Britain, along with Portugal was one of the most successful slave-trading countries. These two countries together were responsible for about 70% of all Africans transported to the Americas. To begin with Britain’s involvement was mainly trading African produce rather than using slaves but this changed with the introduction of slaves to the Americas. Britain’s greatest activity falls between 1640, when the Dutch introduced sugar and African slaves to Barbados, and 1807 which saw the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.
After Dutch planters introduced sugar to Barbados the potential of this new crop became obvious. British colonies converted from predominantly small farms focused on domestic produce to large plantations monopolised by a few landowners and producing crops for export. They initially used mainly white British convict labour but it soon became clear there was not enough supply and so the use of slave labour began. It is estimated that 361,000 Africans were transported by the British to the North American colonies and 2.2 million to the Caribbean between 1640 and 1807 (The National Archive).
Although enslaved people were used to produce many crops in the Caribbean and Americas the most visible and successful was undoubtedly the sugar grown in the plantations of the Caribbean. After surviving the horrific Atlantic crossing a huge proportion of enslaved people were destined to live a life subject to cruel and inhumane practices and violence in order to produce this staple of rapidly growing Western consumerism. Sugar was added to an increasing number of foods and in particular to the newly fashionable but bitter drink tea. The increase in the consumption of sugar in the eighteenth century was enormous: in 1700 the British imported 23,000 tons of sugar, this had grown to 245,000 tons by 1800 (Walvin, p.60). This sugar, added in large amounts to cups of tea around Britain intimately tied the routines of domestic life and sociability, carried out genteel houses, to the labour of slaves on British plantations across the Atlantic. This was of course also true of other slave-grown products such as tobacco, rum, cotton and coffee. The wealth amassed by slave traders and owners financed an overtly consumerist lifestyle, fashionable homes, art and travel.
Abolitionism began to emerge in the 1780s and in 1787 a group consisting largely of Quakers (but also including Granville Sharp, an Anglican, who was tenant in Portnall Park at this time) formed a committee asking for an end to the slave trade. The cause found a broad base of support, not only among the urban middle classes, but also working people, women and even children, for whom abolitionist literature was produced. They were quite successful in a short period of time collecting 400,000 names on petitions objecting to the slave trade. However, the turmoil of the French Revolution in 1789 changed the national atmosphere and created much more wariness about ideas of social levelling and the potential unrest that it might bring. The cause took a heavy blow at this time. It wasn’t until 1807 that the trade in slaves was officially abolished and not until 1838 that slavery itself was ended. In the interval between these dates there were several uprisings among slaves notably in Barbados and Jamaica and these, rather than frightening British abolitionists, helped the cause by fuelling an increasing distaste for an outdated and cruel system that no longer seemed to fit with the current sense of progress and modernity (Walvin, p.64).
The records of the Slave Compensation Commission show who was awarded financial recompense after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, and they provide a snapshot of slave ownership or involvement with slave ownership around that time (the database is managed by The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at University College London). They enable us to connect British citizens and their properties with slave estates and potentially the slaves themselves through ownership or marriage into slave estates and also through invested in slave produced goods via mortgages. However, there are ‘different levels of intimacy of specific houses with slavery’ (Draper, p.22) A connection between the occupant of a county house and a slave estate does not necessarily mean that that house was built through wealth generated by slave labour – it is important to remember that the house may be rented, not owned or may not have been built or renovated by its current occupant. A nuanced understanding of the different ways an individual can be linked to slavery is essential as is the acceptance that these records can only bear limited witness to centuries of complex economic activity.
Nicholas Draper of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership tells us the data suggests that in the 1830s, a few years after Hassell’s paintings were made, ‘five to ten per cent of all British country houses would be expected to have been occupied by slave owners’ (Draper, p.20). Indeed, in some areas it might have been higher and Egham, with its easy links to London and to Bristol in the west, can reasonably be supposed to be one of those areas. Perhaps unsurprisingly, several of our houses have revealed links to slavery either through occupants who were slave-owners, mercantile investment, an indirect link to actual trading and in one case, the presence of a significant abolitionist.
Researched and Authored by Katharine Stimson
References:
Draper, N. ‘Slave ownership and the British country house: the records of the Slave Compensation commission as evidence.’ in Slavery and the British Country House. Dresser, M. and Hann, A. eds., English Heritage, 2013, pp.17-28.
Walvin, J. ‘Slavery’ in An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age. British Culture 1776-1832. OUP, 1999, pp.58-65.
The National Archives. ‘Slavery: British Atlantic Slave Trade’, Research Guides. Accessed 25/05/2020, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/slavery/research-guides.htm
The Legacies of British slave-ownership: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
The Slave Voyages Database: https://www.slavevoyages.org/
The Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers, 1813-1834 can also be searched on Ancestry and provide lists of the numbers and names of slaves on various plantations.