Racism is a loyal companion in our society to this day and has been for quite a long time in history. Fortunately, racism is taboo in many circles today, which of course does not mean that it has simply disappeared. But still... You have to start somewhere. In the USA there is also regular discussion about where racism actually begins and what defines a racist person. And admittedly, it's not always that easy, and white people from the southern states in particular are often assumed to have a certain xenophobia simply because of their accent. In the past, we sometimes found it easier to assess this. There are also very obvious examples of racist acts. The transatlantic slave trade is such an example.
When it comes to the slave trade, things are really damn simple! The fact that white Europeans saw no moral problem in kidnapping millions of people from Africa to America speaks volumes. But a superficial review of the transatlantic slave trade sometimes overlooks just how racist it actually was at its core. This is evident not only in the big picture, in the system of triangular trade with Europe at its center, but above all in the small things. In this article I want to talk about three such "little" things and you will see:The slave trade was even more racist than you always thought!
Britain and the Black Loyalists
So let's not waste time. If we want to talk about racism, the slave trade and colonialism, we almost inevitably have to start with England or Great Britain. True, the transatlantic triangular trade and the slave trade to America in general started with Spain and Portugal and also involved the Netherlands, France and even Denmark. But the most important player was soon based in London. For England, the great era of slavery began in the late 17th century and the 18th century was the absolute peak. The main reason for this was the development of agriculture in the North American and Caribbean colonies. At the end of the 17th century, the plantation economy developed there on a large scale. This demanded more and more cheap labour, which is why Africans were soon being shipped to America in the hundreds of thousands.
From the British side, this included a certain “understanding” of the inferiority of African people. However, when the situation in North America began to become problematic for the British, it became clear just how cynically the British rulers were willing to deal with African slaves. The American War of Independence attacked the core of the British Empire from 1775 onwards. Suddenly white colonialists, who had been sent to America themselves, rose up against the rule of London! Panic soon became evident among royal governors in the North American colonies. In the fall of 1775, just months after the outbreak of war, the governor of Virginia offered all the state's slaves freedom if they went to war for the crown! In other states, too, some slaves joined the British forces. Not that this promise was honored throughout the war, but still:After their defeat, the British did remember it.
After the war ended in a debacle for Great Britain in 1784, almost 3,000 of these so-called "black loyalists" were evacuated to Canada and settled in Nova Scotia. So far, so good, one would actually think. The British aren't really that racist up to this point! But let's not judge too soon. For the now free Loyalists, Nova Scotia soon got uncomfortable again. The very year they arrived, they were attacked by a white mob. Apart from that, British administrators assigned them the far worse part of the land anyway, and they mostly found themselves on less fertile ground. So in the 1790s the Empire came up with a new plan! The Black Loyalists in Canada, as well as all other free blacks that swarmed the Empire, should simply be brought "home." In the period that followed, thousands of them were summarily taken to Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa. Theoretically they had a choice, but neither Nova Scotia nor England was too comfortable for former slaves. And finally, wouldn't these black people feel a lot more comfortable with their friends in Africa anyway?
The "Negro Republic" of Liberia
Since the deep-rooted racism in the British has quite decently struck. Even then, it should have been clear to everyone that Sierra Leona was by no means the “home” of the Black Loyalists from North America. But that didn't matter. Nevertheless, the British model soon caught on. It was in the now independent United States in particular that a real problem eventually developed out of slaves in the decades following the Revolutionary War. There were always stubborn slave owners who knew nothing better to do with their money than to set their slaves free. Thus, around 1820, there were already around 200,000 free blacks in the USA. The problem was that the white elite had no idea what to do with them. Integrating into society was not possible with the best will in the world, that was already forbidden by Puritan decency! So they looked around for alternatives and soon ended up with the well-known "solution" from Britain.
The first person in the USA to campaign for the "return" of black residents to Africa was not a member of the white upper class, but a certain Paul Cuffee. He received permission from London to bring black free Americans to Sierra Leone as well and organized a first ship in 1816 that brought the first 38 of them right there. However, since he died the following year, he could not pursue his project any further. This was then taken over by the very white leadership that really had every reason to get rid of the free blacks! They couldn't be integrated, were inferior to the whites, had criminal tendencies and would only cause a riot among the slaves! In 1816, for example, some elite Washington gentlemen founded the American Colonization Society. Their goal was to resettle as many ex-slaves as possible from the US to Africa. They chose an area south of Sierra Leone, which we now know as Liberia, as their destination.
In 1820, the Society's first ship sailed there, carrying 88 black and three white passengers. Hardly any of these 88 former slaves were actually free and had volunteered for the crossing themselves. Rather, the Society simply bought slaves free in order to more or less force them to relocate. Within weeks, all three white and 22 black passengers on the ship died of yellow fever in their new home, but that didn't stop the ACS from sending more people there. It wasn't until nearly thirty years later that the Society had had enough. In the meantime, several thousand former slaves had actually arrived in Liberia, but the ACS no longer wanted to be responsible for them financially. So the colony's governor was simply persuaded to declare Liberia independent. Thus the “Negro Republic” of Liberia was born. The settlers there quickly demonstrated how wrong the American Colonization Society's racist assumption was that black Americans "fit in better" in Africa anyway. They built an apartheid-like system in Liberia, in which not even 5% of the population oppressed the remaining 95%, the original inhabitants of the country. This upper class was only deprived of power in 1980, followed by a bloody civil war.
Slave trade and the Slave Trade Act
But back to the British! Every nationally conscious Englishman will now point out that it was also Great Britain that, with its Slave Trade Act of 1807, was the first to abolish the transatlantic slave trade or even the entire slave trade in the British Empire. And in fact that's true. As early as the late 18th century there were increasing voices in Great Britain calling for an end to slavery or at least an end to the British slave trade. What the nationally conscious Englishman might find less noteworthy, however, is that the Slave Trade Act only banned the trade of slaves, not slavery itself. Moreover, London was extremely keen to avoid any economic damage by abolishing this trade suffer disadvantages. And they made sure of that.
The opportunity for this arose very soon, namely at the Congress of Vienna, which was to reorganize Europe after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. There, the British delegation actually managed to get slavery outlawed in the congressional acts. Of course, this did not mean that all European countries stopped the slave trade overnight. Spain and Portugal were then simply bribed and paid off by Britain to abandon the trade. Brazil, on the other hand, was intimidated militarily. Only France continued to trade people across the Atlantic until the mid-19th century before giving up the business. In the case of the British, things are definitely double-edged. On the one hand, they were the first major European power to abolish the slave trade. And it was they too who forced the rest of the powers to do the same. On the other hand, they only did all this if they could also ensure that the economy would not be too badly affected by the end of slavery. Was that also the obstacle two hundred years earlier?
On this week's podcast, I speak in detail about the American Colonization Society and their plans in Liberia. There is a lot more that can be said about this than in this short article. If you would like to have more stories and also prefer them delivered free of charge, I have a special offer for you. Sign up for the Déjà vu story newsletter! Your regular dose of history straight to your inbox. I would be happy to welcome you to the community.