{"id":27087,"date":"2023-07-25T07:19:07","date_gmt":"2023-07-25T05:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=234910"},"modified":"2023-07-25T08:11:43","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T06:11:43","slug":"the-children-who-fought-for-the-abolition-of-slavery","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/the-children-who-fought-for-the-abolition-of-slavery\/","title":{"rendered":"The children who fought for the abolition of slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"

They boycotted sugar, signed petitions and played abolitionist board games. Ryan Hanley and Kathryn Gleadle explore the roles of the young people who fought against the slave trade in Georgian Britain, and consider whether these \u2018juvenile abolitionists\u2019 were just doing what they were told by the elders or making a stand on their own right <\/p>

By Ryan Hanley\n \t\t<\/p>

2023-07-25 05:19:07<\/p>

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Young boys can be notoriously untidy \u2013 dirty, even. So perhaps it should have come as no surprise to Shropshire diarist Katherine Plymley when, in 1792, she noticed that her seven year-old nephew Panton\u2019s shoes were \u201clooking very brown\u201d. What raised her eyebrows was the reason, discovered by questioning the servants, why he\u2019d refused to have his shoes shined. He had heard that the polish contained sugar produced on plantations worked by enslaved people. Panton\u2019s scruffiness wasn\u2019t due to indolence or carelessness, but \u2013 as he saw it \u2013 a moral stand against slavery. And he was far from alone among his peers.<\/p>\n

Long before Greta Thunberg first raised her head above the climate change<\/a> parapet, children and younger teenagers were being heralded as moral champions in mass movements for a better future. Notably, during the campaigns for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, children were applauded by many not just as participants but as leaders.<\/p>\n

But was this just window-dressing by canny abolitionists, keen to shame adults into taking more meaningful action? Were children only acting in accordance with the wishes of their parents? Or were young people truly influential anti-slavery activists in their own right?<\/p>\n

Read more | Abolition in Britain: the link between slavery and the British national identity<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
The roots of the anti-slavery movement go back at least to the efforts of 17th-century Quakers, but it was only after the establishment of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787 that British activists began to explicitly seek wider public support. Thanks in part to first-hand accounts by formerly enslaved people such as Olaudah Equiano<\/a> and Mary Prince, and to the tireless efforts of travelling lecturers such as Thomas Clarkson and William Dickson, the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade<\/a> \u2013 and, later, of slavery itself \u2013 became a hugely popular political and moral cause.<\/p>\n
In 1792, many consumers in Britain (more than 300,000, by Clarkson\u2019s estimate) boycotted goods produced by enslaved people, bringing politics into the home. That number was even higher during a second wave of boycotts in the mid-1820s, when women took the lead. Though the direct economic impact of these \u2018anti-saccharite\u2019 movements on the system of slavery was probably not great, they represented an important barometer of public opinion and a significant weapon in the abolitionist campaigning arsenal.<\/p>\n
Generations of anti-slavery campaigns<\/h3>\n
In 1807, an act was passed in parliament abolishing the transatlantic trade in humans. Further victories did not come easily. In 1833, following decades of uprisings in the Caribbean and political reforms in Britain, another act was passed to abolish slavery itself \u2013 while also compensating \u2018slave-owners\u2019 to the tune of \u00a320 million (around 40 per cent of entire government expenditure in 1833) for the loss of their \u2018human property\u2019.<\/p>\n
Read more | Freedom fighters: the enslaved people who fought for the abolition of slavery<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
Throughout these hard-fought campaigns, many abolitionists came to realise that their vision of a world without slavery would take the efforts of more than one generation to make reality. So, as part of the campaigns in Britain, dozens of children\u2019s books and poems about the evils of slavery were produced. The Black Man\u2019s Lament<\/em> by Amelia Opie, brightly illustrated and published in 1826, opens with a plea to its young readers: \u201cYe tender hearts, and children dear!\u2026 Oh! try to end the griefs you hear.\u201d<\/p>\n
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