A statue in Stone Town, Zanzibar depicting and mourning the African slave trade

1. Africans enslaved their 'own' people

They didn't. Africans didn't know they were African. The concept is a European importation. People in Africa thought of themselves as belonging to distinct ethnic, linguistic, or faith communities. Those they enslaved were outsiders, usually prisoners taken in war.

2. Africans were helpless victims of enslavement

No, they weren't. Resistance to slavery started in Africa itself (and continued in the Americas). Communities that were vulnerable to slave raiders often relocated to places that were more easily defended. They armed themselves. They rebelled against local elites who traded in slaves. They repeatedly fought back.

3. Slaves were cheap labour

Not true. Enslaved Africans were expensive to acquire. Europeans had to purchase them with costly trade goods (Indian cottons, brass articles from Germany, French brandy, glassware from Bohemia, etc.). Africans were enslaved because European labourers would not freely migrate to the Caribbean, where plantation work was murderously gruelling. Enslaved Africans had no choice in the matter.

4. The British were the first to abolish the slave trade

They were not. The Danes abolished their slave trade in 1792, well before British abolition in 1807. What’s more, in 1806 the Westminster parliament passed the Foreign Slave Trade Act, which prohibited Britons from participating in the Guinea trade of other countries. Since British captains were the foremost traffickers of that time, the British effectively abolished everyone else’s slave trade before they abolished their own.

5. The British were the first to abolish slavery

Completely untrue. The first nation to outlaw black slavery was Haiti in 1804. Thirty years would pass before the British did the same. By then, a variety of Latin American countries had joined Haiti in ending slavery. Chile did so in 1823, Mexico in 1829. Britain was a late comer, not a pioneer.

About the author

Professor Chris Evans is the author of Slave Wales: The Welsh and Atlantic Slavery 1660-1850. His interests include abolitionism in the British world in the nineteenth century and the links between European industry and the Atlantic slave trade.

The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition

The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is commemorated on 23 August each year. The day is used to draw attention to the horror of the transatlantic slave trade, its legacy, and the struggle against modern slavery.

On 23 August 1791, enslaved people in Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) rose up against their French colonial masters. The uprising played a crucial role in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.