Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: When was slavery abolished in England?
One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688. One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England. In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery. France abolished slavery in 1794. All the Northern states abolished slavery; New Jersey in 1804 was the last to act. None of the Southern or border states abolished slavery before the American Civil War.
Since the Middle Ages, the Christian understanding of slavery has seen significant internal conflict and endured dramatic change. One notable example where church mission activities in the Caribbean were directly supported by the proceeds of slave ownership was under the terms of a charitable bequest in 1710 to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The Codrington Plantations in Barbados, were granted to the Society to fund the establishment of Codrington College. In the first decade of ownership, several hundred slaves at the plantation estates were branded on their chests, using the traditional red hot iron, with the word "Society", to signify their ownership by the Christian organisation. Slave ownership at the Codrington Plantations only finally came to an end in 1833, when slavery in British Empire was abolished. The Church of England has since apologised for the "sinfulness of our predecessors" with the history of these plantation estates highlighted as example of the church's inconsistent approach to slavery. Today, nearly all Christians are united in the condemnation of modern slavery as wrong and contrary to God's will.
Slavery in South Africa existed until the abolition of slavery in 1834.
On 16 Pluviôse (4 February 1794), the National Convention decreed that slavery be abolished in all of France and French colonies.
The decrease in trade indirectly led to the collapse of states like the Edo Empire. Britain withdrew from the slave trade when it was the major transporter of slaves to the Americas. The French had abolished slavery following the French Revolution, although it briefly re-established it in its Caribbean colonies under Napoleon. France sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803, the same year that it gave up on trying to regain Saint-Domingue. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it ended slavery in its possessions. Between them, the French and the British had purchased a majority of the slaves sold from the ports of Edo. The economy suffered from the decline in the slave trade, although considerable smuggling of slaves to the Americas continued for years afterwards.
The first African slaves brought to the British colonies in Virginia in 1619 came on a Dutch ship. At the time, slaves were treated similarly to indentured servants, becoming free with the passage of a certain period of time. Others gained freedom by converting to Christianity, since the English of that time did not typically enslave Christians. Slave labor was used in many efforts to drain and log the Great Dismal Swamp during the 18th and 19th centuries. Escaped slaves living in freedom came to be known as maroons or outlyers. The origin of the term "maroon" is uncertain, with competing theories linking it to Spanish, Arawak or Taino root words. Maroonage, runaway slaves in isolated or hidden settlements, existed in all the Southern states, and swamp-based maroon communities existed in the Deep South, in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Maroonage in the Upper South was largely limited to Virginia and the Great Dismal Swamp.
Although slavery is recognized as being illegal around the world by international treaties and conventions, evidence has shown that there is still existing slavery in Yemen, and the number of slaves is in fact growing. Slavery affects and inhibits many basic human rights, and was specifically abolished by Yemen in 1962. The fact that slavery is alleged to still exist is a major human rights issue.
The history of the Jews in Britain goes back to the reign of William I. The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070, although Jews may have lived there since Roman times. The Jewish presence continued until King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290. After the expulsion, there was no Jewish community, apart from individuals who practised Judaism secretly, until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. While Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to Britain, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London, was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain. The Jewish Naturalisation Act of 1753, an attempt to legalise the Jewish presence in Britain, remained in force for only a few months. Historians commonly date Jewish Emancipation to either 1829 or 1858 when Jews were finally allowed to sit in Parliament. The first Jewish knight was Sir Solomon de Medina, knighted in 1700, with no further Jews being knighted until 1837, when Queen Victoria knighted Moses Haim Montefiore; four years later, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid was made a baronet, the first Jew to receive a hereditary title. In 1885 Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, became the first Jew to receive an hereditary peerage.
On 29 August 1793, Sonthonax took the radical step of proclaiming the freedom of the slaves in the north province (with severe limits on their freedom). In September and October, emancipation was extended throughout the colony. The French National Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic (1792–1804), on 4 February 1794, under the leadership of Maximilien de Robespierre, abolished slavery by law in France and all its colonies. The constitution of 1793, which was never applied, and the constitution of 1795, which was put into effect, did both contain an explicit ban on slavery.
Slavery is currently illegal in every country around the world. However, up until the 19th century slavery and ownership of people had existed in one form or another in nearly every society on earth. Notwithstanding the illegality according to codes of law, slavery still exists in various forms today.
During the later decades of the fourteenth century English started to come back into official use. The Pleading in English Act 1362 sought to replace French with English for all pleas in courts. The Mercers' Petition to Parliament of 1386 is the oldest piece of parliamentary English; the earliest English wills at the London Court of Probate date from 1387; the earliest English returns of the ordinances, usages, holdings of the gilds are from 1389 and come from London, Norwich and King's Lynn. John Trevisa, writing in 1385, noted that: "...in all the grammar schools of England children are dropping French and construing and learning in English...Also gentlemen have now largely stopped teaching their children French".
England had multiple sugar islands in the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, Barbados, Nevis, and Antigua, which provided a steady flow of sugar for sale; slave labor produced the sugar. An important result of Britain's victory in the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1714) was enlarging its role in the slave trade. Of special importance was the successful secret negotiation with France to obtain a 30-year monopoly on the Spanish slave trade, called the "Asiento." Queen Anne of Great Britain also allowed her North American colonies like Virginia to make laws that promoted black slavery. Anne had secretly negotiated with France to get its approval regarding the "asiento." She boasted to Parliament of her success in taking the "asiento" away from France and London celebrated her economic coup. Most of the slave trade involved sales to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, and to Mexico, as well as sales to British colonies in the Caribbean and in North America. Historian Vinita Ricks says the agreement allotted Queen Anne "22.5% (and King Philip V, of Spain 28%) of all profits collected for her personal fortune." Ricks concludes that the Queen's "connection to slave trade revenue meant that she was no longer a neutral observer. She had a vested interest in what happened on slave ships."
