Who was most to blame for the slave trade?

Answer 1

This is a very difficult question to answer not least because Slavery has existed in almost all societies at different times but also because Slavery as a phenomenon can occur in very different forms.

From a Euro-centric viewpoint, in ancient times societies such as ancient Greece and the Roman Empire utilised slaves as a fundamental part of their economy. Slaves in these ancient societies filled wildly varying positions in society, from forced labour in mines to well looked after domestic servants and trusted political and military advisors.

In the European Middle Ages a system tantamount to slavery known as "serfdom" existed. Agricultural peasants were compelled to work at certain times of the year for their landlords. But the landlords did not "own" the serfs. Serfdom was not abolished in the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires until the 19th Century.

When European powers colonised the Americas in the 16th Century the native population was often enslaved. This was justified because they were not Christians. Slavery amongst the indigenous population was condemned in Europe and gradually phased out but the slavery of the native Americans was soon replaced by African slavery.

The trans-Atlantic slave trade began in the 16th Century when Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, Dutch and Danish seafarers bought slaves in Africa from African countries and transported them to the Americas. The slavery of African people - even Christians - was justified in part by the so-called Hamitic Curse found in the Old Testament. Noah cursed his son Ham and all his descendants saying they would forever be slaves to his other sons. It was widely considered that African people were descended from the sons of Ham and were Hamitic and thus the Bible justified their enslavement.

But slavery pre-existed this trade in Africa and in many African societies slavery was an essential part of their society and was used as a punishment for certain crimes. African societies traded slaves between each other and with outside powers such as the Europeans but also with the Ottoman Empire and other Arab powers. The rulers of African countries made pre-existing slaves they had captured available to European slave traders, indeed there were no examples of Europeans capturing otherwise free people in Africa.

The trans-Atlantic or African slave trade was eventually outlawed by the British Empire in the 1830s and the British Navy was used to prevent slaves being transported to the American continent by other European powers. Slavery would eventually cease in the Americas in the 1890s with the independent states of Cuba and Brazil being the last to phase it out. Slavery in east and North Africa would continue with some isolated examples - such as Sudan - being reported in the present day.

No one was to "blame" for the slave trade as it was a near universal phenomena found in many human societies from time to time. Britain was, however, more instrumental than most, in bringing that trade to an end.

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Another view:

The simplest answer to the question of who was, or is, most to blame for any slave trading is that the person who provides a market for the slaves - the person who buys goods or services whose production is dependent on slavery - is ultimately to blame.

But the term 'to blame' is not the right term. 'Responsible for (the continuation of)' is probably far more appropriate. With the African-American slave trade, for example, the vast majority of people both in America and Europe buying, for example, cotton goods, would have had no idea of the sheer horror of slave ships, the misery of the plantations. Even among those who had some knowledge of the meaning of slavery, without actually visiting a ship or a plantation they'd have no conception of the realities involved. Loss of freedom was uppermost in the mind of many who weren't keen on the concept of slavery. Then, as today, among those who actually knew the stark truths behind slavery, only the very tiniest minority would have gained any pleasure or satisfaction from the knowledge of what the slaves endured. It was the increasing public knowledge of what slavery truly meant that - eventually - saw the collapse of the American slave trade.

As with any commodity, the person who buys the goods ultimately drives the trade. If people no longer bought, for example, motorbikes, chewing gum, hire cars, long woolen underwear, or air travel, the people who manufacture or source those goods or services for sale to the public would stop making them, or making them available, and go into some other kind of business.

You can see this rule applied every time you go shopping. Some brands on, say, your supermarket shelf, just disappear and never come back. This is because the owners of the supermarket notice that you and their other customers aren't buying them, and so they stop stocking those brands. If this happens over a wide area and a long period, the manufacturer or provider stops making or providing them and either makes something else or goes out of business.

This is why pressure groups are formed to convince people not to buy goods which involve, at some stage of manufacture or sourcing or provision, cruelty to animals, for example, or forced labor (a current term for slavery, or near-slavery), damage to the environment, and so on. A good example is Fair Trade products, such as coffee, which we are encouraged to buy in order to support the Fair Trade Association (FTA), an initiative designed to ensure that producers - farmers and workers - in developing countries benefit - along with their communities - from their labor rather than suffering unethical treatment which can result from conventional trading methods widely practised by large corporations based in the developed world.

Today we are fortunate in that extensive knowledge is available to us, including knowledge of the origins of our consumer goods. Now we know what animals who provide our meat and dairy products endure to put that food on our tables we can, and do, take action to change the situation. A few decades ago, free-range meats and eggs, and organic vegetables, would have been unthinkable. Farmers said, and governments agreed, that the cost of production would ensure only the wealthy could afford such things. The agricultural industry would grind to a halt, they said. It didn't.

As with the slave trade you're probably thinking of - the historical trade in America, supported by Britain - this kind of pressure can be very effective. While markets for particular goods and services can be created in various ways, the consumer must keep this market going or it will eventually fail. When the English-American slave trade was seriously challenged, huge campaigns were mounted to convince the end-users - slave buyers and those who supported them by buying slavery-linked goods and services - that their whole way of life would collapse, along with the entire economy. It didn't happen.

Historically, slavery has always been solely to serve economic and political (including religious) goals. Whatever other reasons are given for the practice, somewhere at the bottom line it exists because somebody gains hugely from it.

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