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Bodleian Library of
Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House |
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Bodleian Library of
Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House |
Address:
South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RG, England
Telephone: 01865 270908 (from
outside the UK: 44 1865 270908)
Email: rhodes.house.library@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Introduction
List
of Exhibition items
Principal manuscript
collections
2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire, with the bill passing Parliament on 25 March, and coming into force on 1 May. Hailed by Lecky, the great nineteenth century historian, as 'among the three of four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations', the Act was the culmination of a long campaign by the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and had been fiercely resisted by those, primarily the West Indian merchants and planters, who had a vested interest in the trade.
The trade in slaves from Africa to the Americas had begun in the mid-sixteenth century, and it has been estimated that approximately fifteen million Africans were transported across the Atlantic between 1540 and 1850. Ships of many European nations were engaged in the trade, but by the mid-eighteenth century English ships predominated, with Liverpool and Bristol the major ports involved. Conditions on board the ships were appalling, with mortality rates of around 20% amongst both slaves and crew members common in the 1750s. Both the British and French governments passed legislation to reduce the number of slaves carried on each vessel, and captains were paid a bounty if mortality rates fell below 3%. Paradoxically, this measure, whilst certainly reducing the level of mortality amongst the slaves (although not amongst the crews, where it remained at about 16-18%), also led to higher profits for the slave traders as a higher proportion of the slaves arrived in the West Indies in a healthy condition. The captains too profited from the bounty paid by the government as well as by their share in the sale of the slaves themselves.
Until the mid-eighteenth century the idea of slavery went largely unchallenged. However, in the second half of the century enlightenment ideas on natural rights and political liberty were beginning to cause a change in moral consciousness. Despite some earlier efforts, systematic campaigning on humanitarian grounds against the slave trade is generally regarded as having begun in the 1780s. The first petition to Parliament calling for abolition was organised by the Quakers in 1783. It was also the Quakers who set up a committee to obtain and publish information 'as may tend to the abolition of the slave trade', and this work was carried on by the more broadly based Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which was established in 1787. With Thomas Clarkson travelling the country to gather information and to stir up the local committees of the Society this was able to attract the support of a considerably wider segment of the population, and in 1788 over one hundred petitions were presented to Parliament. A further wave of petitions followed in 1792. On this occasion no fewer than 519 were presented, the largest number ever presented during a single session of Parliament, and it has been estimated that around 400,000 people, roughly 13% of the adult male population of the time, had put their names to them.
The anti-slave trade campaign was in many ways the prototype for all the mass political and humanitarian campaigns which have followed it, up to and including the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the campaign to Make Poverty History in our own day. The leaders of the campaign, men such as Wilberforce and Clarkson, saw their role as mobilising public opinion to such an extent that Parliament would be forced to act. This would be achieved through public meetings, the publication and distribution of books, pamphlets and circular letters, the drawing up of petitions and using the burgeoning newspaper press to highlight the issue. The sheer number of petitions presented to Parliament in 1788 and 1792 shows how successful these tactics had been in raiding awareness of the issue.
The anti-slave trade campaign was also one of the first to adopt an easily recognisable emblem or logo. Josiah Wedgwood's design, depicting a kneeling slave, with the famous motto Am I not a man and a brother? was reproduced on pottery and medallions, which were widely distributed and became the most easily recognisable image of the campaign. Later, recognising the important role played by women in the campaign, cameo brooches with the inscription Am I not a woman and a sister? were also produced
Almost equally recognisable was the depiction of the Liverpool slaver Brookes, which Clarkson realised was a powerful piece of propaganda for the abolitionist cause. First published in 1789, this was widely reproduced in pamphlets and broadsides of the time and has appeared in many books about the slave trade since. It appears on the cover of the Library's new publication, The Slave Trade debate (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2007; ISBN 1-85124-316-X), which reproduces the texts of a representative sample of contemporary pamphlets encompassing the arguments put forward by each side.
It was the abolitionists who set the tone of the debate, but the defenders of the trade responded in kind, and throughout the 1780s and 1790s each side issued a flood of pamphlets in an attempt to influence public opinion. The debate touched on many issues, including humanitarianism and the Rights of Man, the economic well-being of Britain's West Indian colonies, the state of the British mercantile marine and the Royal Navy (seen as crucial at a time of war with France), the condition of the poor in England, and, not least, the economic and moral condition of the African slaves themselves.
The Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House possesses a substantial number of the pamphlets published by each side in the debate, and this exhibition brings together a selection from both sides of the argument. The exhibition has been augmented by a number of related artefacts from the collection of Franklin Smith, to whom the Library is most grateful for their loan.
