Thanks for the reminder.
By 1972 more black Africans had come to the United States on purpose than were ever brought as slaves. Buy now that number is 5 times more than were ever brought as slaves.
Thank you for posting this. The way the British crown forced slavery on the Colonies has been erased from history by those wishing to demonize the South.
By demonizing the South, Marxists seek to discredit the Founders and the Constitution as tainted by slavery.
Patriots here on FR who constantly throw the South under the bus are only serving as useful idiots to the Marxists.
Ping for later.*
Very interesting post — I have wanted to see something like this for ages and thank you for digging it up.
The motives of the colonials who wanted to stop importation of more African slaves are mixed, but clear (surplus of slaves already, fear of whites being overwhelmed demographically, changing patterns of agriculture, Slave-owning elites who would not want their slave capital to be devalued by adding supply; same group wouldn’t want arriviste competitors getting in on the slave game, etc.).
I’m very interested in a deeper exploration of the Crown’s motives in forbidding colonial non-importation laws. The quoted petition alleges purely venal motives: highly placed cronies made big profits from the slave trade. (As an aside: Could the authors have expected the King to be swayed by clothing a naked accusation of money-grubbing in transparent sycophancy? I know that slavish humility and implying advisors were really at fault was the required formula, but this was a ham-handed). Were King and Council concerned about the broader effects of allowing American colonial non-importation laws (e.g., in Caribbean sugar colonies?); encouraging the overall emancipation movement?; the empowerment of colonial elites by letting them take the initiative on setting crown policy on such a major issue; horse-trading support on other issues with various Earls of Smerl?; other aspects I can’t come up with at the moment?
I don’t doubt that cronyism and venality were involved, since this was after all, raw politics. It’s just that decisions rarely rest on simple reasons alone. That doesn’t change the facts that your material demonstrates.
bump
The Brits like to crow about having abolished slavery in 1833 but the 1833 law only applied to the British isles, the Caribbean colonies and South Africa but not the remainder of Africa or the Asian colonies.
British East Africa (roughly the same area as is modern Kenya) had slavery until 1904, British Malaya (the Malay peninsula and modern Singapore) until 1915, and the British government in India allowed indentured servitude among the natives until 1917. British Burma until 1926, and British Hong Kong was still practicing a form of slavery limited to young women used as domestic servants until the 1930s.
The (white) Australians practiced de facto slavery of the Aborigines until the middle of the 20th Century. It wasn’t chattel slavery in that they weren’t openly sold in markets but they were confined and held against their will, sometimes in chains, and always restrained by financial means. And the practice was only ended because Aussie labor unions finally gained the political clout to have it ended so that the Aboriginal labor wouldn’t be unfair competition to them.