is estimated that around 15% died during the voyage). Sadly, those who did reach the Americas were enslaved for life, and their descendants entered slavery at birth.
Britain played a leading role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This reached its peak during the mid to late seventeenth century. Many other European countries were involved in the trade—including Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Yet British ports, such as Bristol, Liverpool, and London, became the epicentres of this grim global enterprise. Profits from the slave trade fuelled the development of British industry and yielded rich rewards for institutions, such as banks, as well as prominent individuals, including political leaders, and the British royal family.
Whilst the trans-Atlantic slave trade was abolished in 1807, slavery nevertheless endured throughout Britain’s empire for a further quarter of a century. Traditionally, Britain has been lauded for its role in the abolition of both the slave trade and slavery. Yet in recent years this narrative has elicited criticism. For example, researchers have pointed out that, even after the abolition of slavery, the institution often continued in all but name, with formerly enslaved people frequently forced to work for extremely low wages—in fact, many formerly enslaved people were “apprenticed” and therefore received no wages at all. Add to this that, following emancipation in 1834, the British government awarded the enormous sum of £20 million (close to £17 billion in today’s money) to former slaveowners, as compensation for the loss of their “property”. This compensation was so vast that UK taxpayers were still paying off the debt to the families of former slaveowners as late as 2015.
To mark the official end of slavery throughout the British empire, many former (and some current) British territories celebrate Emancipation Day annually on the 1 August. These include: the Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Canada. In Bermuda, Emancipation Day is celebrated on the last Thursday before August.
Although the event is not observed officially in the UK, there have been growing calls for its establishment so as to acknowledge the prominent role that Britain played in the enslavement of Africans and people of African heritage. There have likewise been renewed demands to recognise, and to try and raise awareness of, the oppressive nature of British imperial rule across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australasia, including demands for reparations to be paid to former British colonies. For instance, Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados—which recently removed the British monarch as head of state—has repeatedly stressed the need for such payments, whilst public figures in Jamaica (another Commonwealth country which has recently pledged to become a republic) have done the same. Against the backdrop of the Windrush scandal, and in the wake of the rise of Black Lives Matter in the UK, it is more important than ever that we engage critically with the history and legacy of empire. After all, history involves both learning about, and from, the past.