What caused the ending of slavery?

[geordief]

I am listening to  someone  singing "We shall not be moved"

 

Very  moving and my first inclination  is to suppose  that the moral and physical  strength of that oppressed group  was the overriding  factor in the changes that brought an end to slavery in Europe  and  the USA.

 

On reflection  I am wondering if I was  naive and whether there were other factors  that brought about those changes.

Can anyone say what they think might have been the main factors?

 

It wasn't  a case of economic change that made the practice less profitable,was it?

Or the new communication technologies that shone a light on what was happening?

It doesn't seem to me that our common wisdom has to increase as time passes and the generations follow each other.

 

Did those African slaves just get lucky at that juncture or was slavery always living on borrowed time?

 

Edited September 25, 2022 by geordief

[J.C.MacSwell]

Clearly it all started with the American Revolution:

At that point Americans invented the concept of Slavery being a bad thing. Prior to that, even slaves themselves going back to prehistoric times thought it was perfectly fine:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/desantis-american-revolution-slavery-b2174224.html

[Phi for All]

You should probably define what you mean by slavery. Is it defined by a lack of pay for productive work? If so, does paying a pittance make it NOT slavery? Emancipation didn't end slavery in many areas.

In any case, describing African slaves as "lucky" sounds like something that would prolong slavery as opposed to ending it.

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, geordief said:

Very  moving and my first inclination  is to suppose  that the moral and physical  strength of that oppressed group  was the overriding  factor in the changes that brought an end to slavery in Europe  and  the USA.

There is quite a bit of scholarship around the various factors and the first thing to consider is that the motivation for each country to abolish slavery was somewhat different. The two most common arguments that you can find are related to morality as well as economics, as you pointed out. Economically, slave trade were connected to colonies, and obviously they becoming less profitable and in connection with the industrial revolution, slave labour was becoming less profitable and ethical concerns got more weight as a result.

However, one often overlooked factor are also the actions of black abolitionists, and perhaps, most famously the Haitian Revolution, which in one fell swoop cut France off from its largest plantation colony. While it took a while (and the Haitians had to pay reparations for their freedom until recently https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/05/1042518732/-the-greatest-heist-in-history-how-haiti-was-forced-to-pay-reparations-for-freed ), some historians argue that this was a turning point in the abolition of slavery in the French (and British) empire.

So, while there is no singular (or simple answer) to the question in OP, it should be noted that luck is probably not a good answer and also takes away the agency of folks who were opposed to it. 

[J.C.MacSwell]

Seriously...I think humans have always had the ability to empathize...and the ability to not empathize...with fellow humans of other races.

Britain did seem to be ahead of the US though, more recently speaking.

[geordief]

6 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

any case, describing African slaves as "lucky" sounds like something that would prolong slavery slavery as opposed to ending it.

Maybe that is how it sounded to you.Certainly not the sentiment I meant it  to express.

Good people can be lucky as can bad people. People of any kind can benefit from luck.

When I think of slavery I think of a very strong kind.The kind where you are hunted down by the "legitimate" forces if you attempt your freedom.

Sure there are gradations but I didn't have that in mind.

[J.C.MacSwell]

14 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

You should probably define what you mean by slavery. Is it defined by a lack of pay for productive work? If so, does paying a pittance make it NOT slavery? Emancipation didn't end slavery in many areas.

In any case, describing African slaves as "lucky" sounds like something that would prolong slavery as opposed to ending it.

No. Though that could be argued if there was simply no alternative. Slavery is much worse. Slaves are owned and forced to work, paid or not.

Edited September 25, 2022 by J.C.MacSwell

[geordief]

5 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Seriously...I think humans have always had the ability to empathize...and the ability to not empathize...with fellow humans of other races.

Britain did seem to be ahead of the US though, more recently speaking.

So lack of empathy would be a stronger factor than outright hatred(or less strong dislikes)?

