What was the impact of the abolition of slavery?
Abolition of SlaveryMichael Guasco, Matthew Wyman-McCarthyLAST REVIEWED: 12 April 2019LAST MODIFIED: 23 June 2021DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0001IntroductionThe abolition of slavery in the Atlantic world occurred during the 19th century, but its origins are generally recognized to be the intellectual ferment of the 18th-century Enlightenment, the political turmoil of the Age of Revolution, and the economic transformations associated with the development of modern industrial capitalism. Although antislavery ideas circulated much more widely beginning in the 1760s, the first sustained effort to do something about slavery began in the 1780s, particularly with the British campaign to end the slave trade. The revolution in Saint Domingue added a new sense of urgency to the issue in France, Great Britain, and the United States (as did each of the increasingly troubling slave rebellions that erupted elsewhere in the region during this era), but it was not until the first decade of the 19th century that the British and US governments abolished the trade and made efforts to suppress it throughout the Atlantic world. Slowly thereafter, slavery would be outlawed in many of the newly independent Latin American nations, throughout the British Empire in 1833, and in the French colonies in 1848. Not until the 1860s would slavery come to a halt in the United States, followed by Cuba and Brazil in the 1880s. Scholars have demonstrated that there were many reasons for the abolition of slavery, including the heroic efforts of enslaved people and radical abolitionists alike. As important as moral outrage and popular pressure were to the effort, however, abolition was also facilitated by changing economic and political circumstances. The language of liberty that pervaded the revolutionary Atlantic world inevitably destabilized the ideological foundation of the Atlantic slave system. At the same time, new agricultural and technological innovations made it possible for European elites to imagine viable, and profitable, alternatives to the plantation complex that had been constructed during the preceding centuries. Much has been written about the end of slavery, but scholars are nonetheless still trying to figure out how the component parts of transatlantic abolitionism fit together into a seamless whole. Show
General OverviewsThe abolition of slavery was once imagined as the logical outgrowth of intellectual transformations associated with the Enlightenment. The economic interpretation in Williams 1944, however, forever altered scholarly analyses of both the rise and fall of slavery in the Atlantic world. There is now little support for the argument that the plantation complex was in decline during the 19th century, but scholarly works such as Blackburn 1988 have been sympathetic to the idea that economic self-interest motivated Europeans to abolish slavery. Others, such as Davis 1975, Davis 2006, and Drescher 2009, emphasize the determinative power of radical social ideas and humanitarian impulses. Klein 1993 demonstrates that the effort to end slavery was a long and often frustrating global phenomenon. Hochshild 2005 is among the most readable synthetic works designed for a general audience.
back to top Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login. How to SubscribeOxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here. What was the impact of abolition?In 1807 the importation of African slaves was banned in the United States and the British colonies. By 1833 all enslaved people in the British colonies in the Western Hemisphere were freed.
How did abolitionists impact the world?The abolitionists saw slavery as an abomination and an affliction on the United States, making it their goal to eradicate slave ownership. They sent petitions to Congress, ran for political office and inundated people of the South with anti-slavery literature.
Who was affected by the abolition of slavery?Slavery Abolition Act, (1833), in British history, act of Parliament that abolished slavery in most British colonies, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada. It received Royal Assent on August 28, 1833, and took effect on August 1, 1834.
Was the abolition of slavery a success?31, 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, banning slavery in America. It was an achievement that abolitionists had spent decades fighting for — and one for which their movement has been lauded ever since. But before abolitionism succeeded, it failed. As a pre-Civil War movement, it was a flop.
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