Emancipation of the British West Indies

The Emancipation of the British West Indies is the name given to the abolition of slavery in the British colonies of the West Indies. Emancipation of the slaves was proposed as early as 1787, but was not achieved until the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 (effective 1834).

The British were the first to attempt to abolish slavery in the Caribbean during the early 19th century, but complete emancipation took time and effort to achieve. Many people, primarily in England, began to view slavery as cruel and unjust as The Enlightenment swept across the nation. The global economic changes taking place during this time period created a decline in the need for slavery in the Caribbean as the industrial revolution and free trade began to take shape and products could be created more cheaply elsewhere. Religious efforts aided in this oppositional movement by taking a strong stance against slavery during the Methodist movement and New Protestant Evangelism. The Roman Catholic Church also played a crucial role in slave uprisings, mainly because it was the primary religion in the area that would recognise slaves as members of the church. Uprisings such as the Haitian Revolution and the Baptist War reinforced the British attempt to abolish slavery by forcing Europeans to focus their attention on Caribbean affairs.

A significant event in the campaign was the preaching by Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, of the 1783 Anniversary Sermon of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), an occasion which he used to criticise the Anglican Church’s role in ignoring the plight of the slaves on its Codrington Estates in Barbados, and to recommend means by which the lot of slaves there could be improved. It was a well-reasoned and much-reprinted sermon, preached before forty members of the society, including eleven bishops of the Church of England. When this largely fell upon deaf ears, Porteus next began work on his Plan for the Effectual Conversion of the Slaves of the Codrington Estate, which he presented to the SPG committee in 1784 and, when it was turned down, again in 1789.

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