With a considerable weight of public opinion behind it, as evidenced by the petitions of 1788 and 1792, it may seem surprising that abolition did not happen for a further fifteen years, being finally achieved in 1807. The reason lies almost entirely with the war against revolutionary France, which broke out in 1793. In reaction to events across the English Channel, the government became increasingly suspicious of the radicalism represented by mass petitioning, a feeling strengthened by the news of the slave revolts in the French West Indies. At the same time, those in favour of the trade successfully presented themselves as the patriotic party, and were able to argue both that the trade itself was an imprtant nursery for British seamen, and that its abolition would lead to the loss of the British West Indian islands to the French or the Americans.
In the long run, however, the course of the war may have helped the abolitionist cause. After Napoleon had had himself crowned Emperor, he re-instituted slavery in the French West Indies, and France under the Empire, although still Britain's foe, was clearly no longer tainted by the Jacobinism of the earlier revolutionary regimes. Moreover, by 1805 many of the French and Dutch possessions in the West Indies had fallen into British hands, thus removing the fear of competition which had dominated much of the thinking of the West Indian traders and planters. In 1805 a Bill abolishing the slave trade to the newly conquered islands passed Parliament, and from this it was an easy step to move to outright abolition of the trade altogether.
The abolition of the transatlantic slave trade was in many ways only the beginning rather than the end of the story. The abolitionists never made any secret of the fact that their ultimate aim was total emancipation throughout the British Empire, but it was to take another quarter of a century's campaigning before this was achieved in 1833. Emancipation was not achieved in the United States until 1865 or in Brazil until 1888. Missionaries such as David Livingstone campaigned against the slave trade between east and central Africa and Arabia, and the Royal Navy devoted considerable efforts to intercepting slave trading ships throughout the nineteenth century.
As the focus of the anti-slavery movement changed, so the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was succeeded in 1823 by the grandly-named Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Empire, and then in 1839 by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, whose papers are also held by the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. The new society's early leaders included Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, as well as Thomas Clarkson. Today Anti-Slavery International remains the world's oldest human rights organisation, and is still actively campaigning against all forms of slavery world-wide. In 2003, following Anti-Slavery's conducting of the first national survey of slavery in Niger, the government of that country introduced a new law against slavery. Within the first six months of this measure coming into force over two hundred slaves were freed. The humanitarian concerns first raised by the abolitionists in the second half of the eighteenth century remain equally important in the first decade of the twenty-first
The abolitionists realised that if they were to succeed in their goal of swaying public opinion in their favour it was not enough to relay on an emotional appeal alone; it was also important to establish the facts. To this end Thomas Clarkson made an extensive tour of the country in the autumn of 1788 collecting evidence from those who had witnessed the slave trade at first hand, primarily seamen who had sailed to Africa themselves or who had served in the Royal Navy on the West Indian station. Their evidence was then made available in this volume. As published, the names of Clarkson's informants have been left blank, no doubt to protect them from any form of harrassment on the part of their employers. However, the Rhodes House Library copy has the majority of the names written in by hand, possibly by one of Clarkson's assistants who knew their identities
James Ramsay (1733-1789) was an important figure in the abolitionist campaign, but, perhaps because he died eighteen years before abolition was achieved, he has received less attention than figures such as Wilberforce or Clarkson.
He was born at Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, and, after training as a surgeon, joined the Royal Navy, serving aboard H.M.S. Arundel on the West Indian station. On 27 November 1759 the Arundel intercepted a British slave ship, the Swift, and Ramsay was so horrified by what he saw of the condition of the slaves that he resigned from the Navy and sought ordination to enable him to work amongst the slaves. From 1762 to 1777 he served as a clergyman on the island of St. Kitts, arousing the antagonism of the planters and government officials for his attempts to improve the welfare of the slaves. Later he rejoined the Navy and served as a chaplain, again in the West Indies. He returned to England in 1781 and became vicar of Teston, near Maidstone in Kent.
In addition to publishing his own works on the slave trade, Ramsay worked behind the scenes, preparing briefs for Wilberforce and other politicians, and providing evidence and arguments they could use in their speeches, both in Parliament and at public meetings around the country. Ramsay was well placed to carry out this role, as he had first-hand knowledge of conditions in the West Indies, something most of the leading abolitionists lacked.
The journal is open to show a part of the series of questions and answers which Ramsay himself used when giving evidence to a Parliamentary enquiry in 1788. It also contains drafts of several of his publications and copies of some of his correspondence with Wilberforce and others.
Unsurprisingly, there are very few first hand accounts of the slave trade written by any of those who had been enslaved. Equiano's book is the most notable exception, providing as it does a vivid description of the experiences of someone abducted into the slave trade. In the introduction Equiano states that the main purpose of the book is 'to excite in august assemblies a sense of compassion of the miseries which the Slave-Trade has extended on my unfortunate countrymen'. The book certainly succeeded in its aim, becoming an important work of propaganda for the abolitionist cause. It is still in print today.