 

It has to be dehumanising ?(I think it was common for vanquished peoples to be enslaved but there would surely be some respect for a defeated foe)

[iNow]

1 hour ago, geordief said:

the main factors?

Never doubt the power of passionate individuals banding together to change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has. 

Whether a critical mass of people decided enough was enough, or specific individuals in power decided enough was enough (or some combination of both), I do not know. 

[CharonY]

9 minutes ago, geordief said:

It has to be dehumanising ?(I think it was common for vanquished peoples to be enslaved but there would surely be some respect for a defeated foe)

Now this alludes to a rather different discussion. There are different forms of slavery, which involve different types of attitudes between slaves and slave owners. However, chattel slavery is infamous for the particular reason that the slaves were basically treated as tools and properties and sometimes disposable ones. Enslaving of prisoners of war falls under a somewhat different category (though someone enslaved under one condition could end up in the other category).  For chattel slavery there is generally no path to freedom as compared to some other forms slavery, the children born to slaves are slaves themselves. Dehumanization seems rather apt here for this type of slavery, at least. Also, in modern times slavery became increasingly connected to race.

But again, this would make a whole new discussion and I think it is important to distinguish different forms of slavery and their historic context. Otherwise one would be stuck with making very generalized statements that are just inaccurate, depending on which era you are talking about.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Here is an interesting overview:

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/whp-origins/era-6-the-long-nineteenth-century-1750-ce-to-1914-ce/64-transformation-of-labor-betaa/a/read-why-was-slavery-abolished-three-theories-beta

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

But again, this would make a whole new discussion and I think it is important to distinguish different forms of slavery and their historic context. Otherwise one would be stuck with making very generalized statements that are just inaccurate, depending on which era you are talking about.

Generalized statements such as: Slavery ended.

It never did. It did change some of its forms and methods, but a whole lot of people are still owned by other people, and a lot of modern slavery is legal. In the US, it's illegal and underground - but it continues. In many places, it is nominally illegal, so they call it something else. Lots of places, it's normal. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-trafficking-persons-one-in-200

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

Generalized statements such as: Slavery ended.

It never did. It did change some of its forms and methods, but a whole lot of people are still owned by other people, and a lot of modern slavery is legal. In the US, it's illegal and underground - but it continues. In many places, it is nominally illegal, so they call it something else. Lots of places, it's normal. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-trafficking-persons-one-in-200

And again, it depends on what precisely what we are talking about. Based on OP I would interpret it as general laws pertaining mostly to the Atlantic chattel slave trade, which as practice has ended. But if it is about slavery in general, including e.g. legal forms in the US as per the 13th amendment then it would be a very broad discussion.

[Peterkin]

 If the actual question is "What caused the ending of slavery?", then it's already much broader than the type and location of the slavery in question - it's rather about the causes of a significant social change over a significant portion of the globe. 

In Britain (and consequently all British colonies), it was done neatly, through an act of Parliament, as a political expedient. After the French Revolution, all kinds of uprisings and riots broke out; slavery was becoming just too dangerous and expensive; plus there was increasing pressure from religious factions. Britain itself was not heavily invested in slavery: they had plenty of cheap native labour as  well as increasing mechanization. There was plenty of other cargo for its shipping trade. The Other European slave trading and imperial nations were in a similar situation; they all abolished slavery by simply passing laws.   

In the US, the situation was different.

7 hours ago, geordief said:

It wasn't  a case of economic change that made the practice less profitable,was it?

In the US, that was certainly a factor in dividing North and South. The constitution had already done that: the slave-owning part developed a completely different economy and culture based on work-intensive agriculture and a severely segregated caste system, while the northern cities charged into the industrial age, with rapid urban growth, enthusiastic enterprise and cheap immigrant and child labour. The progressive half had already begun to eclipse the feudal half in economic and political clout.

