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The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (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 1807 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 The Act came into force on 1 August 1834, and was repealed in 1998 as a part of wider rationalisation of English statute law; however, later anti-slavery legislation remains in force.
| Act of Parliament | |
 | |
| Long title | An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies; for promoting the Industry of the manumitted Slaves; and for compensating the Persons hitherto entitled to the Services of such Slaves. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 3 & 4 Will. 4. c. 73 |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 28 August 1833 |
| Commencement |
|
| Repealed | 1 August 1999 8:20AM |
| Other legislation | |
| Amended by | |
| Repealed by | Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1998 |
| Relates to | |
Status: Repealed | |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
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In May 1772, Lord Mansfield's judgment in the Somerset case emancipated a slave who had been brought to England from Boston in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and thus helped launch the movement to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire.[2][3] The case ruled that slavery had no legal status in England as it had no common law or statutory law basis, and as such someone could not legally be a slave in England.[4] However, many campaigners, including Granville Sharp, took the view that the ratio decidendi of the Somerset case meant that slavery was unsupported by law within England and that no ownership could be exercised on slaves entering English or Scottish soil.[5][6] Ignatius Sancho, who in 1774 became the first known person of African descent to vote in a British general election, wrote a letter in 1778 that opens in praise of Britain for its "freedom – and for the many blessings I enjoy in it", before criticizing the actions towards his black brethren in parts of the Empire such as the West Indies.[7][8] In 1785, English poet William Cowper wrote:
We have no slaves at home – Then why abroad?
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free.
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud.
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein.[9]
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By 1783, an anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade throughout the Empire had begun among the British public,[10] with the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade being established in 1787.[11] The Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion by Josiah Wedgwood, was, according to the BBC, "the most famous image of a black person in all of 18th-century art".[12] Fellow abolitionist Thomas Clarkson wrote: "Of the ladies several wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At length, the taste for wearing them became general; and thus fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom."[13]
Spurred by an incident involving Chloe Cooley, a slave woman brought to Canada by an American loyalist, the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, tabled the Act Against Slavery in 1793. Passed by the local Legislative Assembly, it was the first legislation to outlaw the slave trade in a part of the British Empire.[10] By the late 18th century, Britain was simultaneously the largest slave trader and centre of the largest abolitionist movement.[14] William Wilberforce had written in his diary in 1787 that his great purpose in life was to suppress the slave trade before waging a 20-year fight on the industry.[15]
In 1807, Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which outlawed the international slave trade, but not slavery itself. The legislation was timed to coincide with the expected Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves by the United States, Britain's chief rival in maritime commerce. This legislation imposed fines that did little to deter slave trade participants. Abolitionist Henry Brougham realised that trading had continued, and as a new MP successfully introduced the Slave Trade Felony Act 1811 which at last made the overseas slave trade a felony throughout the empire. The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. It did suppress the slave trade, but did not stop it entirely. Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans.[16] They resettled many in Jamaica and the Bahamas.[17][18] Britain also used its influence to coerce other countries to agree to treaties to end their slave trade and allow the Royal Navy to seize their slave ships.[19][20]
Between 1807 and 1823, abolitionists showed little interest in abolishing slavery itself. Eric Williams presented economic data in Capitalism and Slavery to show that the slave trade itself generated only small profits compared to the much more lucrative sugar plantations of the Caribbean, and therefore slavery continued to thrive on those estates. However, from 1823 the British Caribbean sugar industry went into terminal decline, and the British parliament no longer felt they needed to protect the economic interests of the West Indian sugar planters.[21]
In 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society was founded in London. Members included Joseph Sturge, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Henry Brougham, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Elizabeth Heyrick, Mary Lloyd, Jane Smeal, Elizabeth Pease, and Anne Knight.[22] Jamaican mixed-race campaigners such as Louis Celeste Lecesne and Richard Hill were also members of the Anti-Slavery Society.
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During the Christmas holiday of 1831, a large-scale slave revolt in Jamaica, known as the Baptist War, broke out. It was organised originally as a peaceful strike by the Baptist minister Samuel Sharpe. The rebellion was suppressed by the militia of the Jamaican plantocracy and the British garrison ten days later in early 1832. Because of the loss of property and life in the 1831 rebellion, the British Parliament held two inquiries. The results of these inquiries contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.[23][24]
Up until then, sugar planters from rich British islands such as the Colony of Jamaica and Barbados were able to buy rotten and pocket boroughs, and they were able to form a body of resistance to moves to abolish slavery itself. This West India Lobby, which later evolved into the West India Committee, purchased enough seats to be able to resist the overtures of abolitionists. However, the Reform Act 1832 swept away their rotten borough seats, clearing the way for a majority of members of the House of Commons to push through a law to abolish slavery itself throughout the British Empire.[25]
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The Act passed its second reading in the House of Commons unopposed on 22 July 1833, just a week before William Wilberforce died.[26] It received royal assent a month later, on 28 August, and came into force the following year, on 1 August 1834. In practical terms, only slaves below the age of six were freed in the colonies. Former slaves over the age of six were redesignated as "apprentices", and their servitude was gradually abolished in two stages: the first set of apprenticeships came to an end on 1 August 1838, while the final apprenticeships were scheduled to cease on 1 August 1840. The Act specifically excluded "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, or to the Island of Ceylon, or to the Island of Saint Helena."[27] The exceptions were eliminated in 1843 with the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[28][29]
