Was the Abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean during 1787 to 1834 due solely to the activities of the

humanitarians?
Introduction
The abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean was a crucial event in British and Caribbean history. The creation of the Emancipation Act in 1834 signified the end of a long campaign, which began in 1787, carried out by a group of persons in Britain called the humanitarians, men and women (such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson) who were opposed to the treatment of the enslaved people in the British Caribbean. They fought tirelessly using various available media (for example pamphlets, speeches in Parliament and books) to ensure that the enslaved people received freedom from the barbaric system. However, the gaining of abolition should not be accredited to the humanitarians alone, as there were several factors that helped to further their campaign. Specifically, activities like slave resistance and revolt helped to raise awareness of the deplorable system, the changes in Britains economic structure further turned public opinion against the system as they began to view it as unprofitable, and the writings of persons once involved in the trade further helped the abolitionists cause.

Although the campaigning carried out by the humanitarians in Britain was instrumental in the fight for abolition, there were other important factors that helped slavery to be abolished. These include: the effects of the resistance of the slaves, the effects of the Industrial Revolution and the actions of religious groups.

The fight for slaverys abolition first began with the slaves. After all, no one in Britain would have been greatly concerned about abolition had the slaves not resisted; that would have shown that the slaves were satisfied with their state. In truth, the slaves were subject to very harsh, dehumanising conditions, beginning with their capture in West Africa1, then the Middle Passage2, then plantation life. On the plantations, the slaves were subjected to the restricting British Slave Code, which allowed them little freedom, and, up to the 18th century, allowed the masters to dictate every facet of the slaves lives and to disregard their family lives, rights of slave women and at times even their health and care. Slaves were punished harshly under these codes, as the planter did not punish according to the crime, but set out to maim the slave as badly as possible to set an example. Methods of punishments included brutal floggings, mutilations, and gruesome death sentences (such as hanging). Slaves also faced problems such as the breaking up of families due to the selling of slaves to other planters, the raping of female slaves by white men, the feelings of homesickness for their homeland of Africa and the backbreaking manual labour of the fields.

It follows then that the slaves would rebel against their state and treatment. But rebellion did not only take place in major forms, for example the Sam Sharpe Rebellion, but everyday slaves resisted their condition in many ways. The ways in which slaves resisted slavery are, according to Emancipation to Emigration by Dyde et al, classified into two categories: Passive and Active Resistance. Passive resistance refers to non-violent, simpler forms of opposing slavery. Passive
1 2

See Appendix Extract 1. See Appendix Extract 2.

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resistance usually resulted in the slowing down and hampering of plantation labour and consisted of the slaves doing acts such as: feigning ignorance of how to work in the fields, working carelessly, frequently requesting permission to go a bush to relieve themselves, allowing themselves to become sick in various ways, which included reopening sores, and committing suicide and infanticide. Running away was also a form of passive resistance. Slaves usually fled the estate to escape punishment, or in response to a punishment already given. In other cases, where possible, slaves fled to mountainous areas and set up communities there, for example the Maroons in Jamaica. Active resistance took place less frequently, as there were severe punishments for such acts if caught. The effects of active resistance usually were sabotage and murder. These included the damage of machinery; which involved the burning of mills and ripe cane, the injuring and killing of plantation livestock, petty theft of estate property such as the masters belongings and murdering the whites. Both these forms of resistance affected the slave system in the following ways, they: 1) increased the cost of running the system; in that the planters had to spend money on replacing runaway slaves, slaves who killed themselves, and to obtain new slaves when slave women refused to have children and to replace damaged machinery and livestock; 2) reduced slave labour in the form of runaways and dead slaves. These two effects resulted in a reduction of production, and this, together with the fixed cost of maintaining slaves (giving them food and clothing), undermined the slave systems profitability to the British people. Even though these forms of resistance resulted in loss of life and property damage and did not give the slaves instant freedom, they helped bring to light the plight of the slaves to the British public. In 1790, investigations were done in Britain by a Parliamentary Committee on the treatment of slaves from capture to the plantation, and the truth about the conditions of slavery was revealed. Also, former slaves, namely Olaudah Equiano and Quobna

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Ottobah Cugoano, wrote autobiographies recording the horrors they endured as slaves (see Appendix Extract 1, 2 and 3) and beseeched the British to abolish the slave system (see Appendix Extract 4).

