The abolition of Slave trade in Britain and Caribbean

Tactics and strategies used by British abolitionists

According to Hochschild, the history of slavery in Britain goes way beyond the occupation of the Romans in Britain. There was the slave trade through the Atlantic Ocean in Britain. Adam Hochschild has discussed the slave trade in Britain, and the fact that how the British people had fought against the Atlantic slave trade. (Hochschild 2006)

Hochschild has described that, the British had used numerous tactics and strategies to fight against the Atlantic slave trade. The British used the court to fight against the slave trade in their country, and some of the first ever cases that were filed in court challenging the legal status of the slave trade and slavery were filed in Scotland. (Hochschild 2006)Spens, i.e. the case of Spens v Dalrymple, filed the first ever case in the year 1769, and then Montgomery, Montgomery v Sheddan, filed another case in the year 1756. These two cases had set an example for other people to raise their voice against the slave trade in an appropriate manner. (Franklin 1990, 204)

Hochschild has given reference of a court case in the year 1569 that involved Cartwright, who had purchased a slave from Russia, gave a ruling that English law could not recognize the concept of slavery. However, this ruling was dwarfed by the developments that occurred later in the history of Great Britain, but the Lord Chief Justice again maintained this ruling in the year 1701, when he gave a ruling that a slave would become free as soon as he reached England.

According to Hochschild, in spite of the end of slaveholding in Britain, slavery was still a very powerful institution in the West Indian colonies and Southern Colonies of British America of the British Empire. In the year 1787, the British started their fight against the slave trade. They formed a Committee for the abolition of the slave trade in the Atlantic. The main purpose of the committee was to stop the trading of slaves by the British merchandisers, who used to take fabricated goods from ports like Liverpool and Bristol, and sold these goods in West Africa or exchanged these goods against the slaves. In the Western Africa, the chief of the power structure was connected with the slavery, and they used to transport the slaves to the different colonies under the British rule and some other countries in the Caribbean. The merchandisers used to sell the slaves there, or replaced these slaves primarily for get sugar and rum, and take these products back to ports in Great Britain.

Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, etc were the most famous abolitionists in Britain. Thomas Clarkson had become one of the most outstanding researchers in this subject, and gathered huge quantities of information about the process of trading of the slave, and obtained first-hand explanations by questioning different sailors and the ex-slaves at different ports in Britain such as Liverpool, London, and Bristol. (Adams 2006, 47)

Hochschild has described that one of the most important ...