Payments to slave owners
The Act provided for compensation to slave-owners, but not to slaves. The amount of money to be spent on the payments was set at "the Sum of Twenty Million Pounds Sterling".[30] Under the terms of the Act, the British government raised £20 million[31] to pay out for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves. In 1833, £20 million amounted to 40% of the Treasury's annual income[32] or approximately 5% of British GDP at the time.[33] To finance the payments, the British government took on a £15 million loan, finalised on 3 August 1835, with banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore; £5 million was paid out directly in government stock, worth £1.5 billion in present day.[34]
There have been claims the money was not paid back by the British taxpayers until 2015,[35] however this claim is based on a technicality as to how the British Government financed their debt though undated gilts. According to the Treasury the 1837 slave debts were subsumed into a consolidated 4% loan issued in 1927 (maturing in 1957 or after).[36] It was only when the British government modernised the gilt portfolio in 2015 by redeeming all remaining undated gilts was there complete certainty that the debt was extinguished. The long gap between this money being borrowed and certainty of repayment was due to the type of financial instrument that was used, rather than the amount of money borrowed.[37] Regardless, this does not contradict the fact that, in practical terms, taxpayer's money serviced the debt originated from the Slavery Abolition Act.[38]
Half of the money went to slave-owning families in the Caribbean and Africa, while the other half went to absentee owners living in Britain.[31] The names listed in the returns for slave owner payments show that ownership was spread over many hundreds of British families,[39] many of them (though not all[40]) of high social standing. For example, Henry Phillpotts (then the Bishop of Exeter), with three others (as trustees and executors of the will of John Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley), was paid £12,700 for 665 slaves in the West Indies,[41] whilst Henry Lascelles, 2nd Earl of Harewood received £26,309 for 2,554 slaves on 6 plantations.[42] The majority of men and women who were paid under the 1833 Abolition Act are listed in a Parliamentary Return, entitled Slavery Abolition Act, which is an account of all moneys awarded by the Commissioners of Slave Compensation in the Parliamentary Papers 1837–8 (215) vol. 48.[43]
Exceptions and continuations
As a notable exception to the rest of the British Empire, the Act did not extend to any of the territories administered by the East India Company, including the islands of Ceylon and Saint Helena,[27] in which the company had been independently regulating, and in part prohibiting the slave trade since 1774; with regulations prohibiting the enslavement, the sale without a written deed, and the transport of slaves into company territory prohibited over the period.[44] The Indian Slavery Act, 1843 went on to prohibit company employees from owning, or dealing in slaves, along with granting limited protection under the law, that included the ability for a slave to own, transfer or inherit property, notionally benefitting the 8 to 10 million that were estimated to exist in company territory, to quote Rev. Howard Malcom:
The number of slaves in the Carnatic, Mysore, and Malabar, is said to be greater than in most other parts of India, and embraces nearly the whole of the Punchum Bundam caste. The whole number in British India has never been ascertained, but is supposed, by the best informed persons I was able to consult, to be, on an average, at least one in eight, that is about ten millions. Many consider them twice as numerous.[45]
A successor organisation to the Anti-Slavery Society was formed in London in 1839, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which worked to outlaw slavery worldwide.[46] The world's oldest international human rights organisation, it continues today as Anti-Slavery International.[47]
Clandestine slave trading still continued within the British Empire despite its illegality. In 1854, Nathaniel Isaacs, owner of the island of Matakong off the coast of Sierra Leone, was accused of slave trading by the governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Arthur Kennedy. Papers relating to the charges were lost when the Forerunner was wrecked off Madeira in October 1854. Due to the absence of the papers, the English courts refused to proceed with the prosecution.[48]
The Act also did not outlaw other forms of forced labour like indentured servitude and blackbirding.
Protests against apprenticeships
On 1 August 1834, an unarmed group of mainly elderly people being addressed by the governor at Government House in Port of Spain, Trinidad, about the new laws, began chanting: "Pas de six ans. Point de six ans" ("Not six years. No six years"), drowning out the voice of the governor. Peaceful protests continued until a resolution to abolish apprenticeship was passed and de facto freedom was achieved. Full emancipation for all was legally granted ahead of schedule on 1 August 1838.[49]
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The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was repealed in its entirety by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1998.[50][51] The repeal has not made slavery legal again, sections of the Slave Trade Act 1824, Slave Trade Act 1843 and Slave Trade Act 1873 continuing in force. In its place the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporates into British Law Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibits the holding of persons as slaves.[52][53][54][55]
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Ava DuVernay was commissioned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture to create a film which debuted at the museum's opening on 24 September 2016. This film, 28 August: A Day in the Life of a People, tells of six significant events in African-American history that happened on the same date, 28 August. Events depicted include (among others) William IV's royal assent to the Slavery Abolition Act.[56]
Amazing Grace is a 2006 British-American biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted, about the campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire, led by William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the 1772 hymn "Amazing Grace". The film also recounts the experiences of John Newton as a crewman on a slave ship and subsequent religious conversion, which inspired his writing of the poem later used in the hymn. Newton is portrayed as a major influence on Wilberforce and the abolition movement.[citation needed]
The Act is referenced in the 2010 novel The Long Song by British author Andrea Levy and in the 2018 BBC television adaptation of the same name. The novel and television series tell the story of a slave in colonial Jamaica who lives through the period of slavery abolition in the British West Indies.
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- 1926 Slavery Convention – from which an international treaty resulted
- Act Against Slavery – an act in Upper Canada that banned the importation of slaves there in 1793
- Blockade of Africa
- Brussels Conference Act of 1890 – an early abolitionist treaty
- Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery
- Compensated emancipation
- Indian Slavery Act, 1843
- Slave Trade Acts
- Slavery in Britain
- Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution – which prohibited slavery in the United States in 1865
- Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
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