In the US, the conflict was not over the institution of slavery itself, but the future of newly opened territories, and which kind of state they would become. The Confederacy was aggressively pushing its own way of life onto the west - which would have made it the far larger, more powerful faction. It wasn't about "states rights", so much as who has a right to impose its social structure on new states. The issue was contested in a hugely destructive civil war, but never resolved.  The abolition side  won the war and passed an amendment and a handful of laws ... which were not widely enforced or obeyed, so that another series of violent confrontations were needed to put them into effect 100 years later - confrontations that continue to this day.

7 hours ago, geordief said:

was slavery always living on borrowed time?

I deleted the luck reference, because I took this to mean: Was the institution of slavery a historical phenomenon with a predetermined life-span; was the ending of it an inevitable step in social development? 

To that, I would have to say no. It shifts shape and changes colouring, but it lives on. 

Edited September 26, 2022 by Peterkin
redundancy

[CharonY]

18 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

it was done neatly, through an act of Parliament, as a political expedient.

Considering, the lengthy abolitionist campaign and the fact that there were several stages (first trade, then abiut 30 years later owning them), it seems only neat in hindsight and compared to the US.

And again some historians are putting more weight to the Haitian revolution as one of the factors weighing against slavery. Also not really neat. JC's link has a good summary (though as non-historian hard to tell how much nuance is list).

 

 

[Phi for All]

14 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

No. Though that could be argued if there was simply no alternative. Slavery is much worse. Slaves are owned and forced to work, paid or not.

I don't agree that slavery is defined strictly by ownership. Even the slavery the OP is talking about didn't end when black people stopped being "owned" by white people.

"Forced to work" is a different measure. It doesn't only refer to beatings if you can remove all the other options available, so that work or suffer are the only choices.

[TheVat]

Have always liked economist David Graeber's view that debt, and the concept that people have "worth," always tends to lead to slavery in some form.  

The labor movement has always struggled with this.  As the guy says in the folk song Sixteen Ton, "I owe my soul to the company store." 

Capitalism wants labor to be cheap.  Which means somewhat trapped.  And it's indebtedness that helps maintain that state.

The first slaves shipped to the Americas were debtors.  They were held by tribal chieftains to whom they were indebted, or their families were indebted, and their bodies were payments.  The chieftain could either work them or sell them to European slave traders.  The latter was often the simplest option, with a quick return.

Fastest way to end all slavery might be a MBI and cancelling of all debt.  But that's another thread perhaps.

[Peterkin]

8 hours ago, CharonY said:

Considering, the lengthy abolitionist campaign and the fact that there were several stages (first trade, then abiut 30 years later owning them), it seems only neat in hindsight and compared to the US.

I was comparing it to the US. Passing laws of major reform is always the result of lengthy political contention, and usually done piecemeal over time, but the usual alternative is revolution and civil war. I don't think Britain was really confronted by that option - the abolitionists were unlikely to arm and overthrow the government. But the British establishment did have some reason to fear its own lower classes, so many of whom were displaced by steam and impoverished, they may have thought to mollify the working class - and its increasingly articulate and influential progressive advocates - by removing another perceived rival for their jobs. That was my criterion for 'neat' vs 'messy'. 

8 hours ago, CharonY said:

And again some historians are putting more weight to the Haitian revolution as one of the factors weighing against slavery.

Well, that certainly played a major role in France's decision at the time. Yet, the uprising in Saint-Dominique had little effect on England (or, indeed, Haiti, which practices legal child slavery today), but the republican government did abolish slavery in France three years later, which more than likely encouraged the abolitionist factions (and  insurgency) in British and Hispanic colonies. Eventually the British government moved on the issue, and the Spanish and Portuguese followed. Meanwhile In France, the restored monarch struck down that law only 8 year later, and France didn't choose the 'neat' option again until 1848, the year of Nationalist revolutions all across Europe.  

Of course there are contributing causes for every major change, some of which go back centuries, others born out of unexpectedly erupting events. The definition of institutions also changes with various influences, political and economic trends, shifts in power between interest groups. But there is a thread of truth-in-practice underlying human social structures that doesn't change when a new label is stuck on it.

