The constant calls for Britain to apologise for slavery miss one hugely important fact: that Britain was almost single-handedly responsible for abolishing the abhorrent trade, at immense cost to itself. Former Royal Navy officer Lewis Page makes the case in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt.
There’s a lot of discussion nowadays about Britain’s history of involvement in slavery. Indeed there was a lot of actual, formal slavery here in Roman times and the Dark Ages, mostly imposed by white people on other white people. That gradually mutated into feudalism and so then into ‘freedom’ for people living in England itself no matter what their skin colour: but nobody is very interested in that.
The slavery that people would rather discuss nowadays is the Atlantic slave trade, in which Britain was most definitely – and by modern standards, shamefully – involved. A vessel involved in this typically made a triangular voyage: outbound from Britain or Europe with a cargo of trade goods to West Africa, where goods and/or money would be used to buy African slaves. The slaves would then be taken on the Middle Passage across the Atlantic and the survivors sold to buyers in the Americas. The ship would then load a cargo for Europe – perhaps sugar or cotton – and so return home, usually having made a handsome profit on all three legs. American ships had their own variations on this theme.
The British (and other European/American traders) did not enslave the Africans: that was done by other Africans. African kings would typically sell off prisoners they had taken in wars or purposeful slave-taking raids against other nations. If people today would like to rename something or pull down some statues, they might consider renaming ‘Camp Gezo’, the military base in modern-day Benin, or vandalise a statue of King Gezo, ruler of Dahomey from 1818 to 1859. Gezo enslaved huge numbers of Africans and built an economy based on selling them to the Atlantic traders. The forced marches in which slaves were moved to the coast by Gezo and other African rulers were often as deadly as the Middle Passage itself. Things could always be worse, however: Dahomey also had a tradition of religious human sacrifice.
By the time Gezo was on the throne of Dahomey the slave trade was still very lucrative, with willing buyers across the Atlantic and many northern nations still willing to carry the trade. But one nation in particular had changed its ideas on slavery: that nation was Britain. British slave traders had been in the triangle trade along with Americans and Europeans for around 250 years. But now, not only did this become illegal for Brits, but the Royal Navy – then the most powerful navy in the world – began making active efforts to suppress the African slave trade altogether.
This was an almost unbelievably surprising and forceful move in the context of the time. A few other nations had declared slavery illegal in places where there was no slavery, it is true. This had long been decided in England by the Somerset v Stewart court case of 1772, following which slave owners stopped bringing slaves onto English territory – it was generally considered that this automatically made them free.
No other nation, however, then went on to say that the very slave trade itself should be outlawed and wiped out, and went still further to back its words with deeds.
If we want some new statues and celebrations to make us proud to be British, let us celebrate the men of the RN West Africa Squadron, aka the Preventive Squadron. They fought the Atlantic slave trade at great cost and hardship throughout the 19th century – largely alone during the early, hard part. Mortality among British sailors on the anti-slavery service was more than five times normal, mainly due to disease but also in combat. From 1808 to to 1860 the RN West African force captured or destroyed 1,600-plus slave ships and freed 150,000 slaves at sea: many more in operations ashore, sometimes hundreds of miles up dangerous rivers in ship’s boats. Something like 1,600 officers and men never came back from operations on the slave coasts in the early decades.
Worth reading in full.
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