Interpretations of the slave trade
For many years, historians presented an account of the slave trade from a British point of view. They portrayed it as cruel and evil and that the British realised it was morally wrong.
In 1944, Eric Williams, a historian who later became Prime Minister of Trinidad, showed that the slave trade hadn't been making as much money in the years before abolition. He argued this was the reason it was abolished.
Recently, historians have shown that black Britons and women played significant parts in the Abolition campaign. Historians have also shown the importance of James Stephen's bill of 1806. In effect, Parliament only abolished the slave trade when it had all-but-collapsed anyway.