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John Lok, a merchant from London, brings back a group of Africans to England to learn English so that they can help as translators in their homelands and break the monopoly that the Portuguese have over the African trade in gold, ivory, and pepper (Historic England, n.d.).

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The first English slaving expedition was made in 1562 by Sir John Hawkins. In the following years, he made three major slavery expeditions and set the pattern that later became known as the English slave trade triangle (Royal Museums Greenwich, n.d.).

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Britain and the transatlantic slave trade - Royal Museums Greenwich

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During the reign of King Charles II, the Crown and members of the Royal Family invested a lot of money in the African slave trade (Newman, 2020).

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The Royal African Company is founded to regulate the British slave trade. They establish a legal monopoly of the African coast from the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope (Historic England, n.d.).

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The monopoly of the Royal African Company ends. Thus, opening the trade to private traders from big English cities (Historic England, n.d.).

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Britain was dominating the slave trade with an average of more than 150 slave ships leaving Liverpool, Bristol, and London each year (Lewis-Jones, 2011).

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foto 5 British Cities in the 18th century

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Christopher Codrington, a colonial administrator and planter, left a lot of money earned from slave labour to endow the Codrington Library at All Souls College, Oxford (All Souls College, 2020). Slave-owning planters, merchants, and the masters of the trade were some of the richest people in Britain in the 18th century. The profits were used to build big townhouses and country homes, for example (Walvin, 2011).

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Britain made a lot of money from slavery and used a part of it for the financing of British capitalist development (Blackburn, 2011). The economy flourished by the production and distribution of products as tobacco, sugar, and cotton. A lot of money was invested in warehouses, factories, trading houses, and banks (Walvin, 2011).

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Quaker John Woolman’s anti-slavery tract, one of the first to profess opposition to slavery. The Quakers were the first religious denomination (In Britain as well as in America) to come out against slavery. This formed the beginning of abolition committees (Hochschild, 2011).

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foto 8 John Woolman's anti-slavery tract

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The Trial of The Zong. The Zong, a slave ship, left Africa in 1781 with 442 enslaved on board. After two months on the Atlantic Ocean, 62 enslaved people and seven crew members had died. The captain of the ship, Luke Collingwood, was afraid of the financial cost of more deaths. Enslaved people who died of disease were not covered by the ship’s insurance, but the enslaved who drowned were. The captain ordered to force approximately 130 enslaved overboard. He claimed it was necessary to do that to halt the spread of disease. During the trial between the ship’s owner and the insurance company the owner claimed that since it was legal to kill sick animals for the health of a ship, it was legal to treat enslaved people the same. The court agreed with the owners of the Zong, but the trial exposed the horrors aboard the Zong, and its story was republished by British abolitionists, who wanted to get the slave trade abolished (History.com Editors, 2020).

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The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade is founded in London (Historic England, n.d.). The organizers of the society were strongly against slavery itself, but the abolition of the trade in slaves was a more accessible target at the time (Ditchfield, 2007).

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foto 10 the society for effecting the abolition of the African Slave Trade

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The first bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade fails (British Library, n.d.).

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The transatlantic slave trade is abolished by the British parliament. On March the 25th the act that abolished the British slave trade passed. This act made trading slaves illegal. However, there had been little consideration about how best to enforce the legislation (Lewis-Jones, 2011).

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the Abolition of Slavery Act is passed by the British Parliament, abolishing the practice of slavery in all British territories (British Library, n.d.).

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Over 11 million people were forcibly transported from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to America. Fewer than 9.6 million survived the so-called middle passage across the Atlantic. Due to the inhuman conditions in which they were transported, and the violent suppression of any onboard resistance (Adi, 2012).