History Matters: Why did Britain Abolish Slavery? (Short Animated Documentary)

This episode covers why Britain abolished slavery. What were the reasons and ultimately, how should Britain's role be remembered? History Matters.

Created May 22, 2019

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Sources:

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH CARIBBEAN (2011) by Christopher Petley

Free Trade, Free Labour and Slave Sugar in Victorian Britain (2010) by Richard Huzzey
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That Archive Guy
The Archive Guy
History Matters
Short Animated Documentary
hi

[ThatArchiveGuy]

Allow me to try and clear things up, I've been doing YouTube for a while, so I can only provide as much information as I know. The video was likely demonetized, and for a reason I don't know, but a lot of bigger creators simply delete/private demonetized videos because demonetization is typically a sign that a copyright strike is coming in the near future. Hope this was able to help make things more clear. If you are looking for any other deleted/lost videos from any other creators, let me know!

[irohito]

"I mean why sell slaves to the Carribean when you can sell drugs to the Chinese instead."
Now that's a sentence that I wasn't suppose to hear

[xvxvcaspervxvx]

Britain: Should we abolish slavery?
Foreign Advisor: Do you think this will annoy France?
French Foreign Minister: Oui!
Britain: WE'll DO IT!

[philips.]

I love how the Brits found a way to be moralistic about slavery and still actively try to force everyone to do what the Brits wanted. Very on-brand.

[eccentricthought]

British: Responsible for the sale of 3 million people
Arabs : You got to pump those numbers up those are rookie numbers

[thegreatreverendx]

In a world where slavery was seen as a normal cultural practice that everyone engaged in, but you wanted to end it, you had to start somewhere. No country could champion abolitionism with completely clean hands, but that didn't mean it shouldn't be done.

[milesjolly]

I'm British and I can confirm we invented gravity. Before that, we all just floated around in the air and didn't know what was happening.

[bottomgear]

Thanks for some screenshot of the day stuff

[nickmcgargill]

Don't you mean "the loan provided to the British government via the generosity of James Bissonnette wasn't paid off until the premiership of David Cameron in 2015??"

[peculiar]

i was like "history matters changed their name-?"

[paocut]

Also, there's the fact that Britain's wanted the freest market possible and slaves were seen as bad competition by the workers in industries that where starting to grow in number with a little event in history called the industrial revolution. There where movement to end slavery just because they where seen as competition in addition to all the other stuff you said

[nbewarwe]

Can we just give a moment of appreciation to the British for literally inventing gravity?

[GuapoGtGuap]

I think an underappreciated factor in British abolition is slave rebellions. In the years building up to abolition, rebellions were popping up in multiple different slave colonies. Those rebellions created a lot of negative press for slavery, they highlight the cost and inhumanity of slavery in a way that's harder for the public to ignore. Complete abolition was passed a year after the Baptist War in Jamaica.

[Designs]

Holy shit, there was a deleted video! It's even got a joke that someone mentioned!

[dafeels]

This archive was made possible by James Bissonnette

[davidwright]

The big political change was the great reform act of 1832. The newly enfranchised middle classes were generally very abolitionist. The abolition bill turned out to be one of the biggest economic stimulus packages ever passed helping finance the 1830’s railway boom and accelerating industrialisation as the compensation payments were reinvested.

[mullac]

We hear a lot about the American ending of Slavery, so it'd be interesting to hear about when and why other nations ended Slavery

[jaskaransidhu]

I love how beating France is more important than having the world's largest empire

[paulsoldner]

Slavery: Exists for all time
Europeans: End Slavery
Certain Unnamed Activist Types: Blame Europeans for the existence of slavery.

[thenneklkt]

I'll never forget when I'd taken a course at university on slavery for my degree. My lecturer held a blatant hatred for European civilisation, as so many academics these days do, and at every turn made excuses for African slave empires while condemning Europeans who came to the west african coast to purchase slaves.

I'll never forget the extent to which he pessimistically downplayed the abolition of slavery as a product of the privilege of the moral middle class in Europe. There was no mention of the naval squadrons attached to West Africa tasked with enforcing anti-slavery laws. There was no mention of the sacrifices the average British citizen made financially to enforce abolition.

It's a shame that so few people today are properly presented the very real discontent Victorian Britons (and increasingly Europeans in general) held toward the practice of slavery, a facet of civilisation that had been a fact of life for tens of thousands of years.

So thank you for covering this. No nation is innocent of all charges, no collection of people of this scale can be without guilt. But among the civilisations of recorded history, those in Post-Enlightenment Europe are to be credited most for almost completely destroying the trade of human beings as commodities.