Empire: World History - 66. Wilberforce and the Fight for Freedom

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

The abolition movement is growing in Britain, at its helm are two men. William Wilberforce leads the campaign in parliament and Thomas Clarkson powers it from the grassroots. Their combined might will win a great victory in the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Listen as William Dalrymple and Anita Anand are joined by Michael Taylor to tell this story. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durhampool. How are you? You're right. I'm all right. Thank you, Anita. I'm slightly alarmed, though, by the proliferations.

of Anita Anans all over the media in the last week. May I just say, as somebody who's had to live with all of the Dalrymples popping out of history like some kind of popcorn machine, good. Good. I'm glad. But the Derimples no longer have their hands on armies, bombs and fighter jets, unlike the Anita Anans. I mean, for those of you don't know what the hell we're talking about. Which must be about 10 people in the world given the BBC play.

Not just the BBC. It's gone all over America and Canada is a story that's gone. I mean, I'm viral, William Durhamport. I'm viral. I would never doubt it, Anita. I know you called me things that are similar, but I am actually, in the social media sense, and the word, I'm viral. This is because Canada, there is a country called Canada. It's going to start from the very beginning of the story once by the time. But they have a defence minister called Anita Arman. And for a very long time, time, I have been harangued on Twitter. The less famous, Anita, Arnold. Stop it, no, no, not at all.

She knew proper job and an important person. And I sometimes get... Proper job is true. I get messages demanding troop movements and, you know, the delivery of tanks. I have to keep pointing out, this is not something in my gift. But also, it just came to just a critical nonsense when channels like CNN started running my face on stories about Canada's troop deployments. She was giving tax to the Ukrainians, wasn't it?

That was when it all first started going badly wrong for the war effort. Look, the thing is, we met in person and we had a hilarious conversation, and it has gone viral. It is. So there we are. Ha! It's been weird. It's been weird. Anyway, look, serious.

Seriously now. What are we here for? We have a podcast. We do. Yeah, a crappy podcast. A crappy podcast, I think. That's also sadly gone slightly viral too. You need to take that back.

You need to walk that back. I take it out. It is the greatest podcast. And I don't think we've actually told our listeners that they are now one of 10 million people listening to this podcast. I can see the three dots coming up because Callan is saying, can you shut up now and get all the time? Callum Hill, who age 24, controls everything. And I actually say, do write and edit. Literally the only man who could do this.

It just says, bring your guest in. Okay, look, let's give you a little bit of five minutes. We haven't even said what we're going to speak about yet. This is a big subject this week. So we are talking about somebody who is among, I suppose, the pantheon of gods here in Britain as one of the greatest sons of Britain. I'm talking about William Wilberforce. And let me just start with a quote that weirdly is from a film, okay?

But I think it's just so powerful. I hope you don't mind me quoting it. It goes like this. When people speak of great men, they think of men like Napoleon, men of violence. Rarely do they think of peaceful men. the contrast of reception that they'll receive when they return home from their battles. Napoleon will arrive in pomp and power, a man who has achieved the very summit of earthly ambition, yet his dreams will be haunted by the oppressions of war. William Wilberforce, however, will return to his family, lay his head on his pillow, and remember the slave trade is no more.

So those are the words of Michael Gambon in the film Amazing Grace. You may have seen it. He is playing Lord Charles Fox, and he is congratulating. The great, yes. Congratulations William Wilberforce on the abolition of the slave trade. So now, with much fanfare, and sorry about the delay, our special, special guests, introduce our special special guest today. First of all, apologies for us going off down a rabbit hole and leaving you sitting there in Oxford.

Because we never do that. Never do that. It's not what we do. So we have, actually, we are very lucky to have with us a great historian, the author of a fantastic book called The Interest. His name is Michael Taylor, and his subject is William Wilberforce. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Michael, for being with this.

Thank you very much for having me on, and I say this, rather daunted as one of your 10 million listeners. Michael, your extraordinary book takes what you say is a national myth and gives it a very, very serious workover from the archives and from an astonishing array of research that you have done for many years now on this subject. And you have very much changed people's perceptions of the truth about Britain and the anti-slavery movement and the place of Wilberforce's enemies. Do you want to just lay out your float at the beginning here for what you say in the book

and how, in a sense, you clip this national myth about Britain being the great force which ended slavery and showed the way to the rest of the world, savour of something that existed since time and memorial, and we British, finally put it to rest. What does your work show about that idea? Okay, well, first, thank you very much for that very kind introduction. But what I've tried to do in this book in some of the academic articles that support it

is to attack the myth that Britain simply abolished the slave trade and then slavery itself. And people often conflate those two things. They think that whenever Wilberforce led the campaign to abolish the slave trade, that he also led the campaign. campaign to abolish slavery, but he didn't. Because whenever the abolitionist movement kicks off in Britain in the 1780s, it takes another 50 years and more for slavery itself to be abolished. I had to say,

I was totally ignorant of this until I read your book. I thought 1807 was the year that everything ended and it was the moment of freedom for the slaves. But you point out that it was another, whatever it was, 25 years or something. No, absolutely not. Even after 1807, Britain's slave empire continues to expand. They take Demerara and Mauritius at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. There are more slaves in 1823 within the British colonies than there had been in 1807. And even when the anti-slavery society is founded in 1823, it's again another decade before the Abolition Act has passed. So this is a fierce fight over something that I think a lot of people have often assumed was a fait accompli. And the figure you give is 700,000 black slaves working

on British plantations within the British Empire after the abolition in 1807 of the slave trade. Yes, absolutely. So whenever the last British slave ship docks in early 1808, that does absolutely nothing to amend the position of the men, women and children who wake up the next day as slaves within the British Empire. And to put that number of 700,000 people in context, there are 300,000 of them on Jamaica. and 300,000 is more than any population of any British city except for London. This is a vast population at the time when the population of Britain itself is not anything like what we know as today. That's the extraordinary figure.

