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Throughout the nineteenth century British governments engaged in
a global campaign against the slave trade. They sought through coercion
and diplomacy to suppress the trade on the high seas and in Africa
and Asia. But, despite the Royal Navy’s success in eradicating
the transatlantic commerce in captive Africans, the forced migration
of labour and other forms of people trafficking persisted. This
collection of essays by specialist international, naval and slave
trade historians examines the role played by individuals and institutions
in the diplomacy of suppression, particularly the personnel of the
Slave Trade Department of the Foreign Office and of the Mixed Commission
Courts; the changing socio-religious character and methods of anti-slavery
activists and the lobbyists; and the problems faced by the navy
and those who served with its so-called ‘Preventive Squadron’
in seeking to combat the trade.
… Other contributions explore the difficulties confronting
British diplomats in their efforts to reconcile their moral objections
to slavery and the slave trade with Britain’s imperial and
strategic interests in Ottoman Turkey, Persia and the Arabian Peninsula;
British reactions to the continued exploitation of forced labour
in Portugal’s African colonies; and the apparent reluctance
of the Colonial Office to attempt any systematic reform of the ‘master
and servant’ legislation in force in Britain’s Caribbean
possessions. The final chapter brings the story through the twentieth
century, showing how the interests of the Foreign Office sometimes
diverged from those of the Colonial Office, and considering how
the changing face of slavery has made it the world-wide issue that
it is today.
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Foreword The Rt Hon David Miliband, MP
Editors’ Preface Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon
Introduction
Keith Hamilton and Farida Shaikh
1. Zealots and Helots: the slave trade
department of the nineteenth-century Foreign Office
Keith Hamilton
2. Judicial Diplomacy: British officials and the mixed commission
courts
Farida Shaikh
3. Slavery, Free trade and Naval Strategy, 1840–1860
Andrew Lambert
4. Anti-slavery Activists and Officials: “influence”,
lobbying and the slave trade, 1807–1850
David Turley
5. “A course of unceasing remonstrance”: British
diplomacy and the suppression of the slave trade in the East
T. G. Otte
6. The British “Official Mind” and Mineteenth-Century
Islamic Debates over the Abolition of Slavery
William Clarence Gervase-Smith
7. The “taint of slavery”: the Colonial Office
and the regulation of free labour
Mandy Banton
8. The Foreign Office and Slavery and Forced Labour in Portuguese
West Africa, 1894–1914
Glyn Stone
9. The Anti-slavery Game: Britain and the suppression of slavery
in Africa and Arabia, 1890–1975
Suzanne Miers
Index
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“[T]here can be little
doubt that throughout the nineteenth century Britain led the
international fight against slave trading. . . . As, however,
the authors of this volume reveal, there are limits to what
diplomacy can achieve, especially when it comes to putting universally
accepted principles into universal practice in a world of sovereign
states. Despite all the efforts of governments, non-governmental
organizations and individual activists, slavery persists.”
From the Foreword by The Rt Hon David Miliband, MP
“This volume collects essays on British antislavery strategies
and activism, the Foreign and Colonial Offices’ policies and
activities, and the work of the Mixed Commission Courts. Despite
certain limitations and flaws, it will be of interest to scholars
of the British slave trade and its suppression.
… After making vast profits from the trade in enslaved
Africans, Parliament finally responded to pressure from antislavery
organisations and passed the 1807 Act outlawing this trade.
As subsequent Acts were passed, traders found new ways to circumvent
their restrictions and the trade continued, unabated, notwithstanding
treaties with other countries forbidding the commerce in enslaved
Africans. It was not until the 1840s that a Royal Naval Squadron
with suitable vessels in sufficient numbers was dispatched to
the coast of West Africa to capture slaving vessels. Courts,
sometimes staffed by Britons alone and other times, in the case
of Mixed Commission Courts, staffed by judges from countries
that had signed such treaties, were set up to judge the captured
slave traders.
… Many contributors to the book allude to the idealism
of British officials involved in this process, an emphasis that
ignores the profits earned by the judges and the Royal Navy
and therefore lends an excessively rosy glow to the history.
The unqualified and often incompetent judges were paid from
the profits of the sale of slaving vessels: some British officials
grew very rich from these captures. These funds were also used
as prize money for the Royal Navy.
Foreign and Colonial Office officials were also often less than
idealistic or disinterested. The political importance of Portugal
to Britain necessitated careful and often toothless diplomacy.
