On this day, in 1781: The Zong Massacre. The Zong Massacre was a mass-killing of approximately 142 slaves that took place in 1781, on the Zong, a slave ship owned by a Liverpool slave-trading syndicate. The resulting court cases, brought by the ship-owners seeking compensation from the insurers for the slave-traders lost cargo, established that the deliberate killing of slaves could in some circumstances be legal. It was a landmark in the battle against the African slave trade of the eighteenth century, and inspired abolitionists such as Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, leading to the foundation of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 05:43:03 +0000
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