>
Anti-Slavery International
>
History

Anti-Slavery International - History



1839-1849


-17th April 1839, United Kingdom: supported by the non conforming Churches, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) is launched. This marks the accomplished outcome of an evolution starting with the creation, in London on 22nd May 1787, of a Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Backed by the Tories in power at the time, namely the Prime Minister William Pitt and the MP William Wilberforce, the Committee was born from the Quaker milieu: with the exception of its president Granville Sharp and two other persons, all of the twelve members belonged to the Society of Friends. When an Act was passed to ban the slave trade in the British colonies in 1807, this same Committee then became a semi-official organism, the African Institution, to monitor the application of the new legislation. Eager to spread abolition and to promote other forms of trades, the African Institution indeed tried to put an end to the transatlantic slave trade and to encourage the emancipation of slaves on the model of Sierra Leone, whose capital, Freetown, had accommodated about 14,000 persons set free by the British between 1772 and 1778. But the Institution didn’t fight the “domestic” slavery within the African continent and hardly dealt with the future of those freed, left to cope for themselves. In 1823 thus appeared a “Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions” with members of the 1787 Committee, like Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, as well as Quakers or philanthropists such as Zachary Macaulay (a Scottish planter in Jamaica and a governor of Sierra Leone who launched a newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Reporter, in 1825) and the MP Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845). By dint of petitions to the Parliament, new measures enhanced the living conditions of slaves but were not enough to obtain total freedom. In 1832, the more radical militants of the movement, who had founded a dissident group the year before, the Agency Committee, broke away from the 1823 Society to fight for the unconditional and immediate abolition of slavery. Rather than staying in London, they decided to fight the issue outside the capital and gained to their cause the women, who, if they were still not allowed to vote, could sign petitions; more than 187,000 of them joined the Agency Committee’s campaign. Their efforts were not fruitless: on August 29th 1833, a bill was passed to programme the gradual abolition of slavery after a compulsory apprenticeship period of four to six years. So as to appease the anger of the “owners”, such a procedure allowed the exploitation of a cheap labour force to continue for some time, including children aged over six; this system was eventually abolished in 1838.
 
-12 June 1840, United Kingdom: with delegates from France and the United States, the BFASS organises in London the world’s first anti-slavery convention, held at Freemasons’ Hall. The conference helps to raise common issues on both sides of the Atlantic but also sharpens internal divisions. Because genders are segregated in Victorian London, the English majority refuses to seat several black and white women elected as American delegates; these can not vote and have to join women in the balcony as spectators. Moreover, the United States, where there are 1,350 local antislavery societies with between 120,000 and 250,000 members in 1838, resent the meddling of the former British coloniser regarding the servile status of the Blacks in the South. According to a Congressman from South Carolina quoted by Betty Fladeland, such criticisms are out of place because of “enslaved subjects” in Ireland and the abject poverty of the lower classes in England.
 
-1841, United Kingdom: France, Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia adopt a treaty recognising the right of each to halt ships on the high seas of any one of the group engaging in the slave trade.
 
-1843, United Kingdom: during another world anti-slavery convention, the BFASS opposes free trade and supports protectionism. According to the organisation, tariff reduction would lead to an increase in the British demand for Cuban and Brazilian sugar, produced at low cost through slave work, still legal in Latin American. Free trade between the British Empire and the rest of the world would also ruin the West Indies’ sugar plantations, which emancipated slaves and which enjoyed privileged trade relations with London. But such protectionism could also cause an increase in domestic prices for imported goods, bringing about general discontent in the British popular classes. These contradictions push some members to leave the BFASS and to create a dissident Provisional Committee dedicated to overthrowing slavery whilst remaining consistent with the principles of free trade.