What I'd really like to do is sort of set the landscape upon which Wilberforce has such impact, if that's all right with you, Michael. So if we go back to the 1780s, let's think about those for starters. What exactly is the status of enslaved Africans at that point? That's a very good place to start. And it's a good place to start with the legal say of them as well. Because as much as we think of slavery and abolition as moral and intellectual questions, they are also legal questions.

In some of your previous episodes, you've touched upon the Somerset case, which again, a lot of people assume abolished slavery within England itself, but it really didn't. And just in a few moments, just summarised, because you know, you won't believe this, but not everybody listens to every, I know, hard to believe. Shock, shocking. Everybody. Tragic truth. Astonishing.

But just remind us what the Samerset case was. So James Somerset was an enslaved African who'd been brought to Britain by his master in 1769. Two years later, he escapes and begins living as a freedman for the first time. But when his master is about to sail back to Jamaica, he sees Somerset in the street. And he has him seized and he has him remanded on board a ship. And whenever this happens, Granville Sharp, who again has appeared, I think in quite a few of your episodes, joins together with some abolitionists and issues a writ of habeas corpus. So the idea being, you cannot seize this person and put a monoship and return into slavery in the West Indies.

And this comes before the court in Britain in 1772. It's one of the great sensations of the early part of that year, day after day, week after week, the courtroom is filled with people watching this case. And in the end, Lord Mansfield, who is the Lord Chief Justice at the time, issues of decision, which has been much debated by scholars ever since, but what he says is the power of a master over his slave has been extremely different in different countries, which I think listeners to this series will agree. The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons moral or political, but only by positive law. Nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. I cannot say this case is allowed or approached or approved by

the law of England, and therefore the black must be discharged. Now, a lot of people wrongly assume, that that abolishes the state of slavery in England. It doesn't. In fact, in another court here, so about 10 years later, Lord Mansfield himself intervenes and clarifies the determinations go no further than that the master cannot by force compel a Negro to go out of the kingdom.

So it's not a very satisfactory answer. All the Mansfield judgment says is that there is no common law and there is no law which allows slavery in England. It's not the same as abolishing it. I mean, that is one of the pillars that people have always understood as being the beginning of the end. So it's very interesting that you undermine that notion. The other thing that I was always given to believe is that Britain was moved by some truly awful atrocities against enslaved Africans and the one that

is always mentioned, is the one that awoke the spirit of fairness and probity. The Zong massacre. The Zong massacre of 1781. So this is the time when a slave owner decides that actually to collect insurance money is more valuable than actually transporting the slaves that he has on his ship. I think the water had run out on the ship, wasn't that the story? And he decides basically to drown his slaves. 133 of them.

Yeah, and then claim insurance. Which is appalling. And I was always sort of given to understand that these are the pillars upon which Wilberforce built his castle. Is that not true? It's partly true in the sense that the Zong Massacre like the Somerset case excites quite a lot of attention and excitement with British abolitionists. This is another chance to prove the immorality of the slave trade.

And you're quite right that whenever the crew of the Zong drawing 133 Africans in order to preserve the remainder because they had apparently forgotten to stock up on drinking water, this goes before the courts as an insurance case. There's no charge for murder. It's all insurance. And initially they win, but then the insurers appeal. And what happens that time round is that new evidence comes forward and there was in fact drinking water because it had rained on the last few days on the approach to Jamaica. So they didn't even have to do it?

God. No, they didn't. But this happens in 1781. The trial happens in 1783. So by the middle of the 1780s, Wilberforce hasn't really arrived in the scene yet at all. But there is a growing swell, a grindswell of enthusiasm for abolition, led mostly by British Quakers.

The problem for the Quakers, high- And evangelicals. This is a big moment, isn't it, for the rise of the evangelical, the Clapper Movement. We've come across this in our Indian history, where you suddenly have missionaries pouring into India and stirring things up. And it's one of the main things that turns Indians in the united fashion against the East India Company. This also has effect on the slave trade at the same time, doesn't it? Absolutely. And it's important to emphasize that we think of evangelicalism today as perhaps American preachers on TV demanding money. This is absolutely not what's going. going on in the 1780s in Britain. And you're right also to mention the Clapham's Act, because around the Holy Trinity Church and Clapham Common, a number of prominent Anglican evangelicals gather, and this becomes the spiritual home of the abolitionist movement. And what we mean by evangelicals are mostly Anglicans

who believe that Christianity should be a religion of the heart, not necessarily of form or of the liturgy. They certainly believe in doing good works within society, in undertaking the moral reform of, society, and one of the great books about the slave trade is moral capital by the American historian Christopher Levillie Brown. And he makes the point that whenever this evangelical grinds well is happening, people are beginning to question the morality of empire itself. And they're certainly looking in a world where they believe that God controls events, they think that the

