Slavery In The 1700s Essay

Slavery was used widely in the 1700s. Mainly the Americans, the French and the British used it, but other countries and empires also used it. Most of the time, black people were used as slaves, but there were exceptions.
At the time, America, Britain and France were mainly white countries, so racism was huge at the time. Names were used to insult and discriminate each other and violence was used a lot. But when slavery was first introduced, white people saw them as the equivalent of animals and they had no rights what so ever. But after a few years when slavery was used in mass amounts and the slaves had repopulated, the children were born as free men and women. This meant they could retaliate when they grew older. After that happened, racism
was used more and more and no one wanted blacks in their towns or cities.
In 1765, Granville Sharp found a young slave boy, Jonathan Strong, in his town, seriously injured. He then took action and took Jonathan to the local hospital where he made his recovery. 2 years later, the boy had fully recovered and has got himself a job as a messenger boy. But his old master who has him captured as a slave beforehand, kidnapped him and tried to take him back to Jamaica. Upon hearing the news, Granville Sharp took the case to court and convinced the judge that the boy had done nothing. In the end, the judge decided he was not guilty and he was free. Sharp did this for a lot of other people after that and made a huge difference in slavery.
In 1797, twelve people formed a group to fight for the abolition of slavery. One of those people were called William Wilberforce. He was an MP and made many speeches in Parliament trying to abolish slave trade, and in 1807, he and his group were finally successful. But they didn’t stop there, they fought for another 7 years until slavery altogether was abolished in 1814.
When Olaudah Equiano was ten years of age, he was kidnapped from his home in Africa and taken to Barbados as a slave. He was used as a servant for a ship’s captain were he travelled around the world. At one point, he stayed in London for a long time. He learned English and was christened. But his master took him back to America where he was sold as a slave. After a lot of hard work, Equiano bought his freedom. He was a free man and he travelled the world making speeches about the horrors of slavery and what is was like. He also brought the dreadful slave ship Zong to the public’s attention and made a big impact on how slavery was seen.
In the late 1700s, slaves became less and less needed as machinery was becoming more common.
These machines needed far less man power and slaves were freed, sold or killed. They were quite deadly though. If a slave was lucky enough to be kept at the plantation they were working at, they were made to use the machines that their master owned. Often they weren’t told how to use them properly or didn’t have enough knowledge of the machine. They were used unsafely and people were seriously injured and even killed. People didn’t want more slaves hurt, so they taught them properly and the machines then got smaller and safer and needed far less man power. Slaves were less and less needed and eventually they were freed.
White working class campaigners across the globe knew what slavery was like and wanted to end it. Petitions went round and got mass amounts of signatures. In 1792, a petition was sent round Manchester and got over twenty-thousand signatures out of a population on 75,000. Eventually they abolished slave trade, but the petitions still carried on going round, until the people got what they wanted; the abolition of slavery altogether.
After all these factors were taken note of in Parliament, they ended slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1814. I think the main reason slavery was ended was because of the racism and the slaves becoming free; and slavery was a bad idea right from the start.
By Ally Cargill
9MF