“Anti-Slave Trade Cruzader”: Lord Holland’s Contribution to the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its Impact on the Anglo-Portuguese Political and Diplomatic Relations

Abstract

This article investigates the role of Lord Holland in the abolition of the Slave Trade and in the enforcement of abolition on other nations. Holland, nephew of Charles James Fox, was the embodiment of Whig idealism, yet there was ambiguity in his position. In the frst place much of Holland’s income came from a sugar plantation in Jamaica so that his support for the abolition of slavery itself was highly qualifed. Secondly, Holland was an ardent lusophile and British attempts to suppress the Portuguese Slave Trade produced strains in an alliance that had lasted since the fourteenth century.