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 Wysłany: Pon 8:53, 29 Lis 2010 Temat postu: Air Force 1 Britain Abolishes the Slave Trade Phil |
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Horrors on Board the Slave Ships
However, three months later, Wilberforce and the abolitionists received the worst possible setback. On July 14, 1789, the French Revolution began. This was an emergency of the greatest proportions, a threat to peace and the foundations of society at the time.
Other opponents considered black people barely human savages and thought that slavery was their natural state. Those with an interest in the Royal Navy believed that the ships involved in the slave trade between Africa and the Americas provided valuable training for British seamen.
Most serious of all for William Wilberforce and the abolitionist cause was the fact that the threat from France claimed the full attention of his three political supporters, Fox,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Burke and Pitt. But although they abruptly deserted Wilberforce to concentrate on the war with France, he soldiered on in Parliament and endured vicious personal insults for his trouble.
Yet in these bleak, depressing years, Wilberforce was nearer to success than he imagined. During the fighting against the French, British forces occupied two French territories - Guiana on the north coast of South America and the Caribbean island of
Overnight, the struggle against the revolutionaries became more important than any other topic and the crews of the slaving ships and the ports sited in the slave colonies of the West Indies became vital to the British war effort.
Read on
Amazing Grace: The 2006 Film of William Wilberforce
Battle to Represent Black British History and Race Resistance
William Wilberforce by William Hague
The French Revolution Interferes
Meanwhile, William Wilberforce MP was gathering support among his fellow Members of Parliament. He gained the backing of two important MPs, Edmund Burke and Charles Fox, and best of all, the support of William Pitt, who had been Prime Minister since 1783.
After the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in 1787, some forty-six years passed before both aims were achieved.
The abolitionists,Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, Zachary Macaulay and William Wilberforce had to overcome some very fierce opposition. This came,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], naturally enough, from plantation owners in America and the West Indies who relied on black slaves as a source of cheap labour.
Clarkson also gathered details of the conditions endured by slaves on the tight-packed sailing ships. For this purpose,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], he amassed a gruesome collection of leg irons, manacles, thumb screws and other instruments that were used on board ship to control the slaves.
New Plantations in the Americas
Frequently, these deaths were due to ill-treatment or torture by ships' captains and officers. When these facts were made known, the British public and Parliament were horrified. But there were more shocking revelations to come.
Pitt headed an enquiry into the slave trade which included among its evidence the terrible facts unearthed by Clarkson. When the report was published in April 1789,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], people were appalled.
Thomas Clarkson travelled all over Britain collecting facts and figures. He discovered that between 1764 and 1790, eleven out of every hundred seamen died during slaving voyages. On ships sailing from the two great slaving ports of Bristol and Liverpool, the figure was almost double - 21.5 percent.
What Thomas Clarkson Discovered
Opponents of Abolition
This last was a fallacious argument. The benefits of slave ships for training seamen were not nearly as great as was imagined for the slave trade was responsible for the deaths of thousands of seamen. To capture the attention of the British public, the abolitionists set out to prove it.
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