After all, what makes any event important, unless by its observation
we become better and wiser, and learn ‘to do justly, to love mercy,
and walk humbly before God’?
-
Olaudah Equiano
 25th
March 2007 will mark 200 years to the day that
a Parliamentary Bill was passed to abolish the slave trade in the
British colonies. However slavery itself was not finally abolished
in the Americas until 1888. It is estimated that there are tens of
millions of people still in forms of servitude (slavery) today.
What is a slave?
A slave is a person
owned
by someone
else. Slaves are treated like property, with no rights, no
possessions and no freedom. Two hundred years ago slaves were taken
by force from their homeland, shipped across the seas and sold, like
animals in a market. They were made to work very hard on the land to
produce goods such as sugar. Men, women and children were forced to
work in appalling conditions with no rights, no freedom and for no
money.
What
was the Transatlantic Slave Trade?
In the
18th century there was an infamous trade route, known as the
triangular trade, running between Europe, Africa and the Americas.
The ships started in ports such as Liverpool, London and Bristol,
and took goods (woollen cloth, metal goods and guns) to Africa,
where they were traded for captured African men, women and children.
Next the ships set off for the Americas, and the West Indies. On
arrival in the Americas, the enslaved Africans were sold to
plantation owners at auctions on the quayside. Sugar, rum, rice,
cotton, coffee and tobacco, grown by enslaved Africans, were loaded
onto the ships, which then returned to Europe to sell the goods in
markets there. This return route to Europe was the third section of
the triangular trade.
The
Transatlantic Slave Trade exceeded any slavery that had taken place
before in numbers and in cruelty. From 1450 to 1850 between 9 and 12
million enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic to the
Americas and the West Indies.
To
mark the 200 year anniversary ending the slave trade the film
Amistad will be shown in Room 52 on Wednesday and Thursday of this
week.
|