Britain's Slave Research Articles

Historians, Activists and Britain's Slave Trade Abolition Debate: The Henry Dundas Plaque Debacle

Since the summer of 2020 debate concerning the commemoration of one of Scotland’s leading eighteenth century politicians has galvanised opinions. The heart of the controversy surrounds the wording on a new heritage marker erected in 2021 at the statue of Henry Dundas (later Viscount Melville) in St Andrew Square, Edinburgh. This article does not address the complex question of whether or not Dundas was an abolitionist, but only if he can be held accountable for a delay to abolition of the British slave trade as claimed on the plaque. My overarching argument is that Sir Geoff Palmer, the key figure behind the new plaque’s wording, has wrongly conflated arguments about whether or not Dundas was an abolitionist with assertions that he delayed abolition of Britain’s slave trade. Through identifying the flaws in his approach to the past, I highlight the problems that arise when individuals and institutions discount, marginalise and demean professional and longstanding historical expertise. Indeed, the heritage sector is grossly undermined by the lack of rigorous scrutiny for plaques and memorials erected to serve pressure group politics. Although this controversy is about one monument in one city, it has wider ramifications for how we remember and engage with the past.

Runaway Slaves in Britain: Bondage, Freedom and Race in the Eighteenth Century. https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/.

Runaway Slaves in Britain: Bondage, Freedom and Race in the Eighteenth Century. https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/.

Sugar, spirits, and fodder: The London West India interest and the glut of 1807–15

This article is an overview of the lobbying activities of the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants (the Society) during the period between Britain's slave trade abolition and the Battle of Waterloo. This lobby, at this point in time, continued to be dominated by Jamaican absentee planters and merchants. Their primary concern during the final years of the Napoleonic Wars was centered upon the dull sugar prices and excess supply of muscovado. In order to correct this oversupply problem through government intervention, the Society vigorously lobbied politicians and directed its member Members of Parliament to put forward several proposals that would enhance home demand while suppressing foreign supplies. The organization managed to achieve some success in manipulating policy during wartime, but Jamaican investors could not sustain government favor in the long run.

An Essay concerning Slavery: A Mid-Eighteenth Century Analysis from Jamaica

An anonymous pamphlet about slavery from mid eighteenth-century Jamaica adopted unexpected arguments. It offered radical suggestions for reforming the practice of slaveholding in a militarily vulnerable colony prone to slave plots and revolts. A dialogue format allowed its author to discuss a number of remedies, in the hope that a reasoned case could persuade the Ministry in London to act, rescuing the colonials from themselves by pushing Parliament to restrain Britain's slave trade. The arguments in this unexpectedly early text provide a fresh standpoint for reappraising the narrative of anti-slavery reform, offering an alternative perspective on where these arguments could start; on the legal options for challenging slavery within the common law tradition prior to the Somerset decision in 1772; and on the implications for individual colonial societies of the precedents that Somerset overturned.

Telling Untold Stories: Philippa Gregory's "A Respectable Trade" and David Dabydeen's "A Harlot's Progress"

