Britain was the forerunner for relying on enslaved people for labor forces. Many industries were reliant on slave labor, such as tobacco and cotton. Especially because of the wealth of British countrymen, they couldn’t imagine what their lives would look like without slave labor. The introduction of anti-slave arguments started around the 1760s when many stated that it was inhuman and immoral to have people working without pay. All of this culminated in the Slave Trade Act of 1807, helped immensely by the Clapham Sect, who helped promote abolitionist ideology and elevated the voices of people who had the slave experience.
Not everyone was a supporter of the act, still illegally having slaves and trading them for profit. Though the fight seemed to have been won, it was far from over. Enslaved people had to seek shelter and had to fight to be seen as equal. Parliament had to keep passing acts to make sure slave trading didn’t continue, but 1807 was a significant shift in that enslaved people were legally free, partly to thank because of the Clapham Sect.
Work Cited
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Clapham Sect". Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Nov. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Clapham-Sect. Accessed 12 February 2025.
The National Archives. “Slavery: How Did the Abolition Acts of 1807 and 1833 Affect the Slave Trade?” Nationalarchives.gov.uk, vol. 1, no. 1, discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C530143, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/default.htm.
Wilberforce, William. A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. London, 1807. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/63974/63974-h/63974-h.htm. Accessed 12 Feb. 2025