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Two sides of the slave trade debate: Rev. James Ramsay and Captain Hugh Crow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

John Pinfold
John Pinfold*
Affiliation:
Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies
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Extract

Despite some earlier efforts, systematic campaigning against the slave trade is generally regarded as having started in the 1780s. The Quakers were the first to highlight the issues and it was they who were responsible for the first petition to Parliament in 1783. The Quakers set up a committee to obtain and publish information ‘as may tend to the abolition of the slave trade’, and this work was carried on by the more broadly based Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, established in 1787. With Thomas Clarkson travelling the country to gather information, this new group was able to attract the support of a considerably wider segment of the population and in 1788 over one hundred petitions were presented to Parliament.

Type
Articles
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 104 , 2007 , pp. 29 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2007

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Footnotes

1

This is an expanded version of the paper given to the SCOLMA Conference ‘Slavery and abolition: sources in UK Libraries and Archives’, held at the British Library, 12 June 2007. It also incorporates parts of an earlier paper given to the University of Oxford Commonwealth History seminar.

References

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