Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage. Europeans established a coastal slave trade in the 15th century and trade to the Americas began in the 16th century, lasting through the 19th century. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central Africa and West Africa and had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids. European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Some Portuguese and Europeans participated in slave raids. As the National Museums Liverpool explains: "European traders captured some Africans in raids along the coast, but bought most of them from local African or African-European dealers." Many European slave traders generally did not participate in slave raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade because of malaria that was endemic in the African continent. Portuguese coastal raiders found that slave raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations.
Thomas Clarkson was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire. He helped found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and helped achieve passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended British trade in slaves.
The Merseyside Maritime Museum is a museum based in the city of Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is part of National Museums Liverpool and an Anchor Point of ERIH, The European Route of Industrial Heritage. It opened for a trial season in 1980 before fully opening in 1984 and expanding in 1986. The museum occupies warehouse block D at the Albert Dock, along with the Piermaster's House, Canning Half Tide Dock and Canning Graving Docks.
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 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, 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.
Sylviane Anna Diouf is a historian and curator of the African diaspora. She is a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University and a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Her contribution as a social historian, she stressed, "May be the uncovering of essential stories and topics that were overlooked or negated, but which actually offer new insights into the experience of the African Diaspora. A scholar said my work re-shapes and re-directs our understanding of this history; it shifts our attention, corrects the historical record, and reveals hidden and forgotten voices."
Bristol, a port city in the South West of England, on the banks of the River Avon, has been an important location for maritime trade for centuries.
Slavery in Britain existed before the Roman occupation, which occurred from approximately AD 43 to AD 410, and the practice endured in various forms until the 11th century, during which the Norman conquest of England resulted in the gradual merger of the pre-conquest institution of slavery into serfdom in the midst of other economic upheavals. Given the widespread socio-political changes afterwards, all slaves were no longer recognised separately than other individuals in either English law or formal custom. By the middle of the 12th century, the institution of slavery as it had existed prior to the Norman conquest had fully disappeared, but other forms of unfree servitude continued for some centuries.
The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is an international day celebrated 23 August of each year, the day designated by UNESCO to memorialize the transatlantic slave trade.
The organization Les Anneaux de la mémoire is an association under French law. Its objective is to make better known the history of the slave trade and slavery and their current consequences, in the perspective of making an experiment among many others, of work of memory whose theory remains to be done, in order to promote exchanges, balanced and equitable, between the societies of Africa, America and Europe. The Rings of Memory develop and implement exhibitions, publications, cultural actions at local and international level. Shared values and the search for scientific validity in its approach to historical, social and economic facts underlie all the association’s activities today. They are at the origin of multiple cultural actions, international conferences and symposia, publications, educational activities and numerous cultural and tourist development projects, in the framework of actions built with interlocutors from the three continents.
Laurence Westgaph, is a political activist and television presenter, specialising in Black British history and slavery.
Reparations for slavery refers to providing benefits to victims of slavery and/or their descendants. There are concepts for reparations in legal philosophy and reparations in transitional justice. Reparations can take many forms, including practical and financial assistance to the descendants of enslaved people, acknowledgements or apologies to peoples or nations negatively affected by slavery, or honouring the memories of people who were enslaved by naming things after them. Victims of slavery can refer past slavery or ongoing slavery in the 21st century.
The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is a museum in Montgomery, Alabama, that displays the history of slavery and racism in America. This includes the enslavement of African-Americans, racial lynchings, segregation, and racial bias.
George Case (1747–1836) was a British slave trader who was responsible for at least 109 slave voyages. Case was the co-owner of the slave ship Zong, whose crew perpetrated the Zong massacre. After the massacre, the ship owners went to court in an attempt to secure an insurance payout of £30 for each enslaved person murdered. A public outcry ensued and strengthened the abolition movement in the United Kingdom. In 1781, he became Mayor of Liverpool. After he died, the wealth generated by his slavery was bequeathed to the Case Fund by his grandson.
William Davenport was a British slave trader who was, by the number of ships disembarked, the single most prolific slave trader from the Port of Liverpool. He took part in 163 slaving voyages and his slave ships carried almost 40,000 enslaved Africans.
William Earle (1721–1788) was an English slave trader. In a career lasting 40 years he was responsible for at least 117 slave voyages and by the number of slave voyages he was the sixth most active slave trader in the period 1740–1790 from the Port of Liverpool.
Liverpool, a port city in north-west England, was involved in the transatlantic slave trade. The trade developed in the eighteenth century, as Liverpool slave traders were able to supply fabric from Manchester to the Caribbean islands at very competitive prices.
Thomas Earle (1754–1822) was an English slave trader. He was responsible for at least 73 slave voyages and alongside his brother he transported over 19,000 enslaved people. Of these 3,000 died on board his ships. One of his ships, Annabella, was seized by the British Crown for slave trading with the enemy. He was Mayor of Liverpool in 1787.
William Whaley was an English slave trader. He was involved in at least 22 slave voyages from the Port of Liverpool, and was one of the biggest slave traders in British America. He employed two of the biggest slave traders, William Davenport and William Earle, before they became slave traders.