You can restrict a discussion to "slavery as represented by the European trafficking, marketing and exploitation of African captives across the Atlantic" , but you can't restrict the concept of "slavery" to that single slice of it or discuss the ending of just that aspect with the ending of slavery itself.

2 hours ago, Phi for All said:

I don't agree that slavery is defined strictly by ownership.

Nor do I. All kinds of people have been and are enslaved by all kinds of other people in all kinds of legal and illegal forms. 

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Have always liked economist David Graeber's view that debt, and the concept that people have "worth," always tends to lead to slavery in some form. 

And this seems tied to the religious hierarchy so many cling to to this day. God is above everyone, and the rest of us are placed beneath Him in descending order based on worthiness. Our leaders MUST be better than we are, and priests and doctors and lawyers are surely the goodest folks ever, so they're usually ranked very highly. The masses desperately try to place themselves as highly as they can, and are generally only too happy to judge which folks are BENEATH them, or less worthy than they are. Most businesses are set up with this hierarchy, and so are most governments. And with this structure, there will always be slaves at the bottom with no alternatives.

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Capitalism wants labor to be cheap.  Which means somewhat trapped.  And it's indebtedness that helps maintain that state.

As it is currently thriving in the East. https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/bonded-labour/

India is supposedly an up-and-coming modern democracy, because it's embraced the ideals and practices of capitalism and western technology. It also has the highest number of debt-slaves in the world - far more people than were enslaved in the Americas. https://scroll.in/article/898862/india-is-home-to-the-worlds-largest-slave-population-yes-slavery-still-exists

[swansont]

I wonder how much of the US effort was from industrialization and the associated rise of business, and the increase of a (northern) population that didn't require slavery, so they were free to see the enslaved as people, while the ones who were economically dependent on the institution (who saw slaves as property) just fell into a minority that was too small, even with the slave states wielding outsized influence in federal government. Which of course led to slave states seeing secession/war as their only option to maintain their worldview.

 

[uncool]

On what level do you want an answer?

Because on one level, it was a bunch of wars and abolition movements. But that doesn't answer how all those wars and abolition movements came together.

On another, it was a bunch of philosophical movements that led to ideas of liberty. But that doesn't answer why those movements came to the forefront.

On another, it was a result of economic forces giving rise to systems that outcompeted slavery. But that doesn't answer why they hadn't happened earlier.

And so on and so forth.

[iNow]

9 hours ago, Phi for All said:

And this seems tied to the religious hierarchy so many cling to to this day. God is above everyone, and the rest of us are placed beneath Him in descending order based on worthiness.

Not just religious, but in any cult. The leader becomes the god figure. Worshiped and can do no wrong. Outsiders can’t be trusted. They’re lying. Not just Scientology, but MAGA. 

9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

India is supposedly an up-and-coming modern democracy, because it's embraced the ideals and practices of capitalism and western technology. It also has the highest number of debt-slaves in the world - far more people than were enslaved in the Americas.

Not that it matters to each of these individual human people indentured in their servitude, but given the vast size of Indias population it would be better to normalize your metric.

Instead of saying highest total number of X, say total X per Y-millions of people. Once done, then you can see how many people this represents as a percentage of each country’s population.

We share a desire for the number here to be zero and not to get distracted with accuracy or math, but if you’re going to start comparing regions and generational epochs at least ensure the numbers are normalized. 

[Peterkin]

21 minutes ago, iNow said:

Instead of saying highest total number of X, say total X per Y-millions of people. Once done, then you can see how many people this represents as a percentage of each country’s population.

It didn't occur to me. I just cited the article, to give some credence to the continued existence of slavery and one modern example. According to the Wall Street Journal it's 1.4% . I didn't check the figures for Afghanistan or Congo, and forgot what they were for the ones I did look up.