Slavery and Abolition: The Plymouth Connection

On 25 March 1807 the United Kingdom abolished the slave trade.

The Abolition of Slavery Act brought to an end 245 years involvement by Englishmen and Britons in the transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to labour on colonial Caribbean and American plantations.

Other Europeans had been shipping African slaves to the West Indies for more than fifty years before the English joined in the trade in the 1560s. During that decade, John Hawkins, a Plymouth merchant, led three slavery voyages, the third of which (at least) included his cousin Francis Drake as crewman and then captain. On each occasion, Hawkins sailed from his homeport to the West coast of Africa where he traded for a slave cargo. Africans were traded in the Caribbean for products that were then sold on his return to England.

Hawkins effectively set a pattern that became known as the slave trade triangle. At first, throughout the seventeenth century, ships from London exploited the trade. By the early eighteenth century, when England began to dominate the slave trade, smaller ports were involved, including Plymouth. From the mid-1700s, Bristol and Liverpool traders monopolised. From that time also, the abolitionist movement, although already active, began an organised, co-ordinated and relentless campaign to abolish the middle passage; a campaign in which Plymouth and people from that city played a significant part.

Learn more about slavery and abolition and the Plymouth connection:

John Hawkins

Slave Trade Triangle

Abolition

Conclusion

Glossary

Suggested reading

Slavery and abolition web links