Human Traffacking In The 19th Century

716 Words3 Pages
Jesus R. Silva Government 1301 P.15 Professor Clark Human Traffacking From the 17th century until the 19th century, almost twelve million Africans were brought to the New World against their will to perform back-breaking labor under terrible conditions. The British slave trade was eventually abolished in 1807 (although illegal slave trading would continue for decades after that) after years of debate, in which supporters of the trade claimed that it was not inhumane, that they were acting in the slaves’ benefit, etc. The rationalizations and defenses given for slavery and the slave trade were absurd and self-serving. Slavery was a truly barbaric, and those who think that they can control what another group of people eat, where they sleep,…show more content…
Africans were chained and packed into quarters unfit for movement or proper breathing. The only hope of escape rested in suicide by jumping overboard. With the British Parliament's outlaw of the slave trade in 1808, the naval superpower set sail to enforce total European abolition. The Society of Friends, along with other such concerned parties, published accounts of the horrific middle passage to distribute amongst still practicing nations. These accounts, supported by memoirs such as Oladuah Equiano's, who survived the journey, informed the masses and catalyzed the destruction of slavery. The atrocities continued once the Africans arrived in the West Indies, but resistance began to grow once on the plantation. Great debate exists even today over just how and why the British Parliament voted to abolish the slave trade. By the late 1700's, the abolition movement had become strong enough to exert considerable pressure on Parliament, and an array of differing arguments were being made for abolition. Former slave Olaudah Equiano presented both a moral and an economic case for abolition, in the latter sounding a great deal like Adam Smith. Religious groups such as the Providence Society presented a fiery moral case based on their interpretation of the scripture. One of the most important questions surrounding the abolition of the slave trade is this one: why did it happen? Was it the intellectual climate of the Enlightenment or the new economic fields that were opening up in India, or in the textile mills of Manchester, providing alternatives to British entrepreneurs and investors? CLR James argues in his book The Black Jacobins that, despite all the soliloquies in Parliament on the "immorality" of the slave trade, only economic necessity that brought about abolition. British commerce was, of course, high on the list of priorities to members of Parliament considering abolition.

More about Human Traffacking In The 19th Century

Open Document