In the fall of 1999, U.K. Channel 4 presented another season of its stories. Throughout October (Black History month in the U.K.), the story told on four consecutive Sunday nights was that of role in the circum-Atlantic slave trade.1 Produced by notable U.K. journalist Trevor Phillips and by Philip Whitehead, the series was handsomely presented, accompanied by an extensive web page and a bound volume. Britain's Slave Trade took as its topic the dark side of glorious imperial past. To an audience accustomed to gazing upon the monuments of empire, whether as tourists to Georgian cities like Bath, as visitors to great houses like Blaise Castle, or as consumers of yet another film about Jane Austen's England, the series had a simple message: the money for all this splendor came from somewhere. And in eighteenth-century England, far too often the origins of such wealth lay in the traffic in black slaves. As a private vice made into public (Mandeville), the circum-Atlantic slave trade has at last been brought forth as a topic for British prime-time debate. But what does it mean to tell an untold story? The phrase implies that the story preexists its telling, that it waits not to exist, but only to be enunciated. The series thus teased out the untold, articulating a story that apparently only awaited its own telling. The film crew skirted the circum-Atlantic, traveling to the former Gold Coast of Africa, to the Caribbean islands of Jamaica and Barbados, to Welsh estates, to the cities of Bristol and Liverpool, gathering both personal and academic testimony. The camera followed a white woman in search of her black slave ancestors and a black theologian seeking a white ancestor he believed to have existed. Britain's Slave Trade displayed nostalgia for a point of origin at which, for better or worse, everything would be perfectly clear. At such a moment, ancestors would be clearly recognized, whether in their perfidy or in their bondage, in their acts of complicity or their acts of resistance. At such a time, both doers and deeds could be clearly labeled. Individuals would be named, singled out, made culpable when necessary. Looking back at such a moment with the benefit of our hindsight, we would recognize at last the damage done and we would know what form reparation should take. The desire to tell the untold is also the desire to reach closure, and closure is construed as the therapeutic coming to terms with dark secrets once repressed but now brought into

New Light on Mansfield and Slavery

Popular history often credits Lord Mansfield with freeing the slaves in England by his decision in the Somerset case. That he did not do so is by now agreed and is a point featured in modern scholarship on slavery. This is the main burden, for example, of F. O. Shyllon's Black Slaves in Britain (1974). How extensively the popular history should be revised has not been settled. Newly discovered sources now permit a reassessment of this question.When the Somerset case arose in 1772, it was brimming with portent. The largest specter was the supposed mercantile dislocation that would follow abolition. Additional questions seemed unavoidable, such as the legality of a contract between a slave and his master, and the implications for other contracts if the slave contract were invalidated. The protracted case was an occasion of high drama in which early abolitionist efforts (especially those of Granville Sharp) were pitted against vested trading interests.Mansfield was caught in the middle. He was genuinely ambivalent about the subject of slavery. He accepted and endorsed the widely assumed mercantile importance of the slave trade, yet he doubted the validity of theoretical justifications of slavery, and he sought to redress instances of individual cruelty to slaves. By drawing on previously unexamined manuscript reports of the Somerset case, Lord Mansfield's trial notes, and newspaper accounts of the Court of King's Bench activity, this article will demonstrate the extreme delicacy of Mansfield's position and will establish more fully than has before been possible the ways in which Mansfield accommodated the various competing interests. In the process, the question of exactly what Mansfield said in his Somerset opinion should be put to rest.

The French Press and Great Britain's campaign against the slave trade, 1830-1848

This study, employing hitherto unexplored sources, provides an in-depth analysis of the French press's attitude during the July Monarchy toward Great Britain's efforts to eradicate the slave trade. During the 1830s the French press was largely favorable, despite its marked indifférence, to England 's campaign against the slave trade on the high seas. However, as of the early 1 840s a combination of différent factors, foremost of which was the Anglo-French right of search controversy, influenced the French press to focus its attention' upon Great Britain's slave trade policy and to adopt an extremely critical attitude toward it. From 1841 to 1845 - when the terrnination of the Anglo-French right of search agreements tempered the press's sentiments once again — French newspapers were nearly unanimous in denouncing England 's actions for impugning France 's honor, infringing upon the freedom of the seas and impeding France's maritime commerce. By indicating in detailed fashion the complexity of the French press's response to the issue of British slave trade repression, this article attempts to provide a means of evaluating the varied nature of French opinion on the question of the slave trade in the nineteenth century.

Fugitive Slaves in Britain: The Odyssey of William and Ellen Craft

Early on a December morning in 1848, long before anyone else stirred, two slaves, a man and woman, made their bid for freedom from a plantation, just outside Macon, Georgia. She, almost white, was dressed as a slave master, he as her valet. In four days they were in Philadelphia; three weeks later they moved to the safer city of Boston where they remained until the passing of the infamous Fugitive Slave Bill in September 1850 forced them to flee to England. Nineteen years were spent under the “ mane of the British lion ” free from the “ claws of the American eagle.” Finally, after the Civil War they returned as farmers to their native Georgia. Their bold odyssey in 1848 brought them fame and renown. It was a story of love, determination and resilience, the virtues of frontier America, conquering all odds. No other escape, with the possible exception of Frederick Douglass' and Josiah Henson's, created such a stir in ante-bellum America as did the Crafts'.