By careful selection of quotations from the Bible, principally the Old Testament, it was possible to portray slavery as part of the divine order. This argument is presented in its starkest form in this pamphlet by the Rev. Raymund Harris, in which he attempted to show that 'the Slave Trade is perfectly consonant to the principles of the law of nations, the Mosaic Dispensation and the Christian Law, as delineated to us in the Sacred Writings of the Word of God'. Quoting from the Book of Leviticus, he asserted that God 'does not say ... of them MAY ye buy bond-men and bond-maids, but of them SHALL ye buy bond-men and bond-maids'. From this he drew the apparently logical conclusion that 'the word of God encourages the persecution of the slave trade'.
This interpretation of the Bible met with such approbation amongst the Corporation of Liverpool, the principal slave trade port, that they presented Harris with £100 as a mark of their appreciation.
Harris is rather a shadowy figure. A Spaniard, whose real name was Hormasa, he was a Jesuit priest who was expelled from his homeland and moved to Liverpool in 1773. There he worked as joint priest in charge of a secret Catholic church concealed within a warehouse. He quarrelled with his fellow-priest over the administration of the church's finances, and, after several years of wrangling, the Bishop ruled that he should not be permitted to exercise his ministry within ten miles of Liverpool. After further disputes, he eventually resigned from the church, and spent the last few years of his life campaigning in defence of the slave trade. He died soon after publishing this pamphlet in 1789.
James Ramsay was swift to answer Harris's pamphlet with this one of his own, whose title is self-explanatory. In it he ridiculed Harris's logic by showing that if everything in the Old Testament was accepted as the divine will, then crimes such as incest should be regarded as lawful. The New Testament, he argued, had amended and improved the human understanding of God's will. In his view 'he law of Moses was enacted in aid of natural religion till the perfect religion of Christ should be given to the world'. Moreover, even in the Old Testament, 'nothing ... countenances a trade in slaves', and Hebrew laws had guarded against their ill treatment. Ramsay emphasised the motives of the slave traders and pointed out that there was nothing in the Bible to justify their avarice or greed, or the means by which they obtained slaves, which he characterised as 'robbery, murder and oppression'.
In this sermon Agutter preached on the text 'God hath made of one blood all the nations of men, to dwell on the face of the Earth' (Acts, chapter 12, verse 26). Agutter followed Ramsay in arguing that the law of the Old Testament had been overtaken by the more humane dispensation of the Christian era. As he put it in this sermon:
'Slavery, or servitude, was indeed connived at by the Jewish Laws; but it was constrained by wise and merciful regulations; and we know that God winked at the times of that ignorance when men could not receive a purer law, or be influenced by better motives than those temporary rewards and punishments which were the sanctions of that dispensation'.
At the time of this sermon Agutter held a demyship at Magdalen College. He was well-known as a preacher, and many of his sermons were later published. Politically, he was a conservative, but he also held strong humanitarian views and was a consistent and long-standing supporter of the abolitionists.
Manxman Hugh Crow made a total of thirteen slaving voyages to the west coast of Africa, the last seven of them as master. He was regarded as one of the leading captains in the trade and in 1807 was specially selected to command the Kitty's Amelia, which made one of the last legal voyages by a slaver. His Memoirs, published after he retired from the sea, present a defence of the slave trade, in the course of which it is argued that the slaves were better off working on the plantations in the West Indies than they were as prisoners in Africa. In fact, Crow had little knowledge of conditions on the plantations, basing his argument on what he saw in Kingston, where the domestic slaves were treated markedly better.
Crow treated the slaves carried on his ships with a greater degree of humanity than many of his fellow captains, and his personal warmth towards them was sometimes reciprocated, as demonstrated by the song which some of them composed in his honour.
This book has recently been republished by the Library as The memoirs of Captain Hugh Crow: the life and times of a slave trade captain (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2007; ISBN 1-85124-321-6)
The cover of this book employs the famous anti-slavery logo 'Am I not a Man and a Brother', sixty years after it was first designed by Josiah Wedgwood. By this time slavery in the southern states of America was the principal target of the anti-slavery movement, and this book was intended to have wide circulation in the United States.
As with many other anti-slave trade publications, this pamphlet reproduced the famous diagram of the Liverpool slave ship Brookes, which Clarkson realised was a powerful piece of propaganda for the abolitionist cause. The image of the slaves tightly packed into the lower decks of the ship was a highly emotive one. It depicted them as dehumanised objects passively submitting to their fate and being packed on to the ships like herrings in a barrel. The message was clear: as the slaves were unable to rescue themselves it was up to the British public to demonstrate their humanitarian instincts and right this terrible wrong.
