African Slave Trade - Abolition

Abolition

Beginning in the late 18th century, France was one of Europe's first countries to abolish slavery, in 1794, but it was revived by Napoleon in 1802, and banned for good in 1848. Denmark-Norway was the first European country to ban the slave trade. This happened with a decree issued by the king in 1792, to become fully effective by 1803. Slavery itself was not banned until 1848. In 1807 the British Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, under which captains of slave ships could be stiffly fined for each slave transported. This was later superseded by the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, which freed all slaves in the British Empire. Abolition was then extended to the rest of Europe. The 1820 U.S. Law on Slave Trade made slave trading piracy, punishable by death. In 1827, Britain declared the slave trade to be piracy, punishable by death. The power of the Royal Navy was subsequently used to suppress the slave trade, and while some illegal trade, mostly with Brazil, continued, the Atlantic slave trade was eradicated in the year 1850 by senator Eusebio de Queiroz, Minister of Justice of the Empire of Brazil, the law was called Law Eusebio de Queiroz. After struggles that lasted for decades in the Empire of Brazil, slavery was abolished completely in 1888 by Princess Isabel of Brazil and Minister Rodrigo Silva (son-in-law of senator Eusebio de Queiroz). The West Africa Squadron was credited with capturing 1,600 slave ships between 1808 and 1860 and freeing 150,000 Africans who were aboard these ships. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against ‘the usurping King of Lagos’, deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.

The Islamic trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean trades continued, however, and even increased as new sources of enslaved people became available. In Caucasus, slavery was abolished after Russian conquest. The slave trade within Africa also increased. The British Navy could suppress much of the trade in the Indian Ocean, but the European powers could do little to affect the land-based intra-continental trade.

The continuing anti-slavery movement in Europe became an excuse and a casus belli for the European conquest and colonisation of much of the African continent. In the late 19th century, the Scramble for Africa saw the continent rapidly divided between Imperialistic European powers, and an early but secondary focus of all colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. In response to this pressure, Ethiopia officially abolished slavery in 1932. By the end of the colonial period they were mostly successful in this aim, though slavery is still very active in Africa even though it has gradually moved to a wage economy. Independent nations attempting to westernise or impress Europe sometimes cultivated an image of slavery suppression, even as they, in the case of Egypt, hired European soldiers like Samuel White Baker's expedition up the Nile. Slavery has never been eradicated in Africa, and it commonly appears in African states, such as Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, and Sudan, in places where law and order have collapsed. See also Slavery in modern Africa.

Although outlawed in nearly all countries today, slavery is practiced in secret in many parts of the world. There are an estimated 27 million victims of slavery worldwide. In Mauritania alone, up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour. Slavery in Mauritania was finally criminalized in August 2007. It is estimated that as many as 200,000 Sudanese children and women have been taken into slavery in Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War. In Niger, where the practice of slavery was outlawed in 2003, a study found that almost 8% of the population are still slaves. In many Western countries, slavery is still prevalent in the form of sexual slavery.