{"id":6698,"date":"2021-11-24T17:26:03","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T16:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=192829"},"modified":"2021-11-24T17:41:14","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T16:41:14","slug":"the-zong-massacre-what-the-dark-episode-meant-for-the-british-slave-trade-and-abolition","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/the-zong-massacre-what-the-dark-episode-meant-for-the-british-slave-trade-and-abolition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Zong Massacre: what the dark episode meant for the British slave trade and abolition"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By Elinor Evans\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 24 November 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

\n\n

November 2021 marks the 240th anniversary of perhaps the darkest episode in the grim history of the British slave trade: the mass murder of 133 Africans from the Liverpool ship Zong<\/em>. The subsequent claim for insurance by the ship\u2019s owners, the Gregsons, for those deaths remains a landmark in the litany of barbarities perpetrated on Africans being forcibly transported over the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

Zong<\/em>\u2019s owners claimed that, as the result of navigational errors, the ship was running short of water as it headed to Black River in Jamaica. To save the rest, it was decided to throw 133 enslaved Africans overboard. It remains unclear who gave the order as the captain, Luke Collingwood, was mortally sick, but the crew obligingly embarked on the mass killing. When Zong <\/em>finally docked, it discharged 208 African survivors, who were, it must be assumed, absorbed into the plantation system of western Jamaica.<\/p>\n

When the Gregsons claimed compensation for their maritime commercial loss, the insurers refused to pay so they were taken to court. Had they not gone to law, it is likely the Zong<\/em> massacre would have remained hidden. The law case \u00ad\u2013 or rather the insurers\u2019 appeal against the initial judgement in favour<\/em> of the Gregsons \u2013 was heard before Lord Justice Mansfield and two colleagues in 1783. It prompted outrage among a small band of people, and their incensed reaction was to fuel the early moves towards the abolition of the British slave trade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\""Freed\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Freed slave and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano was just one campaigner who spread word about the \u2018Zong\u2019 case. (Photo by: Universal History Archive\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Granville Sharp \u2013 a dogged campaigner against the slave trade and long-term defender of Africans in Britain \u2013 heard about the case from the freed slave and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano<\/a>. Sharp tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade the Admiralty to bring murder charges against the crew. He also turned to the Quakers who, soon afterwards, launched their own agitations against the slave trade. Quaker petitions, writings, agitation (and their publication of the now-famous image of the slave ship Brooks <\/em>in 1788)<\/em>, formed the effective start of the campaign against the slave trade. It was a campaign that traced its roots back to the Zong<\/em> outrage. Though the Zong<\/em> itself was subsumed into the broader campaign against the horrors of the slave ships, it was that ship which acted as a catalyst, propelling key players \u2013 Equiano, Sharp, the Quakers \u2013 to rouse public and political awareness. Parliament and the public at large soon became aware of the brutal realities of slave trading.<\/p>\n

The words used by Lord Mansfield in the case form a chilling reminder of the essential nature of Atlantic slave trading: \u201cThe case of the slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard. It is a very shocking case\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why were the enslaved people killed?<\/h3>\n

Before the Zong<\/em> case in 1783, the legal question of how insurance claims were affected should Africans be deliberately killed had not arisen. For that was all the Zong affair was concerned with: insurance. The massacre had been explained under a plea of necessity, forced on the crew by a shortage of water.<\/p>\n

The massive expansion of European trade to India and the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries prompted the growth of complex maritime insurance. In the case of slave ships, enslaved Africans were insured as cargo, each with a value on his or her head.<\/p>\n

\""Diagram\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
This drawing of the Liverpool slave ship \u2018Brooks\u2019 was commissioned by abolitionists to depict how Africans were crammed below decks. (Photo by GraphicaArtis\/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

English law accepted that \u2018natural death\u2019 (simply dying or committing suicide) was not covered by insurance. If Africans died in a shipwreck or were killed in a revolt, however, then \u201cthe insurers must answer\u201d. For years, if a ship\u2019s crew had to abandon ship, they would leave the Africans entombed below to a terrible fate.<\/p>\n

Yet why murder enslaved people, who had been bought at such cost and effort? After all, the aim was to deliver Africans in good health to the markets of the Americas. From start to finish, slave trading was a violent business kept in place only by draconian measures and savage punishments for any form of resistance. Chains and manacles were vital on all slave ships, so too were weapons to subdue, punish and deter.<\/p>\n

The persistent threat of African resistance made killings a common atrocity <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>

Though it may seem contrary to the owners\u2019 economic interests, the persistent threat of African resistance made killings a common atrocity. The Atlantic slave trade was a history marked by savage fighting. Revolts were sometimes nipped in the bud \u2013 and followed by exemplary reprisals, often before the assembled survivors. Occasionally, the Africans won, but much more often they were crushed and punishments doled out to the defeated.<\/p>\n

Africans wounded in fighting at sea posed a problem for ship masters. Injured Africans would, in the words of one captain, give \u201can unfavourable impression\u201d. The obvious solution was to jettison the wounded overboard, then claim for them on the ship\u2019s cargo insurance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Was this the case just for British insurance?<\/h3>\n

Though the murderous reality of the Zong <\/em>affair was English, the killing of Africans at sea was common throughout the international trade in African humanity. All of Europe\u2019s major colonial powers and the traders in the Americas had horrific examples of murdering Africans on their ships. We also know that mass killings continued on slave ships as long as the Atlantic trade continued until the 1860s.<\/p>\n

All slave trading nations defined and treated enslaved Africans as cargo. The Dutch spoke of them as \u201cstock\u201d; and the French as \u201cmoveable stock\u201d; while Portuguese insurance law classified slaves alongside beasts of the field.<\/p>\n

Africans on slave ships everywhere were items of trade, just as they were to be on plantations in the Americas. All had a value, except for the old and infirm, who, in the unforgiving language of plantation ledgers, were \u201cworthless\u201d or \u201cuseless\u201d.<\/p>\n

All slave trading nations defined and treated enslaved Africans as cargo. The Dutch spoke of them as ‘stock’; and the French as ‘moveable stock’ <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>

The Zong <\/em>case focuses attention \u2013 then and now \u2013 on this central fact: that the enslaved were treated as chattel. It provides a brutal illustration of the essential nature of Europe\u2019s slave empires, and on the sea routes which sustained them. Though the mass murder seen on Zong<\/em> in 1781 was exceptional in the numbers involved, it exposes a mentality underpinning the wider story of Atlantic slavery.<\/p>\n

A major obstacle to a better understanding of the Zong<\/em> story has been the public perception of Britain as an abolitionist nation. Britain\u2019s abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the United States following suit in 1808 have become a smoke screen, obscuring what happened before those years (ie when Britain was the dominant player in the North Atlantic slave trade).<\/p>\n

Listen:\u00a0Historian James Walvin describes how enslaved people fought for their freedom and ultimately helped to bring down the Atlantic slave empires, on this episode of the HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n