A Sad, Bad History

Queen Elizabeth I was appalled when she was told that Sir John Hawkins had gone into the slaving business. The venture “was detestable and would call down the vengeance from heaven upon the undertakers,” she said.

Then Hawkins showed her the accounts. The Queen immediatelyinvested in his next slaving voyage. That pretty much sums up the Englishattitude towards slavery. It was “detestable.” But they held their nosesbecause the trade made shedloads of money.

Slavery helped finance Britain’s industrial revolution and stately homes as well as providing the economic foundation stone of colonial America.

The British did not invent slavery. Historians estimate that30% of the Roman Empire were slaves. The difference is that the African slavetrade was based on racial superiority which subsequent generations are stilltrying to shed.

The Portuguese were the first in modern times to deal in theAfrican flesh. But by the end of the mid-fifteenth, their Spanish neighbourshad replaced them. King Charles V insured Spanish dominance by selling therights to a monopoly—the asiento– to provide African slaves to Spanishcolonies.

If anyone other than the asentista tried to sell slaves in aSpanish colony the captain and crew could be tried as pirates. This did notstop Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake. The two men are better known forcapturing Spanish treasure ships, circumnavigating the globe and saving Englandfrom the Spanish Armada. But they were also England’s first slave traders.

The first Black slaves in America arrived in 1619. But theAfrican tsunami did not hit the American South until the very end of the 17thcentury. Until then the southern plantations relied primarily on indenturedservants. It is estimated that up to a half of all the white immigrants to theoriginal thirteen colonies between 1606 and 1776 were indentured servants.

African slaves arrived in major numbers after 1675 when thefuture King James II took the lead in forming The Royal African Company to establisha royal foothold in the profitable African slave trade. Because of thecompany’s royal connections, it became official government policy to encouragethe colonials to buy slaves. In 1650 there were only 300 slaves in all ofVirginia. By 1700 they were being imported at the rate of a thousand a year. Itis estimated that between 1713 and 1776 an average of 70,000 slaves a yearcrossed the Atlantic in British ships

Slavery, however, threw up a moral dilemma for the Americanauthors of such high-flown phrases as “All Men are created Equal”. Slave-owningfounding fathers such as Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, recognisedthe problem but were too closely tied to the economic benefits to find asolution.

As the Americans struggled to reconcile the high-flownideals of the Declaration of Independence with the institution of slavery,British abolitionists, led by William Wilberforce, campaigned for a ban on theslave trade. The breakthrough came in 1807 when Parliament voted to abolish theslave trade in the British Empire. This was followed by a second Wilberforcecampaign to ban slavery outright. He achieved his goal in 1833 and died fivedays later.

One of those who attended Wilberforce’s funeral was WilliamLloyd Garrison. The year before, the Bostonian had helped to form America’sfirst serious abolitionist organisation. By 1840 the American Anti-SlaverySociety had 100,000 members and strong support from the British who—now thatthe empire had been dealt with—shifted their full attention to America. Britishabolitionists supplied money, literature, campaign tactics and speakers.

With the end of the Civil War the British public lostinterest in the plight of African-Americans. They were free. The South’s JimCrow laws that followed Reconstruction were of little concern to the Britishpublic until well into the 20th century. This is mainly due to the fact thatthe British did not have clean hands when it came to the treatment of its Blackcolonial subjects. For centuries they had been regarded as an inferior race. Itwas difficult to reverse that mind-set.

Until the 1950s most public places in the British colonieswere segregated along the same lines as in the American South. The Afrikanersare blamed for South Africa’s apartheid, but the foundations were laid by theBritish. The Glen Grey Act of 1894, put limits on the amount of land Africanscould own. Blacks were denied the vote in 1905. The infamous pass laws were aBritish creation. The 1923 Urban Areas Act introduced residential segregationand in 1926 Africans were banned from skilled trades.

The first cracks in the segregation policies of the AmericanSouth appeared in 1954 when the US Supreme Court ruled that racial segregationin public schools was unconstitutional. The move started the civil rightsmovement which eventually culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act which banneddiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, colour, religion or national origin.But for many African-Americans the civil rights legislation was too little toolate, and definitely too slow. They demanded positive discrimination to redressthe balance of centuries of slavery and bigotry.

The race issue that began with the British control of theslave trade and continued with the mistreatment of African-Americans remains aproblem and stain on the national character of both countries and another setof dark Anglo-American roots which helps to bind the two countries together.

Tom Arms is a regular contributor. This article is a precis of the slave trade chapter from his forthcoming book “America: Made in Britain.”