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In 1750 the triangular trade in enslaved Africans was at its height. Sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations in the Caribbean and North America were bringing great profits to Britain’s businesses and banks. Some of these profits were invested in the entrepreneurs and inventors of the Industrial Revolution.

Britain’s black population was growing and consisted both of people tied to their owners as servants and of free black people in a variety of occupations including a shopkeeper, a publican, an actor, a violinist and members of the armed forces. Parish records of births, marriages and deaths show that black people were living in all parts of Britain.

Opposition to slavery

Opposition to slavery grew thanks to the publication of autobiographies written by former enslaved people which highlighted the abuse of their human rights. The slave uprisings on the Caribbean plantations also drew attention to the plight of enslaved people. Opposition became a mass movement in which some British people of African origin played leading roles.

In 1807 Parliament abolished the slave trade and, after many slave rebellions in the Caribbean, enslavement in the British Empire officially ended in 1833 under the Slavery Abolition Act. Emancipation did not bring immediate freedom: former enslaved people were still tied to their owners as apprentices for a time. Meanwhile the slave owners received huge financial compensation from the British government during the 1830s for the loss of their 'property'. This payment was part of the Act and one of the reasons why wealthy, often slave-owning, Members of Parliament (MPs) agreed to it.

Although enslavement still continued illegally for some years, the law was now clear. However, the trade in enslaved Africans had left a poisonous legacy of racist ideas based on skin colour. To justify the slave trade, control the plantations and divide black plantation workers from their white fellow-labourers, ideas of racial difference grew and took hold. Black people were dehumanised and portrayed as inferior.