defeat of Britain and the American Revolutionary War was effectively the judgment of God. And so they begin looking at other activities within the empire and thinking, well, what else could we be getting wrong. And for many of them, the slave trade. How have we angered God? That's so interesting. That's so interesting. And what can we do to atone? And in India, they take the view that it's because we haven't tried to convert the heathen. So this is the point that you get large-scale missionary activity being not just allowed, but actually advocated by the evangelical directors of the East India Company like Charles Grant. And this succeeds in uniting Indians against the British in a way that all the other horrors had not. And it's interesting, the man at the forefront of that is the man that we're talking about at the forefront of this, William Wilberforce, I think it's high time that we introduce him. Who is he, you know, what are his circumstances and is he marked for greatness from the start? Tell us about Wilberforce. So in the mid-1780s, around about this time, Wilberforce is in his mid-20s, and he is MP for Hull and then for Yorkshire. He comes from a wealthy Hull family. His father was a very successful merchant.

that time is a very important port for the trade that Britain did with Scandinavia and the Baltic and North Germany. So as things happened, long before the reform of Parliament, Wilburne, even before he leaves Cambridge, decides that he wants to become an MP. And he is perhaps an unprepossessing figure to imagine as an MP or to imagine as the leader of one of these great movements. James Boswell, who I know has appeared in some of your recent episodes, describes him as a shrimp of a man. He's about five foot four. He's very frail. He's very thin. He suffers from a number of ailments all the way through his life. He's got terrible eyesight, so even reading is very difficult for him. But what he does have is the most magnificent

speaking voice. And Boswell then says that whenever Wilberforce speaks, it is if the shrimp becomes a whale. Lovely. People are spellbound by whatever he says. And he's not a kind of saint this character. He's addicted to gambling. He's quite witty. He's not, he's not this sort of goody-two-shoes, sort of. Absolutely not. So young Wilberforce is very fond. He's a very fond of, he's from the stereotypical image of a puritan evangelical that we might have now. And the very fact of his earliest election is perhaps an indication of this. So in 1780, when he decides that he wants to become MP for Hull, he and his family put on this magnificent dinner and show for people in a field outside Hull.

The drink is flowing. There are several cows being spit-roasted. And there is just explicit unapologetic bribery. Wilberforce hands out something like $8,000 in the money of, today to the voters of Hull. And in today's money, that's about 1.2 million pounds. Gosh. But that was just the way that things were done. What that money does allow Wilburforce to do whenever he becomes an MP, however, sit as an independent. He's not behoven to anyone. So he has got

immediately this sense, even if he's not quite the evangelical of repute of later days, of being his own man and following the causes that he believes in. And what's also fascinating, I think, is that he's from the mercantile background and the shipping background that many of his opponents are. I hadn't realized that in what I'd read before, that he is, his family's trade is with Scandinavia, but he knows the world of ports, he knows the world of merchants, of naval insurance, this kind of thing. It's very much the world he's grown up in. He does indeed, but remember, in the 1780s, getting from one side of Britain to the other is quite difficult. So if you're trading on the East Coast, you're engaged with a very, very different markets, very different.

types of goods than Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow on the West Coast, who are directly involved in the Atlantic slave economy. Now, he is such an enormous figure. I wonder why it's because he has a parliamentary presence. Maybe that is why he manages to eclipse another person who's so pivotal and so often forgotten when you talk about abolition in this country, and that's Thomas Clarkson. Just talk about Clarkson for a little while and how they come into each other's orbit. Because if he is the face, if Wilberforce is the face of abolition, then Tom is, Thomas Clarkson is the muscle, isn't he? He absolutely is.

So Clarkson is about a year younger than Willberforce. Physically, they couldn't be more different. He's six foot, which is a giant for the time. He's got a shock of red hair, even if that hair is covered by the wigs of the day. Piercing blue eyes, he's already a deaconne. Australian become an ordained minister within the Church of England, so frequently wearing black. He comes from East Anglia. His father is a schoolmaster and a minister.

He goes and studies at Cambridge as well. So he does a degree in mathematics. He stays on to do his training for the church. And what do students in the 17-80s in Cambridge get up to for fun? Well, they write poems and they write essays in Latin. And the great prize... It's much like today. That's what they do.

I can't stop my kids writing Latin poems. It's about you, Anita. Wake up in the morning. There's two down on the kitchen table every morning. It was a different time, a different time. So there are these sort of Cambridge students busily causing marriage. hell with their Latin and their poetry. And is this where their paths cross? Not just yet, but in 1784, the great prize for that year is a Latin essay prize on the question of whether it can ever be

right for people to enslave their fellow man. And Clarkson desperately wants to win this price. He spends two months reading as much as he possibly can, going and meeting people who are involved in the slave trade. He wins the prize. He gets to read it out in Cambridge's Senate House. And everything is going tremendously well for him. So then he leaves King. He's on his horse riding to London. And if we talk about people having damascene moments, Thomas Clarkson has a Hartfordshire moment, because he's about halfway there.