Black Slaves in Britain

Black Slaves in Britain

Black Slaves in Britain

Black Slaves in Britain

Black Slaves in Britain. By F. O. Shyllon. London: Published for The Institute of Race Relations by Oxford University Press. 1974. xi and 245 and (index) 6 pp. £4·50.

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Black Slaves in Britain

Black Slaves in Britain

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:SOCIOLOGY IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND: Theory and Methods. By Cora V. Baldock and Jim Lally.THE UNITED NATIONS: Confrontation or Consensus? The Limits of Voting Power. By Alan Watt.THE GENTILE ZIONISTS: A Study in Anglo‐Zionist Diplomacy, 1929–1939. By N.A. Rose.THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY: Essays in the Sociology of Politics. By F. Gross.ARTHUR GRIFFITH AND NON‐VIOLENT SINN FEIN. By Richard P. Davis.RETURN TO THE SOURCE: Selected Speeches by Amilcar Cabral, Edited by Africa Information Service.THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM. By David Coates.COMMON GLOBE OR GLOBAL COMMONS: Population Regulation and Income Distribution. By John C.G. Boot.SHEN PU‐HAI: A Chinese Political Philosopher of the Fourth Century B.C. By Herrlee G. Creel.U.S.‐PHILIPPINES ECONOMIC RELATIONS (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, 1971.)TRENDS IN THE PHILIPPINES: Proceedings and Background Papers. Edited by Lim Yoon Lin.MODERNIZATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE: Studies in Modernization, Religion, Social Change and Development in South‐East Asia. By S.H. Alatas.MODERNIZATION IN EAST MALAYSIA 1960–1970. By J.P. Ongkili.THE FUTURE ROLE OF SINGAPORE. By Dick Wilson.WAR AND POLITICS IN CAMBODIA: A Communications Analysis. By Sheldon W. Simon.INTERNATIONAL POLITICS: Foundations of the System. By Werner Levi.WORLD POWERS IN SOUTH AND SOUTH‐EAST ASIA: The Politics of Super‐Nationalism. By Zafar Imam.JAMES CONNOLLY: Selected Writings. Edited and with an Introduction by P. Berresford Ellis.A SHOW OF JUSTICE: Racial ‘Amalgamation’ in Nineteenth Century New Zealand. By A. Ward.POLITICAL WOMAN. By Melville E. Currell.LABOUR, RACE, AND COLONIAL RULE: The Copperbelt from 1924 to Independence. By Elena L.LORD BRUCE: The London Years. By Alfred Stirling.A NEW SYSTEM OF SLAVERY: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830–1920. By Hugh Tinker.POVERTY, INEQUALITY AND CLASS STRUCTURE. Edited by Dorothy Wedderburn.URBANIZATION IN AUSTRALIA: The Post‐War Experience. Edited by I.H. Burnley.STATE CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA. By Tony Cliff.CAPITALISM AND THEORY. By Michael Kidron.THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY IN THE AGE OF REVOLUTION, 17704823. By David Brion Davis.BLACK SLAVES IN BRITAIN. By F.O. Shyllon.RESOLUTIONS AND DECISIONS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION, 1898–1964. Four Volumes. Edited by Robert H. McNeal.THE GREEK STRUGGLE FOX INDEPENDENCE 1821–1833. By Douglas Dakin.THE ORIGINS OF EUROPE: Four New Studies in Archaeology and History. Edited by Desmond Collins.FEUDALISM, CAPITALISM, AND BEYOND. Edited by Eugene Kamenka and R.S. Neale.CAUCUS MINUTES 1901–1949: Minutes of the Meetings of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, Vol. 1 1901–1917. Edited and introduced by Patrick Weller assisted by Beverley Lloyd.THE MYTH OF LIBERATION: East‐Central Europe in U.S. Diplomacy and Politics Since 1941. By Bennett Kovrig.LOOK FORWARD, NOT BACK: Aborigines in Metropolitan Brisbane, 1965–1966. By Hazel M. Smith and Ellen H. Biddle.CITY POLITICS AND THE PRESS: Journalists and the Governing of Merseyside. By Harvey Cox and David Morgan.RADICALS IN URBAN POLITICS: The Alinsky Approach. By Robert Bailey, Jr.MEIJI 1868: Revolution and Counter‐Revolution in Japan. By Paul Akamatsu. Translated by Miriam Kochan.OKUMA SHIGENOBU: Statesman of Meiji Japan. By Joyce C. Lebra.REGION AND NATION: The Kwangsi Clique in Chinese Politics 1925–1937. By Diana Lary.THE PEASANT QUESTION (1937–1938). By Truong Chinh and Vo Nguyen Giap. Translation and Introduction by Christine Pelzer White.A HISTORY OF THE PORTS OF QUEENSLAND: A Study of Economic Nationalism. By Glen Lewis.CHURCH AND STATE IN TONGA: The Wesleyan Methodist Missionaries and Political Development, 1822–1875. By Sione Latukefu.THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION: Geographical Perspectives on Adaptation and Change. Edited by Harold Brookfield.THE NEW SOUTH PACIFIC. By R.G. Crocombe.MICRONESIA AT THE CROSSROADS: A Reappraisal of the Micronesian Political Dilemma. By Carl Heine.A FOREIGN POLICY FOR AN INDEPENDENT PAPUA NEW GUINEA. Edited by James Griffin.YOUNG AMERICA AND AUSTRALIAN GOLD: Americans and the Gold Rush of the 1850s. By E. Daniel Potts and Annette Potts.ERA OF CHANGE: The Awakening World—1789 to the Present. By A. Howland and C. Barr.EXPERIENCE OF NATIONHOOD: Australia and the World Since 1900. By K.J. Mason.IT DIDN'T JUST HAPPEN: Europe from the Later Middle Ages to the Age of Expansion. By J.J. Grady.AN INTRODUCTION TO AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION. By Kenneth W. Wiltshire.CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION IN CHINA: Changes in Management and the Division of Labor. By Charles Bettelheim.THE ASIAN IMAGE IN AUSTRALIA: Episodes in Australian History. By J.V. DCruz. Introduction by A.A. Phillips.