In addition to passive and active resistance, slave revolts also helped to undermine slavery. Slave revolts were major uprisings among slaves within which much damage was done. This form of resistance was feared by the whites the most, and everything possible was done to prevent any such occurrence, for example harsh punishments. However, in the 19th century, there were three major revolts in the British Caribbean that helped the abolitionist movement: the 1816 Barbados revolt, the 1823 revolt in Demerara and the Sam Sharpe Rebellion in Jamaica in 1831. Each successive one was more destructive than its predecessor, according to Dyde et al in Emancipation to Emigration 3rd Edition, and although none of these revolts brought about freedom in the colonies instantly, the effects helped to speed up the abolition process. For example, the planters abuse of the missionaries in the colonies following the revolts (for instance the imprisonment of John Smith after the Demerara revolt and his death in the squalid prison) turned British public opinion against the planters and slavery.

Similarly, religious groups had an impact on the abolition movement. Prior to the 18th century, the church of any significance in the British Caribbean was the Church of England. They were responsible for bringing Christianity to the slaves in the colonies. In fact, a group was formed by the church for that purpose, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, whose seal is shown in Figure 3 below, which operated a missionary training school in Barbados, Codrington College, named after Christopher Codrington, who had previously owned the plantations where the

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college resided. However, this was not the case in actuality. The Anglican clergy, on the whole, did not see to the welfare of slaves, in fact, slavery was practised at the college, with their slaves branded with the word Society on their backs (Hochschild 3). In addition, many clergymen were in league with the planters and depended on them, and since the planters did not want the slaves to learn Christianity or to read and write, the Anglicans did not minister to slaves. However, the 18th century saw a rise in nonconformist groups in the West Indies. Nonconformists refer to the religious groups which did not agree with the practices of the Church of England, and included the Baptists, Moravians and Methodists. These groups opposed the Church of Englands way of worship and some of their beliefs. As well as the Quakers, these groups were against slavery and in 1754, the Moravians first set up missions in the British West Indies, beginning with Jamaica, and settling in territories like St. Kitts and the Virgin Islands. Soon afterwards groups such as the Methodists and Baptists arrived in the West Indies. In the Caribbean, the missionaries faced severe opposition from the planters. The planters, who made up the colonial Assemblies, were against the slaves receiving religious instruction; in fact, they were even against them learning to read and write. These things, the planters feared; would undermine the slave system, in that the slaves exposure to Christianity, which seemed to profess an idea of equality among men, and learning to read the Bible and being influenced by its teachings could be dangerous, according to the planters (Braithwaite and Phillips 41), in that educating the slaves could incite them to be disrespectful to authority and to rebel, as said by Dyde et al in Emancipation to Emigration 3rd Edition. Also, the planters believed that these religious meetings could facilitate the planning of rebellions by the slaves. So, the planter-run Assemblies made laws that made it difficult for the Missionaries to preach to slaves, for example, if a missionary desired to teach in St. Vincent, according to a law passed in 1793, he

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had to be a resident there for a year. Even the missionary was authorised to teach by the planters, he still had to be able to teach the slaves on the plantations or to have meetings with them. The missionary also faced difficulty here. For instance, in Jamaica, the Consolidated Slave Act of 1808 prohibited Methodist missionaries from teaching slaves or to hold meetings with them in their chapels. In addition, if indeed a missionary was allowed to preach, he could not do so after sunset or before sunrise. Even then the planters did not allow the slaves that they converted to preach to their fellow slaves. On top of it all, the missionary societies were harassed by the planters as well as the slaves who were interested in the societies, like in the case of the Methodist chapel in Barbados, which, in 1789 was stoned by the planters and the slaves who attended the chapel were publicly flogged. In order to appease the planters, the missionaries preached values such as humility, obedience and hard work to the slaves, and told them that they were to endure suffering in order to gain a heavenly reward. However, this sometimes resulted in the slaves losing confidence in them, as they felt that the missionaries were taking the planters side. In spite of the conflict with the planters, the missionaries managed to convert many slaves. By 1834, around 47,000 slaves were members of a missionary church and 86,000 were interested in learning about Christianity (Claypole and Robottom 153). Since Christian beliefs and practices were similar to those of the African slaves (for example, both groups believed in a creator and life after death, and practised naming children in elaborate ceremonies [Christians did so in christening and Africans in outdooring]), the slaves felt a connection to Christianity, as they now found an acceptable way to carry out their beliefs. In this, the slaves gained a new confidence in themselves, especially in churches that had all black congregations. This was most prominent in Jamaica and the Bahamas, in the Baptist churches. There also, slaves could meet