Offer sure moment doesn't sound quite the same thing as a damocy moment. No, it doesn't have quite ring to it. But halfway there. So he's on the horse, gallop, gallop, gallop, gallop. He stops halfway, and then what happens? He does. It suddenly dawns on him that if he has spent two months riding about why it is wrong to enslave other people,

and if he truly believes this, then why doesn't he do something about it? So when he gets to London, he agrees to publish his essay in English, and he begins to meet with these Quakers that we've been talking about. And in 1787, Clarkson Granville Sharp, another Anglican, and nine of the Quakers formed the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Now, however, none of them are MPs. Quakers very difficult for them to get into Parliament because of the restrictions of the time.

They need a figurehead, and that's where Wilberforce comes in. So at a dinner party in 1787, Clarkson approved. approaches Wilberforce and asks him, will you lead this campaign? Wilberforce accepts in May 1787 after a really famous conversation that he has with two fellow MPs. And there's now the Wilberforce Oak in the Kent countryside where this is supposed to have happened. So he's talking with one of them, William Grenville. Just remember that name for later. And the other one is William Pitt, his friend from Cambridge and the current Prime Minister of the UK.

And Pitt says to him, why don't you take this up? If you don't do it, somebody else will. Just for one second, I know when you want to come in, but sort of why was Wilberforce bidderable? And someone, I mean, again, and you are the Mythbuster on this, said he came into the orbit of John Newton, famously the composer of Amazing Grace, who was once a slave owner, once was blind, now can see, and that he almost becomes his sort of shaman, if you like. And that's why Wilberforce was even receptive to, you know, over dinner to his, hear this proposal from, you know, literally a Johnny Nobody, if you like, who's had this

Damascene moment. Well, in the meantime, something else has happened to Wilberforce. So after the 1784 general election, he does what all MPs naturally do, and goes in the sixth month holiday to the French Riviera. So he goes from there, he goes to Genoa, and then they travel up into the Swiss Alps. And when in the Swiss Alps, he has his own moment of conversion, and Wilberforce becomes an evangelical Christian. And he will set himself for the rest of his life. And he will set himself for the rest of his life to doing good works within society. He's a founder member of what becomes the RSPA. He hates cruelty to animals. He also commits himself to the reform of manners and suppression of advice in society. And Anita, you've recently been studying how he commits himself to Christianizing India, sending

those missionaries out there. Oh, yeah. We should just, yeah, just pause on that for one second, because, William, while you were, you know, plugging things in, we were having a little chat, Michael and I about how it really surprised me that Wilberforce takes on as his own personal, not crusaders, maybe not the right, well, maybe it's the right word. You know what? If we've got the East India Company in India, it means nothing until you bring Christ to the heathen. And that becomes his main motivation, he becomes his absolute thorn in the side of the East India Company to the point where they can't stand beside of him, where he's saying, you know what,

this isn't going to work. And if you're not listening, and they've got their fingers in their ears going, it's all about profit, please go away. But he then mobilizes a nation and powerful people and corporations and turns us into an enormous political movement that forces them to bring Christianity as part of the charter, the next East India Company charter. And you tell me something extraordinary. We think of Wilberforce as the man who abolished slavery,

but what did he think of himself? You told me this fabulous quote from him. Well, he certainly thinks by the end of his life that the greatest work, that he has accomplished as the Christianisation of India. The slave trade falls away in his estimation as to the good deeds that he has done. This is a really, really important point because we tend to look on the Clapham, the Evangelicals and Wilberforce with incredibly positive eyes because of the incredible work that they did with the slave trade. But in terms of Indian history, this is the act that creates most resentment of all. And in the work that I've done, looking into the causes of the

1857 uprising. If you look at the, the mutineers' own papers, which are the mutiny papers in Delhi, there's 20,000 pieces of paper, many of which lay out their grievances and what they, they pin it absolutely in the certainly the public expression of what they're complaining about. It's the Christianisation. It's fact that sepoys are being lined up on parade and having the Ten Commandments read to them, that the East Indy company is paying for missionaries to go around and distribute tracks which are vilely rude about Hinduism and Islam. Hinduism is called the religion of the devil. Islam is called the religion of the Antichrist.

And this sort of thing, and it's an incredibly negative, racist and retrogate force in colonial history in India in the same way that we look at it as a positive force when it comes to the Western Union's slavery. Indeed. And Wilberforce himself describes Hinduism as mean, licentious and cruel, are his words. That kind of language is absolutely standard for these people. And it's the thing that creates the largest anti-colonial uprising in the 19th century, which is the 1857 uprising. Okay, so we have now set the scene. You've met the major characters. Join us after the break when we find out what the strategy is to get the work done.

Welcome back to Empire. We are talking to the wonderful Michael Taylor, the author of The Interest, how the British establishment resisted the abolition of slavery, which gives a very different take. on the whole story of the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves. To anything I have read before, and it's a book I highly, highly recommend. Anyway, in the first half, Michael was introducing us to the extraordinary characters who lead the movement against slavery and the slave trade. And we went through Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. And I think the moment probably has come now in the second half to talk about the campaign itself, these early parliamentary attempts to ban the slave trade. The first one is 1791?

