The Zong Massacre was a mass-killing of approximately 142 slaves that took place in 1781, on the Zong, a slave ship owned by a Liverpool slave-trading syndicate.
The resulting court cases, brought by the ship-owners seeking compensation from the insurers for the slave-traders' lost "cargo", established that the deliberate killing of slaves could in some circumstances be legal. It was a landmark in the battle against the African slave trade of the eighteenth century, and inspired abolitionists such as Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, leading to the foundation of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787.
Read more about Zong Massacre: Effect On The Abolitionist Movement, The Zong Massacre in Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word massacre:
“The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)