William Wilberforce has become one of the best known figures in the abolition campaign. Some commentators such as Melvyn Bragg believe that he has not been given enough credit for his role as 'a great man of history'.
Yet many others believe he is given too much credit, especially at the expense of those who were part of the African Diaspora - for no one had a greater interest in abolishing slavery than those who were enslaved. This piece focuses on individuals and communities within the African Diaspora who struggled against slavery, some through the writings of their personal stories and political campaigning, others through everyday forms of resistance.
The Black presence in Britain goes back to before the Elizabethan period. Elizabeth I’s decree that there were too many Blackamores, as then called, living in her realm is a reflection of their numbers at that time.
Who these men and women were is largely unknown, and their histories wait to be recovered. What is often forgotten is that many of these men and women would have been part of rural life. Living on the country estates of the aristocracy where they were forced to work, their part in the making of the English landscape is largely unacknowledged.
Among these country servants would have been young people, many of whom would have arrived in England as children, among them the unnamed girl who appears in a portrait of Louise de Keroualle. Louise de Keroualle first came to England from her native France in 1670 as a maid of honour to Charles II's sister, the Duchess of Orleans. She returned to become the king's mistress in 1671, this portrait of her was painted in 1682. The title of the portrait makes no mention of the young girl painted alongside her. Dressed in pearls, she is a person, a child, without a name, her only role in the portrait to exaggerate the wealth of her slave-owning mistress.
Young black people were, of course, also a part of urban life in London. They were part of street life, on shop signs as the advertisers of millers and public houses, as fugitives on runaway slave posters, caricatures on trade cards and of course as ordinary members of the public.
Hogarth’s eighteenth century urban scenes are among the most famous representations of Black people in this context. Others, such as Ignatius Sancho were shopkeepers and writers; there were highly acclaimed professional musicians like George Bridgetower, as well as street buskers who entertained London's public. Billy Waters, a fiddler, was one such character.
Waters became a well-known character and a common sight outside the Adelphi Theatre, in the Strand, in the 1780s. Identifiable by his wooden leg and the military-style of the outfit that he wore, he was caricatured by the cartoonist George Cruickshank.
Some have suggested that his military inspired costume reflects his role as one of the numerous Black men who fought for Britain during the American War of Independence. At the end of the war these men were left vulnerable and often penniless. Those who made it to Britain often became members of the poor of London.
From research undertaken on workhouse records, it seems that Billy spent his final days at St Giles's Workhouse where he was elected 'the king of beggars'. A verse from his will reads:
Thus poor Black Billy's made his Will,
His Property was small good lack,
For till the day death did him kill
His house he carried on his back.
The Adelphi now may say alas!
And to his memory raise a stone:
Their gold will be exchanged for brass,
Since poor Black Billy's dead and gone
From a piece about Black musicians in the National Archives
‘I am only a lodger, and hardly that’, Ignatius Sancho
Ignatius Sancho was born on board a slave ship in 1729 and his mother died soon after he was born. His father, preferring death to a life of the miseries of slavery committed suicide, a decision taken by many other enslaved men and women. When he was a little over than two years old, his owner brought him to England, and gave him as a gift to three sisters who lived in Greenwich.
They kept Sancho as a pet, denying him an education in the belief that it would make him more obedient. The Duke and later the Duchess of Montague who lived on nearby in Blackheath would eventually take Sancho into their home, support his education and independence.
Sancho became a great man of letters, and following his death in 1780 they were collected and published. In his lifetime he studied the arts and Garrick and Sterne became well acquainted with him. As well as writing, Sancho also composed music, all while running his grocer’s shop off Whitehall.
The first known African man to vote in England, Sancho was not part of the Abolition movement as it is now remembered, for that movement as we imagine it was one begun by the Quakers. But for those who were always seeking to abolish enslavement he was an important presence in the city, an inspiration for what could be achieved with a free life.
S I Martin’s book, Incomparable World brings this and the diversity of the Black experience in London at the time brilliantly to life.
Sancho finally left his owner’s home in Greenwich by running away, and fleeing from your master’s house was one of the most important ways men and women had of re-establishing their agency. Ordinary people would have been an important part of the network that supported runaway slaves.
If you ran away, you needed shelter and money, help to remain hidden in the area you were staying, or help to get to another. If your owner had placed a sliver collar around your neck in order to show as elaborately as possible to their peers that they owned you, you needed someone who would remove that collar for you. They all had to be people who could be trusted not to turn you in for the Guinea rewards offered by owners of the enslaved.
Escape From The Plantations
Those experiencing the brutal life on plantations in the Americas also used escape as a means to access a life of freedom. Some of those who escaped the plantation slavery became successful enough to set up their own independent communities. Among the most famous of these are the Maroons of Jamaica.
The Maroon settlements, made-up of escaped slaves, set up communities in the mountainous areas of Jamaica that were hard for the British to attack. The Maroons’ success forced the British to agree a treaty with them protecting the land they had established control over. As was so often the case with the British, the Crown did not keep its word, but the Maroons continued to fight to retain their freedom and for small spaces where escaped slaves might find reprieve from the patrols that sought to return them to plantation life.
Revolt On The Slave Ships
It is thought that at least one in ten ships experienced an uprising during the middle passage, and rebellions on ships, on the coasts of Africa and on plantations increasingly put up the cost of slave trading, and impacted upon the profits of Europeans.