It is, although the committee is founded in 1787. And there is, in these four years between the first attempt, a lot of really important grind work, which is important to understand to really get to know the campaign. And Clarkson is at the heartbeat of this. He's the man who jumps in his horse and rides hundreds of miles up and down the country across Britain, finding local chapters of the committee to abolish the slave trade, gathering information from the slave ports, which is a very, very dangerous business. And his minder, a man by the name of Falkenbridge, takes to carrying a gun about him, secreted within his coat, Les Clarkson running. He's like an industrial espionage today or something, or trying to infiltrate drug cartels. Absolutely, trying to get whistleblowers

from veterans of the slave trade to dispel any notion that this is a humane and sensible business. And so while he does run into some trouble, some places he has a lot of success. In 1788, he goes to Manchester and finds that there's already abolitionist literature in the local papers. The local Unitarians and Quakers are finding their own societies. They're raising money. And they are getting names on petitions, which is one of the great engines of the abolitionist movement. Michael, you mentioned the Quakers before, and I was very keen to home in on that because

throughout the series, we've come across the Quakers. Am I right in thinking that in the early stages of the slave trade, the very beginning of the trade with Africa. The Quakers were some of the first people to get involved, but they then become the first abolitionist. Can you explain all that to us? So the Quakers probably deserve more credit than any other single group in terms of the whole sweep of the history of abolitionism. Benjamin Lay, the eccentric Philadelphian abolitionist in the early part of the 18th century. In the later part of the 18th century, it's American Quakers and American abolitionists in the Northern States who produce some of the most persuasive and influential literature. And it's this literature,

which they're sending across to their brethren in the United Kingdom, that is absolutely vital to the growth of the abolitionist movement in places like Manchester. And what is it about the Quakers that leads them to this conclusion in a way that the kind of Anglicans don't seem to, or DeCatholics, feel the same way? Well, there is, for the simple reason, that within Quakers and within the society of friends, there is no hierarchy of persons. They are no respectors of persons. So whilst there might within the Catholic and Anglican churches be a very strict hierarchy, a rigid order to things, Quakers have no such problems. They look at everybody as being on an equal plane. So we have, and we've got so much to get to,

so we might have to sort of rock along with these failed bids to get to the point where things actually start to change. So 1791, the bill is defeated. You've got another second attempt then at a parliamentary remedy. That is a year later in 1792. Now, this bill passes in the Commons, and I think maybe the current government may have a little notion of what this feels like, but the Lords say no. That's right, isn't it? But he doesn't give up. I mean, these things are quite disheartening. If you're a parliamentarian and you're trying to get something through, you know, two strikes and sometimes then you're out, but that's not what Wilberforce does. No, no, they keep going. And of course, there is some opposition within the House of Commons.

there are a couple of very colorful characters on the pro-slavery side. One of them, if you know the great painting by John Singleton Copley of Watson and the Shark, is of a young boy having his leg torn off by a shark and the waters off Cuba. That is Brooke Watson, who becomes an MP in later Lord Mayor of London, and he is vociferously in favour of the slave trade while he is in the House of Commons. The other is an MP for Liverpool called Banisha Talton, who is a veteran, a general in the American Revolutionary War, and he is the inspiration for Jason Isaac's

wonderfully malevolent comic villain in the film The Patriot. So we have these two in the House of Commons. In the House of Lords, there is more intractable opposition. Some of it provided by the future William IV, who is at the time the Duke of Clarence. Now, he's known as whenever he becomes king

as the Sailor King, because he had served in the Royal Navy. He'd spent a lot of times in the Navy in the West Indies and he became a staunch ally of the traders and of the planters. Michael, what is their argument for slavery? If you've got the Quakers saying this is inhumane, this is brutal, this is violent, what are the pro-slavery lobby answering all those charges? Well, they don't, unlike the later debate over slavery, there isn't much religious argument because in the Old Testament and the New Testament,

the idea of man stealing is known to be sinful and unlawful. What they do, however, is insist. not only upon the importance of the slave trade and of the ships to the development of the Royal Navy, which at the time is absolutely vital to Britain's imperial security, but there is, of course, the economic importance of the slave trade to Britain. And if you look at the map of the slave trade, it shows that actually there's so much more money invested in and created by the slave trade than the simple profits made from selling people into slavery.

Who builds the ships? Who makes the canvas in the rope for the ships? who makes the metal work. So is this quite familiar to us today? I mean, is this sort of, you know, the pro-slavers saying these woke liberals, that they don't understand the realities of the world, that we realists know how things really work? Absolutely.

And even if you get past that and they say, well, in principle, this is the same kind of thing, this is the kind of thing that we should be doing. Well, it would just cost too much to do it. There were too many downsides to it. Today, when we get pushed back on Twitter against doing a series like this, there's a huge amount of what aboutery saying, what about the, this is like the Romans did, this was something that the Arabs did, what about the Muslim slave traders? Do you get these arguments being rallied to support pro-slavery in the 19th century?

Certainly in the 19th century, there's a lot of comparison of different types of slavery and servitude. When we're dealing with the slave trade itself, there is another similar kind argument, which is that, well, if we abolish our trade, that just means that the French or the Dutch will pick it up. If, you know, if anybody's going to make profit about it, why isn't it us? Okay, so Wilberforce has tried twice. As I say, most people, you know, give up. And, you know, there is a saying, third time's a charm. It isn't for Wilberforce, because the third time he introduces it to Parliament. Again, you know, a year later, 1793, it gets voted down again. So, you know, this is a man, it just sort of explains to you that he is, you know, there are, you know,