Black Slaves in Britain. By F. O. Shyllon. [London, New York and Ibadan: Oxford University Press (for the Institute of Race Relations, London). 1974. xi, 245 and (Index) 6 pp. £4.50 net.

Black Slaves in Britain. By F. O. Shyllon. [London, New York and Ibadan: Oxford University Press (for the Institute of Race Relations, London). 1974. xi, 245 and (Index) 6 pp. £4.50 net.

REVIEWS

Black Slaves in Britain. By F. O. Shyllon.Judicare: Public Funds, Private Lawyers, and Poor People. By S. J. BrakelBlue Cross—What Went Wrong? By Sylvia A. Law.Benjamin's Sale of Goods. First edition.Rayden's Law and Practice in Divorce and Family Matters in All Courts. Editor‐in‐chief: Joseph Jackson, q.c., ll.m. Editors: G. F. Turner, ll.b., Margaret Booth, ll.m., R. Conn and W. D. S. Caird. Twelfth Edition.Introduction to Land Law. By J. G. Riddall.The Law of Landlord and Tenant. By David Lloyd Evans.Lloyd's Maritime Commercial Law Quarterly. Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1–120. Editorial Board: G. M. Hale, Editor of Lloyd's Law Reports, E. R. Hardy Ivamy, ll.d., Maurice Megrah, q.c., and Paul E. Vivan.Introduction to Legal Theory. Second Edition. By John D. Finch.The Laws of Armed Conflicts. Edited by Dietrich Schindler and Jiri Toman.

Black Slaves in Britain

Black Slaves in Britain