Tagged with William Wilberforce
Resource : Drawer handle with abolitionist plaque
In the late 1700s, the image of a kneeling, enslaved African man, accompanied by the words ‘Am I not a man and a brother’ became the most prominent emblem for those wishing to abolish the Transatlantic slave trade, in both Britain and America. As well as appearing in books, prints and pamphlets, it was also reproduced on an extraordinary variety of everyday and household items – from crockery and soft furnishings, to jewellery and hairpins.
Resource : William Wilberforce speaking out against slavery in the House of Lords
The movement to abolish the Transatlantic slave trade was a long and difficult struggle. Campaigners for abolition used every means they could, including sugar boycotts, meetings, petitions, publications, and circulating images showing its shameful nature, to bring the issue to people’s attention in Europe. Enslaved Africans played an essential part, having long resisted their enslavement and treatment through ‘go-slows’, revolts, intellectual and religious claims, and demonstrable capacity to retain and transmit their African or creole (mixed) cultures and languages. Escaped or freed slaves forced judges and social elites to confront the issue through court cases, publications, and performances. Propelled by much of this pressure and evidence, William Wilberforce led the long political campaign to outlaw the slave trade in Britain.
Resource : Thomas Clarkson’s campaign chest
Between the 1500s and early 1800s, millions of Africans were kidnapped, sold and transported to the Americas to work as slaves, in unimaginably cruel conditions, on hugely profitable plantations, producing sugar, tobacco and other commodities. These plantations were largely owned by Europeans and Euro-Americans. Britain grew rich on the profits from this transatlantic slave trade, which were reinvested into other economic sectors. Only in the late eighteenth century did public opinion slowly begin to turn against the trade in Africans, and campaigners for abolition used every way they could to bring the issue to people’s attention in Europe.
Resource : The House of Commons 1783-94 by Karl Anton Hickel
William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister of Britain through the French Revolutionary and early Napoleonic Wars in the late 1700s and beginning of the 1800s. He was known as ‘the younger’, to distinguish him from his father, who was also named William Pitt and led the Government in the mid 1700s. This painting shows William Pitt the Younger addressing the House of Commons.
Resource : Challenging slavery: abolition and opposition
The campaign for the abolition of Transatlantic slavery, acts of resistance by those who were enslaved, and opposition from those who stood to benefit from the brutal trade in African people.
Resource : British politics in the Age of Revolution
The continued calls for the reform of British politics and representation of marginalised sectors of society, and the establishment’s unprecedented measures to restrict and suppress these ‘radical’ ideas and demands.
