British Legal Strategies and the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Abstract

Chapter 2 connects abolitionist efforts to induce the British government to reinvigorate its efforts to suppress the transatlantic slave trade from the 1840s onwards as the catalyst for the creation of new legal tactics. First, within the confines of the Foreign Office, a model standard agreement was devised that was to be concluded with African rulers, which furthered an agenda based on the idea of replacing the slave trade with ‘legitimate commerce’. The model agreement built on an existing tradition of including abolition clauses in treaties since the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Second, the implementation of the model agreement ran parallel to the increase in commercial power and the use of force to suppress the slave trade through the use of naval blockades and the bombardment of the coastline of West Africa.