Gradual Abolition of Slavery and the Prohibition of the Slave Trade
The abolition of the international slave trade to the Americas was the first of the many steps that led to emancipation in the Western Hemisphere. The first measures to prohibit the importation of enslaved Africans to the thirteen British colonies in North America started in the first half of the eighteenth century, motivated by fear of slave insurrections led by newly arrived enslaved Africans.
After the Stono Rebellion of 1739, the largest slave revolt in colonial North America (discussed in chapter 15), South Carolina twice banned the importation of enslaved Africans, and when the international slave trade restarted, colonial authorities created special tariffs to discourage slave imports. The thirteen colonies that became the United States broke ground on the gradual abolition of slavery in the United States. However, independence movements led by creole elites, whether in North America, the Spanish Americas, or Brazil, did not include emancipation of the enslaved population, especially in the regions where the institution of slavery was central to the economy.Even in the areas where bondage was not dominant, slave owners opposed emancipation, imposing on the enslaved population the long path of gradual abolition. Still, the American War of Independence fueled antislavery discourses and the early abolitionist movement. Enslaved men and women actively participated in this process by petitioning their owners to obtain freedom and in some cases rewards for past services.7 After the end of the war and with the rise of the French Revolution in 1789, antislavery activity spread in Europe and the United States. As discussed in chapter 12, this new context cleared the way for the passing of gradual emancipation legislation liberating newborns of enslaved mothers in the Northern states of the newly independent country.
The birth of Haiti in 1804 inspired rebellions and the abolitionist movement in Europe and the Americas.
In 1807, Napoléon Bonaparte crossed Spain to invade Portugal. In that same year the British Parliament abolished the international slave trade to the British colonies. Also in 1807, following the mandate of the Constitution of 1787, the United States Congress passed an act (made effective in 1808) prohibiting the international slave trade to its territory. Moreover, in 1808, the French and Spanish alliance was dismantled. To resist French occupation, a series of juntas (councils) were created all over Spain, which eventually led to the establishment of the Cortes of Cádiz in 1810. Spain’s first national assembly with representatives from its various colonies, the Cortes of Cádiz started discussing the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the Spanish Empire. Between 1814 and 1820, the end of the Napoleonic Wars led to the legal ban of the slave trade in France, Portugal, and Spain, even though the illegal slave trade persisted for several years.8The abolition of the British slave trade in 1807 was the first achievement of a powerful social movement gathering thousands of men and women who for moral and religious reasons condemned the continuation of the evil trade in enslaved Africans even though it still generated significant profits to British planters and slave owners. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the movement to abolish slavery in the British West Indies increased as well, fueled by the emergence of slave rebellions in Barbados, Guyana, and Jamaica, and also impacted by the activities of the Anti-Slavery Society that gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures demanding better conditions for the enslaved populations, gradual emancipation, and the total abolition of slavery. After months of intense debates, the Slavery Abolition Act of August 28, 1833, declared the end of slavery in the British colonies starting on August 1, 1834. The act formally freed nearly 800,000 enslaved persons. But except for Antigua, in all other British colonies of the West Indies, bondspeople older than six were submitted to a period of so-called apprenticeship, consisting of four years if they worked as domestic servants and six years if they were agricultural workers.9 Moreover, the Abolition Act included a provision to compensate 46,000 slave owners with £20 million.
Intended to control the former enslaved population, the apprenticeship system preserved most components of the old relations between slave owners and bondspeople.10By the time slavery was outlawed in the British Empire, the industries of tobacco, rice, and especially cotton had quickly expanded in the South of the United States, where the second slavery was flourishing. Meanwhile, the process of legal abolition of slavery in the United States remained gradual, varying from state to state. New York abolished slavery in 1827, Rhode Island in 1842, Pennsylvania in 1847, and Connecticut in 1848. Although New Jersey legally abolished slavery in 1846, freedpeople became apprentices for life. Consequently, the apprentices in New Jersey only obtained free status when slavery was abolished in the United States two decades later.11
Similar processes occurred in the Spanish Americas. The early rebellion that gave rise to the Mexican War of Independence in 1810 was a popular movement. Its leaders called attention to the problem of racial and social inequalities that separated white creole elites from the great majority of the poor population of color.12 Two years after Mexico’s independence, on September 26, 1823, the Constituent Assembly passed a decree that prohibited the transatlantic slave trade to Mexico. Even though the Mexican Constitution of 1824 did not address the issue of slavery, constitutions of various Mexican states, enacted between 1824 and 1827, either abolished slavery or determined that newborns should be manumitted.13 Eventually, President Vicente Guerrero issued a decree on September 15, 1829, ending slavery in Mexico, but the Congress overturned it less than two years later. Only in 1837 did the Congress of Mexico prohibit slavery across the country.14
Between 1811 and 1842, the Atlantic slave trade to the various colonies and former Spanish colonies in Central America and South America was legally abolished. Yet from 1843 to 1847 the trade in enslaved Africans reopened in Peru, as well as in Argentina and Uruguay between the 1820s and the early 1830s.15 In Santo Domingo (today’s Dominican Republic), the external slave trade and slavery were abolished in 1822. But other Spanish colonies and former colonies adopted gradual abolition by first enacting free womb legislation and only later abolishing slavery. Chile and the RÃo de La Plata (in today’s Argentina) enacted free womb laws in 1811 and 1813, respectively.16 The regions of present-day Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, and Panama passed legislation freeing newborns in 1821, Uruguay in 1825, Bolivia in 1831, and finally Paraguay in 1842.