In light of recent events which led to the Black Lives
Matter demonstrations in Sheffield and across the globe last weekend, much
focus has now been turned on statues with links to slavery and plantation
owners.
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Poster against shipping of slaves to Cuba, 1862
(Sheffield Archives: MD2024) |
For over 250 years Britain was involved in the slave
trade - the enforced capture and removal of Africans from their homes and
transported by ship across the Atlantic to the West Indies and the Americas.
This brutal system was sustained for such a great length of time, mainly
because it guaranteed the prosperity of the nation. Goods manufactured in
England were shipped to Africa where they were used to buy slaves, not only
with European traders, but with native African traders too. Slaves were shipped
across the sea in what was known as the ’Middle Passage’ after which they were
sold to work on plantations and farms. The money raised was used to buy
products such as sugar, coffee and tobacco which were increasingly popular in
Europe. The well-being of many an Englishman or woman was directly tied to the
suffering of Black Africans thousands of miles away. By the late 18th century
there were calls for the slave trade to be abolished and Sheffield played a
leading role in the struggle to end slavery in the 19th century.
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Card appealing to the people of Sheffield to
boycott West India sugar, 19th cent.
(Sheffield Local Studies Library: MP151S) |
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Plantation hoes sold
by Joseph Smith of
Sheffield, 1816
(SLSL: 672 SSTQ) |
One of the earliest documentary references in Sheffield’s
collections to attempts to abolish the slave trade is a pamphlet written by
William Fox in 1791, entitled An address to the people of Great Britain on the
utility of refraining from the use of West-India sugar and rum. Such early
examples of efforts to bring economic pressure to bear on the campaign to end
slavery were fairly common. The Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society campaigned
for a boycott of sugar and coffee which had been produced in the West Indies -
most likely by slaves. They switched to buying East Indian produce. As well as
products such as sugar arriving back in Sheffield from the West Indies where
they had been produced by slaves, Sheffield’s merchants exported goods to be
used on plantations.
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Election handbills, 1807
(Sheffield Archives: WWM/E221) |
In 1806-1807 abolition of the slave trade was an
important political issue, not least in Yorkshire where William Wilberforce,
the famous anti-slavery campaigner was a Member of Parliament. In the run-up to
the general election of 1807 slavery was referred to in many handbills and
flyers. Slavery was not the only issue
on which the election was fought, but pro-slavery candidates were unsuccessful
and two anti-slavery candidates were returned to Parliament - William
Wilberforce and Charles Wentworth-FitzWilliam, later 5th Earl FitzWilliam
[Viscount Milton].
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Sheffield Ladies Anti-Slavery,
Society, 1830 (Sheffield Local
Studies Library)
|
In the 1820s a national anti-slavery society was established
calling for gradual abolition; however some groups, notably a group of women in
Birmingham called for immediate abolition. A Sheffield Ladies’ Anti-Slavery
Society soon followed the establishment of the one in Birmingham. Its
literature states it was engaged in the cause of 'light, of liberty, of
knowledge, of mercy, of truth and love'. The society was dissolved following
emancipation in 1833, but it was later re-established to continue campaigning
against slavery in other parts of the world.
There were many campaigners against the slave trade and
slavery. On the slave plantations themselves there were regular uprisings and
insurrections against slave owners and the slave system. Many of these attempts
at freedom were brutally crushed, but they were never eliminated. A well-known
anti-slavery campaigner was Olaudah Equiano. Born in what is now Nigeria,
Equiano was sold into slavery in childhood. He was eventually sold to a Quaker
Merchant and gradually saved enough money to buy his freedom. He went on to
write his autobiography - The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African (1789) as part of the anti-slavery
campaign. Equiano travelled the country speaking at abolitionist meetings. In
1790 he came to Sheffield and addressed a large gathering.
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Letter from William Wilberforce to Samuel Roberts
in Sheffield, 1824 (Sheffield Archives: RP/46) |
The most well known campaigner against the slave trade
and slavery was the Member of Parliament for Yorkshire, William Wilberforce.
Wilberforce wrote many letters to his acquaintance in Sheffield, Samuel Roberts
of Park Grange. The letters refer to anti-slavery meetings and petitions,
abolition and emancipation etc. In the example shown here, Roberts had asked
Wilberforce about what to do next. Wilberforce replies that a general meeting
of the Anti-Slavery Society is about to take place in London and that some
county meetings also are about to be convened.
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| Mary Anne Rawson(Picture Sheffield: y06413) |
Locally, a famous campaigner against slave trading and
slavery was Mary Anne Rawson. She was born in 1801 at Green Lane, Sheffield
into a committed non-conformist family. She married William Bacon Rawson at
Ecclesfield parish church in Feb 1828, though William died only 18 months
later. Mary became actively involved in a number of philanthropic campaigns -
better conditions for chimney sweep boys and better education for the poor etc.
She was actively involved in the abolition movement, and continued to campaign
for complete freedom after 1833. In 1837 she formed the Sheffield Ladies’
Association for the Universal Abolition of Slavery. She was still campaigning
for the rights of fugitive slaves as late as 1875. Mary Anne died in August
1887.
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James Montgomery, local reformer,
poet and journalist who wrote to
Mary Anne Rawson about slavery
(Picture Sheffield: s08135) |
Even after the Act of Emancipation in 1833 campaigning
continued. Twenty million pounds compensation was set aside for slave owners.
No compensation was offered to the slaves themselves, who had to remain in
apprenticeships for a further four years. This ‘continued oppression’ was
highlighted in a handbill from 1837. A petition from over 18,000 Sheffield
residents had failed to persuade enough Members of Parliament to vote in favour
of their cause for complete freedom. Further pressure was requested to bear on
Parliament to help those who were ‘in a worse position than when they were
called slaves’. Later reformers carried on the campaign against slavery as
other countries continued to trade in slaves and use slave labour.
