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Abolitionist Movement, reform movement during the 18th and 19th centuries. Often called the antislavery movement, it sought to end the enslavement of Africans and people of African descent in Europe, the Americas, and Africa itself. It also aimed to end the Atlantic slave trade carried out in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Fore more Visit: www.worldhistory-hero.blogspot.com


Abolitionist Movement

The Atlantic slave trade began in Africa in the mid-1400s and lasted into the 19th century. Initially, Portuguese traders purchased small numbers of slaves from kingdoms on the western coast of Africa and transported them for sale in Portugal and Spain. The Atlantic slave trade did not become a huge enterprise until after European nations began colonizing the Americas during the 1500s. During the 1600s the Dutch pushed the Portuguese out of the trade and then contested the British and French for control of it. By 1713 Britain had emerged as the dominant slave-trading nation. In all, the trade brought more than 10 million Africans to America, and at least another 1 million Africans died in passage. ( Five of the World’s Biggest minds reveal the secrets behind how to Think Big – and Act on it – to reach unparalleled success Click Here Now To Find Out! )

The brutality of the Atlantic slave trade and of slavery itself played an important role in the origins of the abolitionist movement. Those subjected to the trade suffered horribly: They were chained, branded, crowded onto disease-ridden slave ships, and abused by ship’s crews. Many Africans died on the ships well before they arrived in the Americas. Once in the colonies, slaves were deprived of their human rights, made to endure dreadful conditions, and forced to perform backbreaking labor. Despite the horrors of the slave trade and slavery, white opposition to the institution developed slowly. The economies of many of the colonies were based on huge plantations that required large labor forces in order to be profitable. Also, views of society at the time were very hierarchical, and many people simply accepted the fact that classes of people they considered lower than themselves should be enslaved. In addition, the widespread perception that blacks were culturally, morally, and intellectually inferior to whites contributed to the longevity of the system. It was not until the early 18th century that attitudes began to change.
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Black resistance to enslavement, Christian humanitarianism, economic change, and intellectual developments all contributed to the rise of abolitionist movements in European countries—most notably Great Britain—and in the colonial Americas. Black resistance was the most important of these factors. Since the 1500s Africans and persons of African descent had attempted to free themselves from slavery by force. Revolts were most common in the West Indies and Brazil, where the majority of the population was black. But there were also uprisings in Mexico, Venezuela, and the British colonies in North America.

Until the end of the 18th century, rebellious slaves did not really challenge the institution of slavery itself. Instead, they simply sought to free themselves from it. While this rebellion occasionally took the form of slave revolts or uprisings, more frequently slaves tried to free themselves by escape. Sometimes, especially in the West Indies and Latin America, escaped slaves formed maroon communities. These settlements were located in inaccessible areas, to prevent recapture by the authorities, and were usually heavily fortified. Maroon communities, many of which endured for years or decades, became havens for escaped slaves and bases for attacks on plantations and passersby. In a way, these communities encouraged antislavery sentiment among whites: The inability of local authorities to recapture escaped slaves and the periodic violent raids by members of maroon communities made some whites disturbingly aware of their vulnerability in a slave society. In addition, whites became more aware of the inherent cruelty of slavery because slaves were willing to risk severe punishment and even death to escape from their masters or to rise up against them. If slaves had submitted meekly to their masters, slavery would not have been perceived to be oppressive and sinful.
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The first whites to denounce slavery in Europe and the European colonies were members of the Society of Friends—commonly known as Quakers. Unlike the prevailing idea of the time that blacks were inferior to whites, Quakers believed that all people, regardless of race, had a divine spark inside them and were equal in the eyes of God. These beliefs led them in the mid-18th century to take steps against slavery in Great Britain and the British colonies in North America. The first goal of the Quaker abolitionists was to end slave trading among fellow Quakers because the barbarity of the buying and selling of slaves was more obvious than that of the institution of slavery as a whole. It was also generally assumed that if the slave trade was abolished slavery itself would soon cease to exist. After slave trading among Friends had been stopped, during the 1760s Quaker congregations began expelling slaveholders. Under the influence of Quakers in the American colonies, British Quakers established Britain’s first antislavery society, the London Committee to Abolish the Slave Trade, in 1783.

In the late 18th century an age of revolution began to bring ideas about equal rights to the forefront, ideas that became a powerful force against slavery in the Atlantic world. In the past, servitude and slavery had been taken for granted as part of a class system where the rich dominated the poor and those of the lower classes were prevented from social advancement. But the Industrial Revolution, which brought increased economic opportunity and power to the lower and middle classes, began to undermine this system. Also, an 18th-century European intellectual movement known as the Age of Enlightenment asserted that all human beings had natural rights. The American Revolution (1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789-1799), widely seen as revolutions by citizens against oppressive rulers, transformed this Enlightenment assertion into a call for universal liberty and freedom.
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The successful slave revolt that began in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1791 was part of this revolutionary age. Led by François Dominique Toussaint Louverture, black rebels overthrew the colonial government, ended slavery in the colony, and in 1804 established the republic of Haiti, the first independent black republic in the world (see Haitian Slave Revolt). The revolt frightened slaveholders everywhere, inspired other slaves and free blacks to action, and convinced religiously motivated whites that only peaceful emancipation could prevent more bloodshed.

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