On St George’s Day, Should We Feel Ashamed About Britain Profiting From the Transatlantic Slave Trade, or Proud That We Helped to Stamp it Out?

We’re publishing an original essay today by Dr. Paul Jones, Head of History at an independent school, to mark St. George’s Day. Dr. Jones takes issue with the fashionable view that Britain’s history is an unbroken litany of oppression, exploitation and self-deception and points out that, while we bear some of the responsibility for the horrors of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the British were hardly alone in participating in slavery, and, unlike other nations, we were at the forefront of abolishing that trade.

First, Dr. Jones focuses on the debit side of the moral ledger.

According to Martin Meredith, Britain was responsible for the trafficking of over 600,000 slaves from Africa to America between 1791 and 1807. The National Archives suggests that Britain transported 3.1 million slaves between 1640 and 1807, though some estimates put the figure far higher at 12.5 million and the UN suggests about 15 million people were shipped as slaves across the Atlantic. Conditions on board slave ships, known as ‘Guineamen’, were utterly horrific, with slave traders cramming as many people below deck as possible to maximise potential profit and offset the costs of those who died during the Middle Passage. From the 1500s to the 1800s, 10% to 30% of slaves being transported died in the cramped and insanitary conditions of their ships. As Olaudah Equiano’s account of his experience of the Middle Passage shows, treatment of slaves was predictably brutal as slaves were regarded as cargo rather than humans, with floggings and beatings being used to maintain control. Even worse things could happen. One infamous incident occurred in November 1781 when the crew of the British slave ship Zong threw over 130 slaves into the sea to save food and water and strengthen their case for an insurance claim. Arrival in America and living on a plantation was hardly any easier either. Disease was rife and one in three slave children died before the age of 10. Slave owners handed out all manner of horrendous punishments to those who resisted or tried to escape.

He then contextualises this by pointing out how many other countries and empires have been involved in slavery throughout history.

The truth of the matter is that England arrived relatively late to the slave trade. Slavery had existed for thousands of years before England engaged in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Ancient Egypt relied on slave labour for construction projects, notably the pyramids, and ancient Greece likewise made use of slaves – Herodotus claimed slaves, known as helots, outnumbered free people by as many as seven to one in ancient Sparta. The Roman economy heavily relied on slaves too. Viking raiders enslaved people in any area they targeted, whilst Arabs began enslaving people from Africa from about the ninth century, establishing the trans-Sahara slave trade. Arab slave traders continued to be prolific in East Africa throughout the 19th century, and pirates from North Africa enslaved at least one million European people between 1500 and 1800. Slave labour provided the power source for the galleys deployed by Italian city states and the Ottomans for centuries and proved crucial in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Roughly 6.5 million people were enslaved and shipped across the Black Sea from 1200 to 1760.

English people were themselves subjected to the terror of slavery as the coastline of Britain was frequently targeted by Barbary pirates. So severe was the problem that it was stated in the Calendar of State Papers in May 1625 that “the Turks are upon our coasts. They take ships only to take the men to make slaves of them”. Raids by Barbary pirates became so problematic that Parliament established the Committee for Algiers in December 1640 to deal with the ransoming of those who had been taken into slavery. Edmund Carson was sent to Algiers by Parliament in 1645 to negotiate the release of English people taken captive and he ended up spending the final years of his life trying to secure the liberty of further English slaves. Yet, despite Parliament’s efforts, North African pirates continued to terrorise England’s coast until combined British and Dutch military forces finally stamped the problem out in 1816 and freed 4,000 slaves in the process.

Finally, Dr. Jones describes Britain’s efforts to stamp out the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The Royal Navy was deployed to actively suppress slave trading and in 1808 the West Africa Squadron was formed under the command of Commodore Sir George Collier to hunt down and intercept ships involved in slave trading. Some £4 million was spent from 1870 to 1890 maintaining naval forces off the coast of East Africa for the purpose of suppressing slave trading. This would equate to £547 billion in today’s money being spent on efforts to fight for freedom, whereas the U.K. Government has perhaps spent anything from £310 to £410 billion on efforts to restrict freedom through Covid measures. Average GDP from 1870 to 1890 was £1.259 billion and defence spending during that period typically constituted £0.03 billion, or 2.38% of GDP (Britain has often spent about 2% of GDP on defence in recent years). Maintenance of anti-slavery patrols on East Africa alone thus accounted for about 0.015% of GDP or 0.634% of defence spending, and all done with just a fraction of the number of bureaucrats we have today. Whilst it may be true that only a small percentage of slave ships were intercepted by the Royal Navy, perhaps less than 10% by the West Africa Squadron, and some might complain that Britain should have committed more resources to the task, the fact of the matter is that Britain made a clear effort (and a far greater one than any other country) to suppress slave trading. That effort yielded results. Around 1,600 slave ships were intercepted by the Royal Navy between 1808 and 1860, liberating about 150,000 slaves. Liberated slaves often ended up joining the Royal Navy and were themselves involved in freeing other slaves. Between 1866 and 1869, a further 129 slave ships were captured and another 3,380 slaves were freed. Action by the Royal Navy in 1873 shut down the slave market in Zanzibar and British Governor-General, Charles Gordon, made concerted efforts to end the slave trade in the Sudan. It was after Khartoum was captured and Gordon killed by Mahdist forces in January 1885 that the slave trade grew again. British anti-slave trade operations continued into the 20th century, with British action suppressing the slave trade in Tanganyika in 1922. One simply cannot ignore or deny the fact that Britain was at the forefront of the anti-slave trade movement.

Worth reading in full.