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and discuss their issues and become informed about the abolitionist movement. It was in these religious meetings that slaves planned revolts, for example, the Sam Sharpe rebellion was planned at religious meetings that Sharpe held. The missionaries played an important role in the fight for abolition, in that they testified about the horrors of the system, for example, William Knibb, a Baptist missionary, gave a report in England after being acquitted from his arrest after the Sam Sharpe rebellion, and this greatly helped in the passing of the Emancipation Act. Also, their abuse in British colonies helped to turn public opinion against the planters and slavery (for example the imprisonment of Rev. John Smith after the Demerara revolt and his death in his cell angered persons in Britain). Finally, their influence on the slaves fuelled the slaves fight for freedom. Britains economical shift also had a part to play in the abolition of slavery. The movement coincided with Britains Industrial Revolution, which, according to Dictionary.com, was, the totality of the changes in economic and social organization that began about 1760 in England and later in other countries, characterized chiefly by the replacement of hand tools with power-driven machines. These machines employed the use of elements as water and coal, rather than hands, in order to work. As a result of these inventions (see Table 1 in Appendix), commodities such as cloth could be produced more cheaply and in larger quantities, with less people to operate them, for example, the Spinning Jenny . Because of this increase in production, the industrialists needed a market for these goods. Coincidentally, the world population had greatly increased at the time these machines were created and the production of these goods increased. This increase in population resulted in an increase in demand for these goods now being produced at a lesser cost and in larger amounts. Soon after, manufacturing in Britain was being replaced by industrialism, as new

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items were being created by these machines, such as nails, pots, iron bedsteads and new methods of transportation, for example the train and railway track. This rise in machine labour and decrease in manual labour in Britain posed a challenge to the slave system. In the British Caribbean, the planters either refused or could not afford to implement such machines (Braithwaite and Phillips 60), for example the planters resisted the use of the plough on the plantations. Besides, sugar profits began to fall for a number of reasons, such as a decrease in production due to slave resistance and the increased popularity of beet sugar (which cost less to produce) As a result, young first-time businessmen in Britain chose to invest in industry rather than sugar, as they viewed the sugar trade as unprofitable. This boosted the abolition movement in that the abolitionists were able to win over these industrialists by showing them that the sugar trade was not only unprofitable, but brutal and inhuman as well. Soon many industrialists joined the abolition movement, such as Josiah Wedgewood, a potter who was responsible for creating the porcelain cameo, shown below, that became the symbol of the abolition movement. Another economic factor that contributed to abolition of slavery was the introduction of cheaper goods, which included cheaper sweeteners for British consumers. The British people wanted to buy goods at a low cost, and West Indian sugar, which was once widely used in Britain, was becoming expensive as the West Indian planters had to increase costs in order to ease the blow they received from the rising costs of sugar production, which occurred ever since the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. So the British decided to find cheaper ways to sweeten their teas and other drinks. The solution came from the production of the sugar beet, which was begun by Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), as an alternative to British cane sugar which the British blocked access to in the war. Since the crop was cultivated in Europe (its origins were