are powerful forces arrayed against him, but he still doesn't give up. No, he doesn't. The problem with the third attempt is that he's got a terrible sense of timing because events have transpired over the past few years. Seventy-3, this is immediately after the French Revolution, presumably that feeds into the... It absolutely does. So 1789, the French Revolution happened. 1792. There is war with revolutionary France and the ideological extremities of the French Revolution are becoming incredibly clear to everybody. 1793, Louis XVIth is executed. And so now you have some real problems with radical liberal policies that would appear to glory in fraternity, liberty, equality. The Earl of Abingen

stands up in the House of Lords and says, well, what is the abolition of the slave trade? But liberty and equality. You also have the problem that Thomas Clarkson was in Paris in 1789 and 1790. So people begin to ask, is he one of these dastardly Jacobians? Is the abolition of the slave trade, a Trojan horse for Jacobinism? Well before himself is made an honorary citizen of France, which he desperately doesn't want. And just to clarify this, you talked about the economic argument of the pro-slavery lobby. Slavery produces about 12% of British GDP at this point. Is that right?

I read somewhere there was 590 people. leaving in their wills more than six million pounds around this decade in their wills from slavery fortunes. In other words, you've got around 600 people in the country that have made such fast fortunes that six million in 18th century money are being passed on. It's a huge amount of cash. It is. There's a new book coming out this summer by his rowans, Maxingberg and Pat Hudson, which will probably be the best new research on the economic importance of the slave trade Britain. But to give you a brief tour of the map of the Atlantic and how much this matters economically, I mentioned earlier the first, who makes the ships, who makes the rope and the canvas, who supplies

the ships with the metalwork and the gunpowder. Whenever the ships reach the coast of Africa, they're selling alcohol, guns, manufacturers, metalwork to the African chiefs who are training their own people to the British ships. You get the cross. Then in the Atlantic or across the other side of the Atlantic, you are producing sugar, cotton. coffee, indigo. You're using tools and equipment and machinery made in Britain. The West Indies are not only a producer of goods for Britain, they're also a really important market for British producers. Then you bring back all of these tropical goods to Britain and they're sold in shops. They're refined in distilleries. They're re-exported to the continent. There is a massive economy

bound into the slave trade, which goes far, far beyond the selling of other human beings itself. And that economy is what is, and the desire to dominate that economy is what fuels a very important moment in history, which is France and Britain going to war with each other. You know, this is, who has the plantations? We want the plantations. You've got our plantations. And when we talk about Haiti elsewhere in this podcast, but Nelson's victory in 1805, how much is that a factor in what happens when it comes to abolition? It is a really important factor, and as you've just said, that Wilbur loses for a third time in Parliament in the 1790s. It's fair to say that almost nothing happens for about a decade. In fact, as you've covered in other episodes, Britain invades Sandeman, which becomes Haiti, in the attempt to re-enslave the rebels and to seize that really valuable sugar colony. We've just dealt with this in the last episode with the extraordinary Toussaint-Liverture. Absolutely. The largest expeditionary force in British history to that point in time is sent to Haiti.

20,000 men, 200 ships, two thirds of them die. It's such an extraordinary story. We should quickly say that Nelson, and this is one of the controversial issues that has got caught up in the culture wars with a man who is now our deputy prime minister in this country, attacking woke liberals, as he calls them, for speaking against Nelson. But I think, again, just like we had that devastating quote from Churchill earlier in the podcast, here is what Nelson has to say about the slave trade. He says, I will always be a firm friend to slaveholders. For I was bred in the good old school and taught to appreciate the value of our West Indian possessions. And neither in the field nor in the Senate shall,

their just rights, that's the rights of the planters, be infringed while I have an arm to their defence or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable and cursed doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies. It's a pretty devastating quote. Yeah, and there certainly has been some controversy over that quote, because from the decks of HMS victory itself in 1805, shortly before the Battle of Trafalgaron's death, Wilberforce did write a letter to Simon Taylor, who was a planter in Jamaica, saying that. The problem was that one of the problems was that whenever that letter got sent across to England, William Cobbett, who was a nefarious radical journalist and who hated the abolitionist because he believed they should be addressing

their philanthropy to British subjects, changed some words. So there is a slight forgery, but Nelson definitely did write that letter. Okay. So Britain, thanks to Nelson, is now dominating the seas. It would seem, if you're in a dominant position, that actually you have no reason to think about slavery. And if, you know, the people who are in charge and parliament, and everybody else has said, no, no, no, three times. But is it something as prosaic, as you know what, if we just keep our fist on this so tightly, we're going to have to deal with more and more rebellions and they're expensive, you know, rebellions like those taking place in Sanderman, which is now Haiti? There's a little bit of that. I think there's also the case that Wilburforce and the abolitionists,

even if they haven't been terribly successful over the last 10 years, have continued to chip away at the moral edifice of the slave trade. People are not persuaded that this might be the right thing to do. There have been two other really important events in world history. One is that the French have absolutely definitely lost Sandemagne, and they've also sold Louisiana to the United States. So if one of the arguments for keeping the slave trade is that we want the British Caribbean to remain dominant,

well, they no longer have any competition from the French. So, okay, so now the Brits have lost the argument that, you know, If we don't do it, others will do it because they've got everything. And Wilberforce has still been getting his message across. At what point does he try again to push it just over the line? Well, he tries again in 1804 and 1805 and gets a bit further but runs out of time. But by this stage, as we've just gone over, the French colonial empire has effectively collapsed. The British Supreme Sea and then 1806, and this is really the crucial bit.

the Tories leave office and the Whigs and the Ministry of All the Talents come in. Charles James Fox is one of the major players. He's the Foreign Secretary and he is a noted abolitionist. And the Prime Minister, if you hark back to that conversation that Wilberforce had under the Oak with William Pitt in 1787, is the third man in that conversation, William Grenville. So finally, there is a government who is willing to do what is necessary to push abolition through Parliament.