One example of political pressures preventing any meaningful
action can be found in Britain’s treatment of the ongoing slavery
(as “forced labour”) in Sao Tomé and Principe, from which British
companies imported cocoa, in the period between 1894 and 1910.
And how to explain British law officers who sometimes actually
questioned the legality of declared policies, such as the statute
of 1839 empowering Britain to seize and try Brazilian vessels?
Brazil was a colony of Portugal. British funds were used in
Brazil to influence governments and abolitionists; if the aim
is declared to the humanistic, can we not also accurately label
it as bribery?
… This collection’s primary limitation is an excessive
focus on diplomacy without a sufficiently detailed or sceptical
analysis. To detail diplomatic activity without a full political,
historical, and commercial context results in a biased picture
that fails to explore the many possible reasons and motivations
for diplomacy. For example, activities could be undertaken both
to prevent conflict and to exert pressure regarding a particular
issue. And what was the effect of the diplomacy? Was publicity
– that is, presenting a positive picture of Britain abroad –
deemed sufficient motivation for diplomacy? Without adequate
enforcement – and the essays in this book indicate wholly inadequate
enforcement – Acts passed and treaties signed remained pieces
of publicity, of diplomacy, and were perhaps used to cover up
what was really going on.” Victorian Studies
“Hamilton, a historian in the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth
Office (FCO), and Salmon, a historian in the FCO who also teaches
history at the U. of Newcastle, UK, compile nine essays by international,
naval, and slave trade historians from the UK and US, who consider
the roles played by individuals and institutions in the suppression
of the slave trade by the British government in the nineteenth
century. They discuss the personnel of the Slave Trade Department
of the Foreign Office and the Mixed Commission Courts; the socio-religious
character and methods of anti-slavery activists and lobbyists;
the problems faced by the navy in combating the slave trade;
British diplomats’ competing moral objections to slavery
and interests in the trade; British reactions to the exploitation
of forced labor in Portugal’s colonies; and the reluctance
of the Colonial Office to the reform of legislation relating
to Britain’s Caribbean possessions. Papers were first
presented at a seminar, held in October 2007, on the theme of
‘Whitehall and the Slave Trade,’ at the Foreign
Commonwealth office on the bicentenary of the 1807 act abolishing
the slave trade.
…
The last chapter brings to mind an issue that has puzzled this
reviewer for many years: What explains the attraction of Islam
to Black Americans, i.e., the American-founded Nation of Islam,
when the mother land of Islam, Saudi Arabia, continued to endorse
slavery for generations after nations dominated by non-Islam
religions had banned slavery? Adding to that puzzlement was
the practice of Muslims in East Africa of continuing to engage
in slave trading long after that was discontinued by non-Muslim
nations.
… Collectively,
the individual chapters recount the long struggle to eradicate
slavery. It is a needed reminder that merely passing a law or
several laws was not sufficient to eliminate this scourge, which
exists yet today, but in different forms, as evidenced by the
growth of the sex slavery trade throughout the world.”
Reference & Research Book News
“Hamilton and Salmon’s Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire
is the product of a seminar hosted in 2007 by the British
Foreign and Commonwealth Office to commemorate the bicentennial
of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade. This is generally
a study of the “official mind,” built primarily on the archives
of the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office. The collection
covers an admirably long time frame, from 1807 to 1975. Six
essays examine the nineteenth century, and three reach well
into the twentieth century. The collection looks beyond abolition
and the American plantation complex to include official responses
to other forms of slavery in other regions, especially in East
Africa and the Middle East. This breadth is uncommon and commendable
in the study of British abolitionist politics. While the contributors
often laud the British government for its historic leading role
in opposition to slavery, they commonly acknowledge that slavery
was always a secondary concern for British officials. These
officials regarded their priorities as the international balance
of power centered on Europe and the protection of national sovereignty,
whether Britain’s or that of an ally. Furthermore, colonial
officials “on the spot” were reluctant to disrupt local economies
and possibly foment rebellion through the reform of labor systems.
Officials were periodically forced to strike an artful balance
between international policy, or the socioeconomic stability
of an imperial territory, and the abolitionist cause of a humanitarian
lobby. As Suzannie Miers explains in her incisive concluding
essay, all of these factors shaped the “anti-slavery game,”
which commonly ended with little or no practical effect.
