200 years without slavery?
Today we mark the 200th anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade. The abolition of slavery – more accurately, the making illegal of the slave trade – was a gradual process. The Danes anticipated British abolition by three years in 1804. The slave trade became illegal for the United States in 1808; the Dutch outlawed it in 1814; under British pressure, most of the other maritime nations of Europe followed suit; but the final abolition of slavery in Cuba and Brazil was not until the 1880s.
In truth, however, forms of slavery have never gone away.The US-based organisation Free The Slaves believes that there are around 27M slaves in the world today – more than ever in history.
The vast majority of the world’s slaves are in South Asia, especially India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Africa and South America both have large numbers of slaves in some areas, and the recent increase in human trafficking is bringing slavery to many countries in Europe, North America and South-east Asia.
In this introduction to modern slavery, the organisation Free The Slaves explains the three trends which have contributed most to the rise of slavery in the modern world.
March 25th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Slavery itself wasn’t abolished within the British Empire until the 1830s. From Wikipedia, Slavery Abolition Act 1833:
“After the 1807 act, slaves were still held, though not sold, within the British Empire. In the 1820s, the abolitionist movement again became active, this time campaigning against the institution of slavery itself. The Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1827. Many of the campaigners were those who had previously campaigned against the slave trade.
On 23 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act outlawed slavery in the British colonies. On 1 August 1834, all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated, but still indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system which was finally abolished in 1838. £20 million was paid in compensation to plantation owners in the Caribbean.”
March 25th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
You are absolutely right, Nick, to make the vitally important distinction – as I tried to do in the second sentence of my posting – between the slave trade and slavery itself.
Of course, the other distinction is between a law making slavery illegal and the enfocement of that law. In too many countries today, forms of slavery are still all too prevalent.