That the propaganda put out by the supporters of the slave trade had some effect on public opinion is demonstrated by this pamphlet, the author of which changed his mind, after originally signing the petition against the slave trade. Seemingly influenced by an unnamed 'Chaplain to a Regiment in Jamaica', he was led to believe that the slaves had 'each a little snug house and garden and plenty of pigs and poultry', and that it was 'a common thing to see at their feasts fine fowls, very good beef, English bottled porter and wine'. Consequently, like many others, he believed it was more important to ameliorate the condition of the poor at home than to abolish the slave trade and slavery on the West Indian plantations. This was a view shared by slave trade captain Hugh Crow, who, in his Memoirs, wrote 'I would rather be a black slave in the West Indies than a white one at home'.
The author of this pamphlet is generally thought to be Sir John Gladstone, the father of four times prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. It puts the economic case in favour of the slave trade, arguing that 'the West India planters and merchants have only been the humble instrument ... for extending the commerce and thereby adding to the wealth and strength of the British Empire'. Given the high mortality rates in the West Indies, it was argued that a 'constant supply of negroes from Africa' was needed to continue cultivation there, and that if this dried up many of the planters would leave the islands, which might then be lost to France or the United States.
Originally from Scotland, Gladstone was a leading Liverpool merchant who in 1803 purchased the Belmont estate in Demerara and began trading in sugar and cotton from the West Indies. He became chairman of the Liverpool West India Association and was a staunch defender of the rights of the West Indian planters. He was never directly involved in the slave trade itself, but he was a considerable slave owner, and as late as 1830 was still arguing against the total abolition of slavery in the West Indian colonies.
This handsomely produced volume was published to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade, but only appeared some three years after the event itself. It is open to show part of the poem West Indies, by James Montgomery and one of the fine engravings of pictures by Smirke which are used as illustrations. Other poems in the volume are James Grahame's Africa delivered and Elizabeth Benger's Poem occasioned by the abolition of the slave trade.
James Montgomery was a writer of both poetry and hymns, but he was also known as the radical editor, and later proprietor, of the Sheffield Iris. In 1795 he was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for publishing a poem celebrating the fall of the Bastille, and the following year served another six months for his reporting of the use of the militia to fire on a crowd of demonstrators in Sheffield.
A contemporary illustration of a slave market in the West Indies, published by an anti-slave trade body. The inscription reads:
'Fleecy looks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit Nature's
claim
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in Black & White the
same'.
Clay pipes such as this, with outsized bowls, were probably not designed for smoking, but as objects of display, to indicate that the owner was also a slave-owner.
The reverse depicts an African slave with a headdress of sugar cane, and the motto ' I serve'
Depicts an African head, surmounted by a crown. Thomas Goode established his first shop in London in 1827 and this plate probably dates from shortly after that date.
Shaped to depict an African head, this jar, like the clay pipe, would have indicated that its owner was a slave owner.
Album of pamphlets, cuttings, drawings, poems, etc. on slavery, ca.
1824-1828
(Mss. Brit. Emp. s.6)
Papers of the Anti-Slavery Society, 1820-
(Mss. Brit. Emp.
s.16-24)
Papers of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Bart.
(1786-1845)
(Mss. Brit. Emp. s.444)
Papers of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Bart.: press
cuttings
(Mss. Brit. Emp. s.445)
Correspondence of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton 1st
Bart.
(Mss. Brit. Emp. s.558)
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton: letters and papers
(Mss. Brit. Emp.
s.559)
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton and Priscilla Buxton:
letters
(Mss. Brit. Emp. s.547
Letters of Thomas Clarkson to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton,
1825-1828
(Mss. Brit. Emp. s.495)
Manuscript plans of Elmina and other Cape Coast castles,
ca.1774-1799
(Mss. Afr. s.733)
Uncompleted manuscript autobiography and other papers of Sir John Hobbis
Harris (1874-1940), parliamentary secretary to the Anti-Slavery
Society
(Mss. Brit. Emp. s.353)
Journal of the Rev. James Ramsay (1733-1789)
(Mss. Brit.
Emp. s.2)
Correspondence and papers dealing with slavery of Lady Simon,
1927-1951
(Mss. Brit. Emp. s.25)
Papers of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the
Universities Mission to Central Africa, 1700-
(Mss. SPG)
Scrap albums of letters, poems, cuttings and drawings, collected by Lucy
Townsend, Secretary of the West Bromwich branch of the Ladies Society
for the Amelioration of the Condition of Negro Slaves, 1825-1840
(Mss. Brit.
Emp. s.4,5)
Papers of the Rev. Horace Waller (1835-1896)
(Mss. Afr.
s.16)