… This collection focuses on bureaucratic structures and
the officials who developed these structures and exerted influence
on policy. Keith Hamilton’s essay typifies this approach in
illuminating the transformation of the Slave Trade Department
over several decades into the Consular-Africa Department in
1883. This department exerted considerable influence on British
foreign policy in the era of the “new imperialism,” during which
the Foreign Office confronted rejuvenated antislavery politics
as Europe sought a moral mandate for its imperial expansion
into Africa. Turning to the Middle East, T.G. Otte addresses
British diplomacy and various forms of slavery in the second
half of the nineteenth century, emphasizing the key roles of
consular officers in establishing slave trade conventions with
Egypt and Turkey. William Gervase Clarence-Smith then examines
how several British officials, stationed in Islamic societies
of Britain’s formal and informal empires after the 1830s, interpreted
the status of slavery and the prospect of abolition in terms
of Islamic law. One of the most successful essays in the collection
is Mandy Banton’s study of the process through which the Colonial
Office reviewed Masters and Servants laws throughout the Empire
between 1830 and the 1950s. Banton exposes serious conflicts
between officials in London and colonial legislatures and local
consular officials, demonstrating that over time the laws became
increasingly punitive as the Colonial Office became disinterested.
She shows that the Colonial Office never had a strong policy
with which to defend the rights of free laborers in the British
Empire.
… The collection consistently demonstrates that British
officials subordinated abolition to international relations
and sovereignty. This is abundantly clear in Andrew Lambert’s
essay on slavery and British naval strategy between 1840 and
1860. Whereas the British navy stopped the slave trade to Brazil
by 1851, it did not stop the slave trade to Cuba, because Britain
had a strategic interest in supporting Spanish sovereignty there
against the United States. Similarly, Glyn Stone shows that
the Foreign Office resisted humanitarian pressure to intervene
against forced labor in Portuguese West Africa before the First
World War in order to avoid compromising Britain’s “ancient
alliance” with Portugal. Even under bilateral treaties against
the slave trade, British officials sometimes permitted national
rivalry to undermine cooperation, as one sees in Farid Shaikh’s
essay on Mixed Commission Courts in the first half of the nineteenth
century. These courts were established jointly by Britain and
other governments to determine the status of passengers aboard
vessels of their respective nations that were seized under suspicion
of transporting slaves. Despite problems of rivalry and staffing,
some judges were committed to enforcing the letter of the law,
even if this resulted in the release of slave traders and their
human cargo.” The Journal of Modern History
“The
machinations of colourful rogues such as James Bandinel, the
department’s first manager, come alive in Hamilton’s own first
chapter. The roster of those serving on mixed commission courts,
as diplomat Farida Shaikh relates in her chapter 2, was just
as notoriously uneven as their metropolitan colleagues were,
with many judges succumbing to disease or violence in diverse
places such as Havana, Rio de Janeiro, Luanda, and eventually
New York. Only when official attention moved from the Atlantic
to the Near East and Africa after 1870 did the professional
support, stature, and success of those charged with ending
the slave trade improve greatly. As the enforcers became more
established, they, like their late Georgian predecessors,
were always grappling to find that right balance of idealism
and pragmatism that would enhance perfidious Albion’s image
and influence globally. That balance obviously changed with
respect to time and space. In dealing with weaker sisters
such as Spain, Portugal, and Brazil in the Atlantic, the full
force of the British Navy was deployed to catch slavers and
to free their cargoes, but dealing with the land-based Ottoman
and Persian Empires, among others, in Asia later in the nineteenth
century required much more quiet diplomacy and, most interesting,
moral persuasion respecting Islamic beliefs and precepts,
as chapters 5 and 6 discern. The closing article by noted
historian Suzanne Miers provides a timely update, reminding
all of us that chattel slavery, like the British Empire itself,
has been greatly reduced yet not completely eradicated from
the face of the earth. Accordingly, this reviewer recommends
this comprehensive collection for research libraries that
support experts in modern British and world history.”
The Historian
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Publication Details
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Hardback ISBN: |
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978-1-84519-298-3 |
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Paperback ISBN: |
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978-1-84519-573-1 |
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Page Extent / Format: |
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256 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
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Release Date: |
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Hardback, May 2009; December
2012 |
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Illustrated: |
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Yes, plate section |
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Hardback Price: |
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£49.95 / $75.00 |
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Paperback Price: |
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£25 / $34.95 |
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