England certainly has a long and famous history.
It's amazing you ever needed anyone's help at all, isn't it? Perhaps you didn't really need ours at all. Maybe we'll see next time.
(Oh, yeah..how long after you guys ESTABLISHED slavery here did you ban it in the home islands?
)
http://innercity.org/holt/slavechron.html 1619
The other crucial event that would play a role in the development of America was the arrival of Africans to Jamestown. A Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of Africans for food in 1619...
Although the number of African American slaves grew slowly at first, by the 1680s they had become essential to the economy of Virginia.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, African American slaves lived in all of England’s North American colonies. Before Great Britain prohibited its subjects from participating in the slave trade, between 600,000 and 650,000 Africans had been forcibly transported to North America.1672
English merchants form the Royal Company to exploit the African slave trade. (The People's Chronology 1995, 1996 by James Trager from MS Bookshelf)...
Founded in 1672, the Royal African Company was granted a similar monopoly in the slave trade. Between 1680 and 1686, the Company transported an average of 5,000 slaves a year. Between 1680 and 1688, it sponsored 249 voyages to Africa.
Still, rival English merchants were not amused. In 1698, Parliament yielded to their demands and opened the slave trade to all. With the end of the monopoly, the number of slaves transported on English ships would increase dramatically -- to an average of over 20,000 a year.
By the end of the 17th century, England led the world in the trafficking of slaves."
Of course,
"In England, a humanitarian milestone was reached in 1772 when the courts decided in the famous Somerset Case that a slave became free as soon as he set foot on English soil. Slavery was abolished within England,
but it was still permissible within the colonies, as was the slave trade itself.Oh..what happened here Dowding? Didn't the colonies belong to England at this time?
It also took a while to get England out of the Slave Trade didn't it?
"
In 1807, Parliament finally passed a bill that made it illegal for any English vessel to take part in the slave trade.
Incidentally, that same year the United States Congress enacted a law prohibiting the importation of slaves."
Yeah, Dowding...slavery was certainly a US problem alone, wasn't it? You English can be so proud you had nothing to do with our slavery problems here...and that you abolished it in your own country (but not your colonies) so relatively early. While your merchants continued to ply the Slave Trade.