Grenville himself takes the initiative. he puts a bill through the House of Lords first, and that removes the major barrier to abolition. And once the common see that the House of Lords has already passed this bill, they effectively fall into line. I mean, so it's a landslide. I mean, the vote that takes place in 1807 is 283 to 16. I mean, I do wonder about the 16. Who were the 16 who said no? Do you know? I mean, that may be an unfair question. Most and mostly MPs belonging to slave trading constituencies like Liverpool and Bristol and Glasgow and a few diehard reactionary Tories. Okay.

But just again, to clarify, because this is one of the main points of your book, what exactly is this act doing? It's abolishing the trade in slaves, but it's not abolishing slavery. It doesn't touch slavery at all. The abolitionists had disavowed any intention on their part to attack slavery itself. Was this what got it over the line? that they made that distinction. Absolutely. There was no chance if they'd gone after slavery itself,

that they would have gone anywhere, because that would have been an attack on property. And we've just had a revolution in the American colonies about interfering in the internal affairs of colonists. So, no, that simply would not have worked. So what is the moral difference in their view between ending the slave trade and not ending slavery? What's the argument that makes that distinction,

other than realism? Yeah, part of it is realism and pragmatism. there is a religious difference. There is a biblical difference between the slave trade and between slavery, because the slave trade and men stealing, as we've called it, is forbidden. But all the way through the Bible, in the Old Testament, the patriarchs of slaves, the Israelites of slaves, the Israelites are made into slaves. Even Christ himself in the New Testament doesn't challenge slavery, and St. Paul repeatedly encourages slaves to return to their masters and pay them due obedience. This is a very religious age. People take what the Bible says, very, very seriously. And so there is this biblical defense of slavery, but not of the slave trade.

And how does that biblical distinction work? The idea is that it's bad to trade or to capture men, but it's fine to... If you've got them already. If you've got them already. And we might look at that and think that's completely perverse, but people sincerely believe that to be the case. And that got it over the line, that moral distinction. It certainly helped. But you're completely right and saying, that 1808, whenever the final British slave ship docks for the last time, there are almost three quarters of a million people still in slavery for whom this makes no difference. But this isn't a passive thing. I mean, I think maybe we're making it sound a little more passive than it was because there

was an enforcement of abolition that took place that involved the Royal Navy hunting down slave ships. I mean, that did happen. But the problem was, when they did find these slave ships, they didn't know what to do with the so-called human cargo, you know, the cargo, as they call it. What did they do in this stage, when you've still got slavery as a legal option and you actually stopped a ship in the middle of the sea, do you send them back to Africa? Well, I mean, that's not a solution for most of the people who are on those ships, because the middle passage is a nightmare. Of course it is a nightmare.

So there is this very interesting thing, isn't there, Michael Taylor, that, you know, as a last resort, because they really don't know what to do with these people that they've found, is that they take them to West Indian colonies. So, I mean, does their life, does it get better or not really very much? Well, it's certainly better than being enslaved. But they are known as liberated Africans. And you're right, there are these experimental colony set up. You've done with Maya Jasinoff a couple of episodes on Sierra Leone,

which receives some of the liberated Africans. They also go to islands like Tortola, which is later used as a test case for whether or not liberated Africans could work sensibly and profitably as free laborers. because that is the question that a lot of people really want to answer it, because they didn't know. Yeah, I know. I mean, it's a question that Tucson LaVitoe himself wrestles with on Sander Bank, you know, that we need to keep the plantations open because we need an economy, but okay, you're not slaves, but you're going to have to work as hard as you ever did.

Tell us about the slave registry, because that's really fascinating. So you're right in saying that after the abolition of the slave trade, people that try to enforce that abolition. But the abolitionists, even if they take a step backwards or not doing so much, They worry that there is an illicit slave trade and that slaves are being smuggled into the British colonies. So their solution to this is to create a slave registry. This is basically a census of the slave population on all of the British colonies. Now, this causes an issue in 1816 whenever it's propokes.

And it causes an issue because once again, you're coming back to that old thing of the internal affairs of the colonies. What is Westminster doing interfering in the internal business of places like Jamaica and Barbados? Even worse than that, the idea about a new form of abolitionist activity is alleged to have caused the revolution that happens on Barbados in 1816. So once again, there's a tie in this. You get some of the most sort of terrifically angry headlines from the white plantation owners. In Barbados, a newspaper has the banner headline. We cannot be governed by tyranny. Again, this irony of tyranny being something that happens to white people.

but it doesn't kind of happens to black ones. Yeah. Time and time again, the idea of abolitionist activity within the British Parliament, not only being represented as this kind of infernal tyranny, but also as the cause of slave rebellions, that really hurts the abolitionist movement. So in the 1810s in the later half of the decade,

Britain is in socio-economic distress, there riots everywhere, attempts in the life of the Prince Regent, and Wilberforce himself has to step back. He backs all of the repressive legislation that's going through the host. Just a second. Sorry, just to drill into that a little bit more.