Historians such as David Eltis argue that, even if a ship’s rebellion was not successful, it added to the cost of slave trading, making it a less attractive market to new capitalists, and thus helping to contribute to the difficulties of the trade.
Even though there were violent and sordid punishments for those who were caught resisting at sea or on land, the fact that uprisings continued at every point of the trade is an illustration of how much enslaved people were willing to risk to regain their freedom.
While I was in Montserrat I knew a negro man, named Emanuel Sankey, who endeavored to escape from his miserable bondage, by concealing himself on board of a London ship, but fate did not favour the poor oppressed man; for, being discovered when the vessel was under sail, he was delivered up again to his master. This Christian master immediately pinned the wretch down to the ground at each wrist and ankle, and then took some sticks of sealing wax, and lighted them, and dropped it all over his back.
Olaudah Equiano
This quote is from the Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, one of the greatest abolitionists based in London, and his book is perhaps his most famous legacy. His autobiography tells us that slavers captured him when he was about twelve, and took him to Barbados, and then he was sold onto a plantation in Virginia. In turn he was sold to a British naval officer, Michael Pascal who renamed him Gustavas Vassa, and eventually to a Philadelphia Quaker merchant, Robert King.
Working for payment on King's trading ships, Equiano eventually saved enough money to purchase his freedom. During the latter part of his life Equiano settled in England, and in 1789 he published 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African'. One of the most important publications of the abolition movement, his narrative went through nine English editions, and was translated into Dutch, German and Russian. The narrative deals with many of the issues of slavery that are still being discussed today. The horrors of the middle passage:
This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now became insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.
The loss of identity, both of culture, community and names that was forced upon those who were enslaved:
While I was on board this ship, my captain and master named me Gustavus Vassa. I at that time began to understand him a little, and refused to be called so, and told him as well as I could that I would be called Jacob; but he said I should not, and still called me Gustavus: and when I refused to answer to my new name, which I at first did, it gained me many a cuff; so at length I submitted, and by which I have been known ever since."
and the loss of family and friends:
Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends, to toil for your luxury and lust of gain? Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice? Are the dearest friends and relations, now rendered more dear by their separation from their kindred, still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery, with the small comfort of being together; and mingling their sufferings and sorrows?
Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, husbands their wives? Surely, this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has no advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates distress; and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery.
The Slave Ship Zong
Perhaps not so well know is it that it was Equiano who brought the Zong case to the attention of Granville Sharp (seen here in the centre with his family) in 1781. The Zong case, described by Peter Fryer as mass murder on the high seas, was one of the most controversial episodes in eighteenth century Britain.
The Zong was a slaving ship, owned by a William Gregson, a Liverpool banker, and his business partners. On the journey that made the headlines, Zong was heading for Jamaica having left the costal waters of Africa on 6 September 1781. Greedy for profit, the crew of 12 packed 470 enslaved Africans onto the ship. By the end of November, over 60 of the enslaved Africans, chained together in appalling and cramped conditions, had died and many more were seriously ill.
If those men and women who were sick died a natural death onboard the ship, the owners would bear the loss of profit, if however these men and women were thrown overboard, because they were said to be a danger to the ship, the Zong’s insurers would have to bear the price. The captain picked out 133 to be murdered. On the first day 54 were killed, 43 on the next day. On the third day of the killings the remaining 36 fought back against their killers and so were shackled before being thrown into the sea. The last ten escaped the bonds of their captors and jumped overboard.
The Zong’s owner’s claimed the full amount possible for the murdered slaves, claiming falsely, that insufficient water onboard the ship had prompted their murder. The underwriters refused to honour the claim despite being instructed to by a court – the issue of murder was not on the court’s agenda.
Equiano heard about the case from a letter in the Morning Chronicle and took the news to Sharp, who in turn began a campaign to bring the issue of murder to the attention of the court and the British public. Despite the public outrage that was generated, those guilty of the murders were not punished, and it was not until 1796 that an English court ruled that enslaved Africans could not be treated as merchandise.
The legacy
This image of Beckford is held in the National Portrait Gallery, but he was not an abolitionist at all, he was in fact a staunch supporter of the trade that made his family, and himself, one of the wealthiest of their generation, but he is also good example of the intimate relationship between slavers and those who sought to free the enslaved, as these words from the academic and broadcaster Robert Beckford show us.
"My name is a slave name, a physical, material and psychological brand given to my slave ancestors by their owners. The white Beckford family was a major slaveholding family. At their height they owned 22 plantations and some 1600 African slaves in Jamaica.
As J.Lees-Milne points out in his publication William Beckford, the first Beckford began slave trading and planting as early as the later part of the 1660s. For almost 200 years as a result of the huge profits from their plantations in Jamaica, a plethora of Beckford descendants lived lives of luxury and influence in Jamaica and England. … Even at the end of Slavery in 1834, the white family, like other slave owners, received a lump sum for their losses - over £200,000 in compensation. In contrast the black Beckfords, as in the case of other slaves received nothing. There are descendants of both the slave owning and enslaved Beckfords living in Britain today of which I am one.
Sources and Suggested Further Reading
Robert Beckford quotation source here
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative And Other Writings, Penguin 2003
Peter Fryer, Staying Power, Pluto Press, 1984
S I Martin, Incomparable World, Quartet, 1996
Ignatius Sancho, The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, Penguin, 1998
Marika Sherwood, After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade since 1807, I B Tauris, 2007
