Developments towards abolition

Abolitionist sentiments in Britain had been rising and falling during the late 18th and early 19th century. A small yet noteworthy step towards abolition of the slave trade had already been made in 1788, when “Dolben’s Act” was passed seeking to limit the number of slaves that could be carried on a vessel according to its

DOI: 10.4324/9781003313366-4 tonnage.^[215] While the Act further required the presence of surgeons on board and a record to be kept of illnesses and deaths, it has not been clearly established whether the statute led indeed to a decrease of mortality during the voyages, as had been its purpose.^[216]

It was during a “second wave”, as Robin Blackburn describes it, that following several failed bills in parliament, the Slave Trade Abolition Act was finally passed in 1807 (hereafter the “1807 Act”).^[217] The endeavour had been successful argu­ably because it had focused exclusively on the trade, “explicitly disavowing any intention of pressing for slave emancipation in the British colonies.”^[218] The ban was expected to result in an amelioration of conditions since further supply of slaves would be limited to natural reproduction,^[219] though this hope amongst abolition­ists did not materialize.

Following the enactment, Britain made campaigning against the Atlantic slave trade a central plank of its diplomatic efforts. The policy allowed the Brit­ish Empire to assume a position of moral authority against those states which continued to allow their vessels to carry out the traffic.^[220] Following the Peace of Vienna in 1815, the European maritime powers passed a succession of abolition Acts, “often unwillingly... under diplomatic pressure from Great Britain”.^{[221] [222] The achievement of an international ban was a milestone that was reached towards the end of the century, at the Brussels Conference in 1890.8 The process was thus a prolonged one, though not, as Jean Allain points out, for the lack of a multilat­eral agreement.}

The abolition of the slave trade 53 particularly when considering the fate of the captured cargo, the so-called “Prize slaves”, as discussed in the Mauritian context below.

3.3