The United States was one of the very last nations to abolish slavery after its civil war in the early 1860s and for a hundred years following their emancipation, they were still legally discriminated against. That began to change to some extent in the 1960s with the rise of the Civil Rights movement and their stature has grown by leaps and bounds in the decades since but still lacks true equality with that of the white majority.
Is this the same for other countries with similar pasts? How were the Africans in England treated after Parliament granted them their freedom? If it was as prejudiced, did it last as long as it did here in America? What about other countries?
I am curious after seeing *Amistad *for the first time
Britain was a slave owning country - but the slaves weren’t in Britain, they were abroad - mainly the carribean, so there weren’t really any freed slaves wandering around Britain.
Britain was pretty much mono-racial (if you don’t count the Irish as a separate race) until the early 50’s when large numbers of West Indians (who were the descendents of slaves) were invited here to fill our labour shortages.
They certainly faced a lot of prejudice (signs on pubs would say “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs”) but they’re well integrated now and race isn’t the hot topic here that it is in the USA. (For instance most black people I know wouldn’t call them selves “african”, but Jamaican, Barbadian etc).
So the upper classes paid white servants instead of using free African labor then? Interesting. I admit it’s something I’ve never thought of before but I always assumed British slavery took much the same tack as the American variety did.
I knew it wasn’t the last country to abolish the practice, just one of the last, as I said in the OP. I was unaware that it lasted into the 20th century though.
It’s worth noting that the proportion of the population which constitued slaves or ex-slaves is very small. There was no momentous change when their status changed. And furrter to this - finding a slave in England can often indicate that the slave had a special skill.
I’m not a big expert on slavery in america, but I would have thought that in parts of America (specifically the North,) it was quite rare, just like in England. (That was part of the reason for the north-south divide in the civil war IIRC, that the North didn’t really have a slave economy and thus really had nothing to lose by declaring slavery ‘inhumane’ and freeing them.)
In the south, on the other hand, my associations were that a lot of the slaves were farm hands in the cotton fields and such. There wasn’t as much labor-intensive farming going on in the north states and in britain.
I think it was more or less the same in other europeans countries.
Slaves were present in the french colonies in the americas, but not in the mainland. I’m not even sure it would have been legal to own one, since a royal ordinance was specifically enacted during the XVIth century to allow slave ownership in american settlements. However, I think I’ve noticed here and there references to a black slave in the household of a nobleman or trader, during the XVIIth-XVIIIth century so I believe it happened. But it would have been, I think, a rare occurence.
When slavery was ultimately forbidden in 1948, I doubt there was any slave present in the country. Any slave who would have been living in France during the revolution would have been freed anyway when the first law abolishing slavery in 1794 was voted (later reppelled by Napoleon, and essentially not enforced in the colonies due to the opposition of slave owners). So any slave present in 1848 would have had to be brought in during the first part of the XIXth century. Once again, I don’t even know if this would have been legal, and in this case, I can’t remember any mention of a slave in France at this time (in history books, novels, etc…). Which doesn’t prove with certainty there wasn’t any, of course.
The only sizeable population of descendant of slaves that can be found in France are people from the french west indies (the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique), but I believe they begin to came in France proper in significant numbers only during the XXth century (and a lot of them as civil servants, not as, say, uneducated workers). As a result, though I believe slavery is still a hot topic in said islands, it has never been in the mainland.
Concerning discrimination, there was no discrimination laws in France. Descendants of slaves had exactly the same rights as other citizens, and anyway wouldn’t have been present in significant numbers until maybe the middle of the XXth century, as I mentionned above. On the other hand, people from the french colonies in Africa weren’t citizens (with some exceptions), hence had limited rights when present in France. But those weren’t present in significant numbers either (immigration from african colonies was actively discouraged), until the 50s. And they weren’t descendant of slaves, of course.
Slavery is a mostly irrelevant problem regarding racial issues in France. Typically, a black man isn’t a descendant of a slave, but a first, second or third generation african immigrant. By the way, actual descendants of slaves from the west indies aren’t refered to as “black” but as “antillais” (these islands being called “antilles” in french) and perceived as a different population than african blacks.
I would have believed it was quite obvious, since for instance in historical movies set in Europe, one would rarely see any black servant.
Cheap labor was abundant in Europe, anyway. I’m not sure a free servant or farm worker would have been significantly more costly than a slave, and you didn’t have to buy him at the first place. So, I don’t think it would have made much sense economically speaking to use this african “free” labor in an Europe crowded with poor people willing to work for wages barely sufficient to have them and their families fed, anyway.
Actually, I strongly suspect that slavery would have been ultimately widespread in Europe too if it had made economically any sense, and that its absence is a strong evidence that it didn’t.
I know that’s what you meant, I was just pointing out that it might not be entirely fair to say that the U.S. was “one of the last to abolish slavery” when there were quite a few countries (about…what, at least 9, from that list?) that held onto slavery after the U.S., for quite a few more decades.
Sorry, that’s hijacking the thread more than I should’ve, isn’t it? :smack:
In Canada, some Loyalists brought their slaves with them from America when they fled, about 2,000 of them. One historian has counted 4,092 slaves in the country; of course, the numbers may have been higher. Most of them weren’t black, actually but Indians/First Nation peoples. Slavery officially ended in the Two Canadas in 1834, although if they were like New York state (which abolished it in the 1820s) there were probably few people actually still in bondage by that time.
As of now, approximately 2% of Canadians are Black, although most of them are immigrants who arrived from the Caribbean in the last four decades, when racial restrictions were lifted.
As far as Canada and slavery, I immediately thought of ‘the underground railway’, in which escaped slaves were helped by a network of anti-slavery supporters safely through the north of the US and into Canada, where they were safer from ‘slave hunters’ trying to take them back to their owners. A quick google search reveals that this sort of thing reached its height between 1840 and 1860.
Yes, but what this ignores is that some employed black slaves precisely because they were expensive. Black slaves as servants were the ultimate fashion accessory in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They may not feature in historical movies, but they do frequently appear in contemporary portraits, again because their owners wanted to appear fashionable.
The figure usually given for the numbers of black slaves living in England in 1772 when the English courts ruled that slavery within England was illegal is 15,000.
But, as owlstretchingtime has already pointed out, the current black population in the UK is mostly the result of more recent immigration. Although slavery is a significant factor in the history of that population, it is not the immediate reason for their presence in Britain.
