How The West Abolished Slavery

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In the opening remarks of a recent Cato Institute event, David Boaz, the executive vice-president of the Cato Institute, asked an important question, “How is it that slavery went unchallenged for thousands of years, but disappeared in a single century?” Answering this question was James “Jim” Powell, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute.

Taking from his new book, Greatest Emancipation: How the West Abolished Slavery, Jim Powell explained the importance Thomas Clarkson played in ending the slave trade.

“[A British citizen in the 18th Century], Clarkson originally believed the slave trade to be too heavily entrenched in British society. Being an island, England relied heavily upon the British Royal Navy for protection. The navy and society viewed the slave trade as a ‘nursery for sailors’ that could be quickly called upon to serve in the navy.”

Dr. Powell explained how Clarkson understood that only when British society viewed the slave trade as harmful would people consider abolishing it.

“Clarkson was able to prove that the slave trade hurt the capability of the British Royal Navy to mobilize large number of sailors quickly . . . Shocking numbers of sailors die in the slave trade, more than in any other commerce . . . The slave trade was soon considered the ‘graveyard for sailors.’”

Clarkson was able to present the slave trade as harmful to British society, yet had to convince the government that society no longer endorsed the slave trade.

“Clarkson soon began to give speeches. He collected shackles, whips, leg braces, neck braces, thumb screws, and all kinds of tools used to discipline slaves . . . He talked about shocking practices, for example the practice of dumping the sick slaves overboard to drown. Traders could collect insurance on slaves who went overboard, but not the sick . . . Clarkson went to parliament with a petition signed by 400,000 people who wanted the slave trade banned.”

Dr. Powell explained that Clarkson’s efforts led “parliament to pass a bill that made it illegal for British citizens to engage in the slave trade in 1808.”

From this act passed in 1808, “Britain began a decades-long process to implement an anti-slave trade treaty with the rest of Europe and the United States,” stated Powell. “The British Royal Navy helped enforce these anti-slave trade treaties . . . And, this campaign by the Royal Navy went on for half a century.”

“Britain [did] a great deal to start the [global] emancipation processes,” stated Dr. Powell. And, Thomas Clarkson did a great deal to ignite Britain’s anti-slave movement.

Lance Nation is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.