Abolitionism in the United Kingdom

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.

In the 17th century, English Quakers and evangelical religious groups condemned slavery (by then applied mostly to Africans) as un-Christian; in the 18th century, abolition was part of the message of the First Great Awakening in the Thirteen Colonies; in the same period, rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticised it for violating the rights of man. James Edward Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning slavery in the Province of Georgia on humanistic grounds, arguing against it in Parliament and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More vigorously to pursue the cause. Soon after his death in 1785, they joined with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect. Though anti-slavery sentiment was widespread by the late 18th century, the colonies and emerging nation-states that used slave labour continued to do so.

The slave trade had been banned in England in 1102. In a 1569 court case involving Cartwright, who had bought a slave from Russia, the court ruled that English law could not recognise slavery, as it was never established officially. This ruling was overshadowed by later developments. It was upheld in 1700 by Lord Chief Justice Sir John Holt when he ruled that a slave became free as soon as he arrived in England.

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