Asian Studies
Contemporary Spanish Studies
Critical Inventions
Demographic Developments
First Nations & Colonial Encounter
Latin American Studies
Peace Politics in the Middle East
Religious Beliefs & Practices
Spanish History
Spirituality in Education

Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire
Britain and the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807–1975

Edited by Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon
Keith Hamilton is an historian in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Senior Editor of the series, Documents on British Policy Overseas. His most recent publication (co-edited with Edward Johnson) is Arms and Disarmament in Diplomacy (2008). Patrick Salmon is Chief Historian in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Professor Emeritus of History in the University of Newcastle. His publications include: (with John Hiden) The Baltic Nations and Europe: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (1995); (editor) Britain and Norway in the Second World War (1995); and Scandinavia and the Great Powers, 1890–1940 (London, 1997).

“ [T]here can be little doubt that throughout the nineteenth century Britain led the international fight against slave trading. . . . As, however, the authors of this volume reveal, there are limits to what diplomacy can achieve, especially when it comes to putting universally accepted principles into universal practice in a world of sovereign states. Despite all the efforts of governments, non-governmental organizations and individual activists, slavery persists.”
From the Foreword by The Rt Hon David Miliband, MP

“Hamilton, a historian in the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and Salmon, a historian in the FCO who also teaches history at the U. of Newcastle, UK, compile nine essays by international, naval, and slave trade historians from the UK and US, who consider the roles played by individuals and institutions in the suppression of the slave trade by the British government in the nineteenth century. They discuss the personnel of the Slave Trade Department of the Foreign Office and the Mixed Commission Courts; the socio-religious character and methods of anti-slavery activists and lobbyists; the problems faced by the navy in combating the slave trade; British diplomats’ competing moral objections to slavery and interests in the trade; British reactions to the exploitation of forced labor in Portugal’s colonies; and the reluctance of the Colonial Office to the reform of legislation relating to Britain’s Caribbean possessions. Papers were first presented at a seminar, held in October 2007, on the theme of ‘Whitehall and the Slave Trade,’ at the Foreign Commonwealth office on the bicentenary of the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade.
… The last chapter brings to mind an issue that has puzzled this reviewer for many years: What explains the attraction of Islam to Black Americans, i.e., the American-founded Nation of Islam, when the mother land of Islam, Saudi Arabia, continued to endorse slavery for generations after nations dominated by non-Islam religions had banned slavery? Adding to that puzzlement was the practice of Muslims in East Africa of continuing to engage in slave trading long after that was discontinued by non-Muslim nations.
… Collectively, the individual chapters recount the long struggle to eradicate slavery. It is a needed reminder that merely passing a law or several laws was not sufficient to eliminate this scourge, which exists yet today, but in different forms, as evidenced by the growth of the sex slavery trade throughout the world.”
” Reference & Research Book News

Throughout the nineteenth century British governments engaged in a global campaign against the slave trade. They sought through coercion and diplomacy to suppress the trade on the high seas and in Africa and Asia. But, despite the Royal Navy’s success in eradicating the transatlantic commerce in captive Africans, the forced migration of labour and other forms of people trafficking persisted. This collection of essays by specialist international, naval and slave trade historians examines the role played by individuals and institutions in the diplomacy of suppression, particularly the personnel of the Slave Trade Department of the Foreign Office and of the Mixed Commission Courts; the changing socio-religious character and methods of anti-slavery activists and the lobbyists; and the problems faced by the navy and those who served with its so-called ‘Preventive Squadron’ in seeking to combat the trade.
… Other contributions explore the difficulties confronting British diplomats in their efforts to reconcile their moral objections to slavery and the slave trade with Britain’s imperial and strategic interests in Ottoman Turkey, Persia and the Arabian Peninsula; British reactions to the continued exploitation of forced labour in Portugal’s African colonies; and the apparent reluctance of the Colonial Office to attempt any systematic reform of the ‘master and servant’ legislation in force in Britain’s Caribbean possessions. The final chapter brings the story through the twentieth century, showing how the interests of the Foreign Office sometimes diverged from those of the Colonial Office, and considering how the changing face of slavery has made it the world-wide issue that it is today.

Foreword The Rt Hon David Miliband, MP Editors’ preface Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon Introduction Keith Hamilton and Farida Shaikh 1. Zealots and Helots: the slave trade department of the nineteenth-century Foreign Office Keith Hamilton 2. Judicial Diplomacy: British officials and the mixed commission courts Farida Shaikh 3. Slavery, free trade and naval strategy, 1840-1860 Andrew Lambert 4. Anti-slavery activists and officials: “influence”, lobbying and the slave trade, 1807–1850 David Turley 5. “A course of unceasing remonstrance”: British diplomacy and the suppression of the slave trade in the East T. G. Otte 6. The British “official mind” and nineteenth-century Islamic debates over the abolition of slavery William Clarence Gervase-Smith 7. The “taint of slavery”: the Colonial Office and the regulation of free labour Mandy Banton 8. The Foreign Office and slavery and forced labour in Portuguese west Africa, 1894–1914 Glyn Stone 9. The anti-slavery game: Britain and the suppression of slavery in Africa and Arabia, 1890–1975 Suzanne Miers Index

Publication Details