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in Greece (Harveson, Robert M. 1)), transportation costs were reduced as it did not have to travel over the Atlantic. However, many British people preferred cane sugar to the sugar beet. This problem was solved by cane sugar being accessed from areas such as the East Indies. These areas allowed the British to get cane sugar at a cheaper cost than in the West Indies, as labour costs were lower in these areas. Also, the use of East Indian sugar gave the fight for abolition a push, as persons in Britain, seeing that sugar can be produced without slave labour at a much lower cost began to refrain from using West Indian sugar. Some persons even encouraged a boycott of West Indies sugar, for example, the Peckham Ladies African and Anti-Slavery Association published a book, Reasons for Using East Indian Sugar, in which they encouraged British people to refrain from buying slave-produced West Indian sugar, using arguments such as if persons continued to use this kind of sugar, let them reflect on what it took to produce it, as seen in this excerpt, taken from page 15 of the book: May every man, before he indulges his appetite with the blood-bought luxury, reflect on the price it costLet him bring home the subject home to his heart, and say, as he truly may, this lump cost the poor slave a groan; and this, perhaps, worn down by fatigue and wretchedness and despair, he sunk under his misery and died! The British public supported this move and soon there was a decrease in demand for West Indian sugar. This, combined with the fall in profits, weakened the British West Indian sugar trade. British planters began to lose their influence socially, politically and economically. When the British parliament underwent reforms in 1832, most planters lost their positions, which they were once able to purchase. Now those in opposition of slavery had gained power, which included the industrialists, and in 1834, the Emancipation Act was passed.

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Conclusion
Indeed, the efforts of the men and women called humanitarians were integral in securing slaverys abolition in the British Empire. Persons such as William Wilberforce, Thomas Fowell Buxton and Thomas Clarkson played an essential role in making the abolition of slavery a reality, by sharing the horrors of slavery with the British public and campaigning in the British parliament. However, the abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean cannot be credited solely to the humanitarians, as there were other factors involved that helped to bring about this change in Britains operations. Without events such as the Industrial Revolution and the series of slave revolts in the 18th century, the humanitarians would not have been so successful in their campaign for abolition.

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Bibliography About.com Inventors. 27 August 2011 <http://inventors.about.com>. Association, Peckham Ladies African and Anti-Slavery. Reasons for Using East Indian Sugar. London, 1828. Braithwaite, Edward and Anthony Phillips. The People Who Came. Kingston: Longman Publishers, 1989. Claypole, William and John Robottom. Caribbean Story Book 1. Kingston: Longman Publishers, 2001. Dyde, Brian, Robert Greenwood and Shirley Hamber. Emancipation to Emigration 3rd Edition. Oxford: Macmillan Caribbean, 2008. Harveson, Robert M. "History of Sugarbeet Production and Use." CropWatch Web site. 24 August 2011 <http://cropwatch.unl.edu/web/sugarbeets/sugarbeet_history>. Hochschild, Adam. "Slavery: How the Church of England treated its slaves." October 2006. The CBS Interactive Business Network. 26 August 2011 <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5391/is_200610/ai_n21399700/?tag=content;col1>. Media, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New. Teaching History.org. 2010. 27 August 2011 <http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/website-reviews/14607>. PBS. Africans in America. 27 August 2011 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h67.html>. Spartacus Education. 27 August 2011 <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk>. The Abolition Project. 2009. 26 August 2011 <http://abolition.e2bn.org>.

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Machine Spinning Jenny Steam Engine Spinning Mule Power Loom

Inventor James Hargreaves James Watt Samuel Crompton Edmund Cartwright

Appendix Date 1770

Powered By Steam

Late 1760s 1775 1785

Steam Water

Steam, mechanically operated Table 1: Inventions created during the Industrial Revolution

Uses To increase production of cotton To increase cloth production To increase cloth production To increase cloth production

Capture One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both. My sister and I were separated and I ended up in the hands of a slave dealer who supplied the Atlantic slave ships. Six months later I found myself on board a slave ship.
Extract 1, From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano.

The Middle Passage The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. The air soon became unfit for breathing, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died. This wretched situation was made worse by the chains. The shrieks of women, and the groaning of the dying, created a scene of horror almost unbelievable. Three desperate slaves tried to kill themselves by jumping overboard. Two drowned, the other was captured and beaten unmercifully. When I refused to eat, I too was beaten. Extract 2, From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano. Every day I saw the most dreadful scenes of misery and cruelty. My miserable companions were often cruelly lashed, and as it were cut to pieces. I saw a slave receive twenty four lashes of the whip for being seen in church on a Sunday instead of going to work." Extract 3, From Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Human Species by Quobna Ottobah Cugoano. "Is it not strange to think, that they who ought to be considered as the most learned and civilized people in the world, that they should carry on a traffic of the most barbarous cruelty and injustice, and that many think slavery, robbery and murder no crime?" Extract 4, From Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Human Species by Quobna Ottobah Cugoano.
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