Abolition, Illegal Trafficking, and the Long Legacy of the Slave Trade

Organized opposition to the trade crystallized in Britain with the founding of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787; Thomas Clarkson gathered documentary evidence, William Wilberforce led the parliamentary campaign for nearly two decades, and the formerly enslaved Olaudah Equiano published an influential autobiography in 1789. Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act in 1807, banning the trade throughout the British Empire, and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 went further, freeing enslaved people across most of the empire while compensating slaveowners with £20 million — followed by a transitional "apprenticeship" system (1834-1838) that imposed continued compulsory labor. Britain's example directly influenced abolitionist campaigns in France and the United States.