British involvement in slavery is over 2,000 years old, but not as it is known to us. Cicero noted in about 54 BC that the British enslaved by Julius Caesar were too ignorant to fetch fancy prices in the market. Domestic slavery – usually called serfdom existed in Britain. Serfs were bought and sold with the estate on which they had to work for a fixed number of days a year without payment (about 6); they could only marry with their lords consent, could not leave the estate and had few legal rights (they had traditional eclesiastical rights until Bishop of Cantebury murdered). However, as they could not be easily replaced, they were not as physically abused as enslaved Africans a few centuries later. The institution of serfdom was not abolished in Britain until 138. Britons were also enslaved by the Barbary pirates. The cross-Mediterranean trade was subject to piracy and privateering (piracy licensed by ruling monarchs). Some of the British enslaved by the north Africans (the Barbary coast) were used as galley slaves; others fulfilled the usual tasks allotted to slaves; those who converted to Islam had an easier time. The men seized by the British from Barbary vessels were either sold as slaves or executed as pirates. The enslaved/imprisoned could be ransomed: Queen Elizabeth I attempted to have the Negroes resident in Britain volunteer to hand themselves over to a trader named Caspar Van Senden. This Lubeck trader had told the Queen that he could sell them as slaves in Spain and Portugal, which would enable her to repay his expenses in ransoming and returning to England some English prisoners held there. It seems that neither free Africans nor the owners of any enslaved Africans in Britain were prepared to obey the Queens proclamation, as she had to issue it a number of times. Arab and then Muslim slave traders had been marching Africans, or sailing them across the Red Sea and then the Indian Ocean, from about the sixth century AD. Probably at least as many women as men were taken: the women were used as domestic labour and as concubines in the harems of the rich; men were also domestics, but most were destined for the military. Some, used and abused as plantation labour in the area we now call Iraq, eventually revolted and were not again used for such labour. The Africans were not seen as non-human objects, had rights and could rise in the ranks of the army and the society. In most Arab societies they could also intermarry and the resulting children were not slaves. Slavery in Muslim societies was not racial – the Turks enslaved my Hungarian ancestors while they ruled Hungary from the sixteenth century. There was also an export of east Africans to India and the intermediate islands. The conditions of slavery in India were similar to those in the Muslim world, more akin to serfdom in medieval Europe than to the conditions imposed upon enslaved Africans in the Americas. Europeans enslaved Africans because they needed labourers to work in the new world – the Americas. In the process of conquest they annihilated many natives. Those who survived the Europeans guns and diseases refused to work in the mines taken over by their conquerors, or on the plantations they created. The Europeans tried two solutions: export prisoners, and export men who indentured themselves to pay off debts. Both groups either succumbed to diseases or ran away to freedom. So another solution was sought. Europeans could not send armies to conquer Africans or to kidnap them. They made their purchases from the local kings and chiefs. The traders found all conceivable means to foster warfare, as Africans were usually only willing to sell prisoners-of-war. The enticement of European goods – especially guns and ammunition – eventually resulted in kidnapping gangs raiding neighbouring peoples. Those caught or taken prisoner were marched to the coast to await purchase. How many were killed during the raids, wars and marches is unknown. The number transported is estimated to be between 12 and 20 million. The African sellers had no notion of the monstrous forms of slavery that were practised by Europeans in their colonies. Africans both resisted kidnapping and fought back against those who wanted to capture them in wars. The devastation wrought by the constant warfare and kidnappings, and the export for hundreds of years of millions of the most able-bodied and vigorous of the population had a long-lasting effect – still there today. There was simultaneous slave raiding and slave trading by African Muslims and Arabs, for export to the north and the east. As Muslims were enjoined by the Koran not to enslave each other, Muslim slavery was not based on skin colour, but on religion. Britain followed in the footsteps of the Portuguese in voyaging to the west coast of Africa and enslaving Africans. The British participation in the nefarious trade was begun by Sir John Hawkins with the support and investment of Elizabeth I in 1573. By fair means and foul, Britain outwitted its European rivals and became the premier trader in the enslaved from the seventeenth century onwards, and retained this position till 1807. Britain supplied enslaved African women, men and children to all European colonies in the Americas. The trade became a very lucrative business. Bristol grew rich on it, then Liverpool. London also dealt in slaves as did some of the smaller British ports. The specialised vessels were built in many British shipyards, but most were constructed in Liverpool. Laden with trade goods (guns and ammunition, rum, metal goods and cloth) they sailed to the Slave Coast, exchanged the goods for human beings, packed them into the vessels like sardines and sailed them across the Atlantic. On arrival, those left alive were oiled to make them look healthy and put on the auction block. Death rates (during the voyage) are unknown: one estimate, for the 1840s, is 25 per cent. Plantation and mine-owners bought the Africans – and more died in the process called seasoning. The slaves were treated as chattels, to be worked to death as it was cheaper to purchase another slave than to keep one alive. Though seen as non-human, as many of the enslaved women were raped, clearly at one level they were recognised as at least rapeable human beings. There was no opprobrium attached to rape, torture, or to beating your slaves to death. The enslaved in the British colonies had no legal rights as they were not human. Europeans who were Roman Catholics often treated their slaves more humanely than those of the Protestant faith, perhaps especially the members of the Church of England, which owned slaves in the West Indies. (Roman Catholics did not deny Africans their humanity and made attempts at conversion, while British slaveowners forbade church attendance.) The enslavement of Africans was justified in Britain by claiming they were barbaric savages, without laws or religions, and, according to some observers and academics, without even a language; they would acquire civilisation on the plantations. In the 1770s, some Christians in Britain began a campaign to convert the population to their perspective and to influence Parliament by forming anti-slavery associations. Slavery was declared a sin. According to William Wilberforce, the main abolitionist spokesperson in Parliament, it was this fear of not going to heaven that impelled him to carry on the abolitionist struggle for over 20 years. The Act making it illegal for Britons to participate in the trade in enslaved Africans was passed by Parliament in March 1807, after20 years of campaigning. A few Britons – including the British Africans – were not content with abolition and campaigned for the emancipation of slaves. history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Slavery/articles/sherwood.html
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 10:08:03 +0000
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