So that economic sink that, you know, Britain finds itself in, is that because they have taken part in abolition? Or is it because, you know, the war is over and war has been expensive and you've got a lot of soldiers coming back who need jobs who, you know, don't have jobs because there are too many people and not enough industry for them. Why is there? Because this is the time of the Peterloo massacre as well, isn't it? People are angry.

They are going without. But what is the cause of that? Why is that? It's not just that we don't have slavery anymore, is it? Or the trade has been banned. It's not that, is it? So it's much more the latter. It's the post-war economic depression. It's too many people coming back from fighting for not enough jobs, a government laden with debt. In fact, slavery is booming. So the abolitionists had hoped that if you cut off the slave trade itself, then the slave plantations would suffer in the end. and that slavery itself would diminish away. They thought they were laying the acts of the root of the tree. In fact, the slave plantation owners, they adapt.

There are more and more people in slavery because the populations are beginning to grow. Is that because, I mean, the old argument always was, and we've had this on earlier podcast, that so cruel were the West Indian plantations that you had high mortality rate, sometimes 30% in a year, which kept being replaced by new slaves. Now, if you've cut off the supply of new slaves, does that mean that the slave owners have become more careful with what they regard as their property and are treating the slaves better or not? In degree, yes. They are now forced to recognize the people that they have enslaved, not as disposable property, but as long-term investments. And they still regard them in those terms.

There's still a denial of the humanity of the people that they have enslaved. But they know they need to look after their workers if they are to. to maintain the profits of their plantations. And also, I would question whether Wilberforce was quite as clear as you say about this. There are quotes from Wilberforce that are uncomfortable about this, because he was very clear, not just out of pragmatic attempts, but on principle, that his aim was not to abolish slavery. And he says that before the slaves could be fit to receive freedom,

it would be madness to attempt to give it to them. So Wilberforce, again, is a more complex character than we perhaps would want to be as the movie hero? Part of that is certainly strategic politicizing of the matter, but there was certainly this really prevalent, really powerful belief that until the enslaved Africans attained a certain degree of civilization, they would be unable to work as free men, as free laborers,

and that if emancipation happens too early, then it would lead to the scenes of bloodshed and carnage that had defined Sondamag. in Haiti during the 1790s. Exactly. I think you get reports in the British press and indeed in the French press about the Tussaudouet-Vitou's uprising, painted in the most lurid colours as this, as black men with machetes going around, scalping white men and burning them alive and this sort of thing. And this is being read in London and people are reflecting on it. So look, we're coming to the end of this podcast time that we have together. But I do want to sort of

take us on to the men who are in this relay race, if you like, and Wilberforce has had the baton. He's abolished the trade, but not slavery itself, as you very clearly pointed out a number of times. Tell us about the anti-slavery society and where they come from, because they have got much more ambition. There certainly was by 1822 and 1823, a bit of a sea change in politics. So you have got somebody like Daniel O'Connell, who's beginning to campaign for Catholic emancipation. You've got the London Phil Helene Committee beginning to wonder, should we not support the Greeks in their pursuit of independence from the Ottomans. The economic situation is much, much better.

Politics is a little bit calmer. So in late 1822, early 1823, the old guard, the old abolitionists, decide, well, we were completely wrong. We thought the abolition of the slave trade would lead to the diminishment of slavery itself. That hasn't happened. So in January 1823, the 31st of January, they gather in a pub called, the Kingshead Tavern, which is on the street called poultry in central London, very short street. And how long is this after the slave trades?

This is what, 15 years later? It's, yeah, 15, 16 years. So, I mean, a long time, more than the decade has passed. Yeah, and, you know, the ultimate hopes of that early abolitionism have been frustrated. The political weather simply wasn't favorable to starting the campaign again, but now finally they think they can do something. I've tried in vain to find the old site of the Kingshead Tavern. All I could find was a boots and Italian tailors,

but it was somewhere there on poultry. And they met and they issued their prospectus, and they decided to organise once again. So Thomas Clarkson, even though he's much, much older, he's still a strong man, he's still a brave man. He gets up on his horse and he begins retracing all of the roots that he took 20, 30 years beforehand. Still with a shock of red hair, or is it now grey in this era? Well, we can certainly see it now because people have stopped wearing wigs,

but there is red and there's some grey through it as well. But you're right, Wilberforce is not really going to be involved in this. I think we thought for a long time that he'd been at that meeting in the King's Head Tavern, but some recent study of his diary has revealed that he wasn't even there. So the bad news is being handed over to a new man, and this man is Thomas Fall Buxton. He comes from East Angley in stock. He, like Wilberforce, is an independent MP,

and all of the great influences on his life have been, They call him the great elephant, don't they? He's a big chap. He's a big boy. He is not just because of his size and his stature, but he is a workhorse. He's referred to as a dray horse. He is the man that you give all of the really hard stuff to do and he will keep going at it. Can I just say I'm really a bit excited because my best friend at school was a direct

descendant of the Buxton's, of him in fact. And he was married into the frife. family as well. Indeed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so Thomas Fawillop Buxton now, this commanding elephant stroke

dray horse has decided this now is his mission, the anti-slavery society. Maybe that's a good place to leave it for this episode. Join us on Thursday when we find out how, may I put it this way, the elephant in the room, changes Britain's relationship with slavery forever. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita. Aranen and goodbye from me, William Duremberg.