Prior to the formation of the United Kingdom in 1707, taxation had been levied in the countries that joined to become the UK. For example, in England, King John introduced an export tax on wool in 1203 and King Edward I introduced taxes on wine in 1275. Also in England, a Poor Law tax was established in 1572 to help the deserving poor, and then changed from a local tax to a national tax in 1601. In June 1628, England's Parliament passed the Petition of Right which among other measures, prohibited the use of taxes without its agreement. This prevented the Crown from creating arbitrary taxes and imposing them upon subjects without consultation.
From an early age during the Atlantic Slave Trade period, the crown attempted to stop the trading of non-African slaves. The enslavement and overseas trading of Chinese slaves, who were prized by the Portuguese, was specifically addressed in response to Chinese authorities' requests, who, although not against the enslavement of people in Macau and Chinese territories, which was common practice, at different times attempted to stop the transport of slaves to outside the territory. In 1595, a Portuguese royal decree banned the selling and buying of ethnically Chinese slaves; it was reiterated by the Portuguese King on February 19, 1624, and, in 1744, by the Qianlong Emperor, who forbade the practice to Chinese subjects, reiterating his order in 1750. However, these laws were not able to stop the trade completely, a practice which lasted until the 1700s. In the American colonies, Portugal halted the use of Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, and Indians to work as slaves for sugar plantations, which was reserved exclusively for African slaves.
Slavery in the French Republic was abolished on 4 February 1794, including in its colonies. The lengthy Haitian Revolution by its slaves and free people of color established Haiti as a free republic in 1804 ruled by blacks, the first of its kind. At the time of the revolution, Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue and was a colony of France. Napoleon Bonaparte gave up on Haiti in 1803, but re-established slavery in Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1804, at the request of planters of the Caribbean colonies. Slavery was permanently abolished in the French empire during the French Revolution of 1848.
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, as during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English.
Although the first Jews may have arrived on the island of Great Britain with the Romans, it was not until the Norman Conquest of William the Conqueror in 1066 that organised Jewish communities first appeared in England. These existed until 1290 when the Jewish population of England was expelled by King Edward I of England.
Human cadavers have been dissected by physicians since at least the 3rd century BC, but throughout history, prevailing religious views on the desecration of corpses often meant that such work was performed in secrecy. The Christian church forbade human dissection until the 14th century, when the first recorded anatomisation of a cadaver took place in Bologna. Until then, anatomical research was limited to the dissection of animals. In Britain, human dissection was proscribed by law until 1506, when King James IV of Scotland gave royal patronage to the Barber-Surgeons of Edinburgh, allowing them to dissect the "bodies of certain executed criminals". England followed in 1540, when Henry VIII gave patronage to the Company of Barber-Surgeons, allowing them access to four executed felons each year (Charles II later increased this to six felons each year). Elizabeth I granted the College of Physicians the right to anatomise four felons annually in 1564.
This was ended in 1961 when South Africa left the British Commonwealth on becoming a Republic, and formally abandoned all of its connections, with Union nationals becoming citizens of the Republic of South Africa. By the time South Africa returned to the Commonwealth in 1994, the phrase "British Subject" had been replaced by "Commonwealth citizen". Australia was the last to phase out British Subject in the Citizenship law which was in 1986.
The Confederacy was also faced with the issue of slavery, very much contested despite its victory in what came to be known as "The War of the Southern Revolution." With the rest of the world abolishing slavery, Confederates started feeling that they were out of step. Virginia abolished slavery in its territory, followed by Kentucky and North Carolina, and later Maryland and Tennessee. A new political force named the Jeffersonian Party called for abolition of slavery and gained the support of such prominent persons as Stephen Dodson Ramseur, Robert E. Rodes, John Pegram and, later, Leonidas Polk. Finally, Confederate slavery was fully abolished in 1885, the Liberation Bill being adopted with little opposition under the presidency of James Longstreet. Southerners having resolved this by themselves, rather than having the decision forced upon them by a victorious hostile army, helped avoid any lingering bitterness, and no organization resembling the Ku Klux Klan arose.
Despite attempts by Edward I to conquer Scotland in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, the two countries were entirely separate. However, when Elizabeth I became Queen of England in 1558, a union became increasingly likely as she neither married or had children. From 1558 onwards, her heir was her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots who pledged herself to a peaceful union between the two kingdoms. In 1567, Mary was forced to abdicate as Queen of Scots and replaced by her infant son James VI and I, who was brought up as a Protestant and became heir to the English throne. After Elizabeth died in 1603, the two Crowns were held in personal union by James and his Stuart successors but England and Scotland remained separate entities.
France abolished slavery within the French Kingdom (continental France) in 1315. In May 1787 the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in London to end the British slave trade. Revolutionary France abolished slavery in France's colonies in 1794, although it was restored by Napoleon with the Law of 20 May 1802 as part of a program to ensure French sovereignty over its colonies. Haiti formally declared independence from France in 1804 and brought an end to slavery in its territory. The northern states in the U.S. all abolished slavery by 1804. Great Britain and Ireland and the United States outlawed the international slave trade in 1807, after which Britain led efforts to block slave ships. Britain abolished slavery throughout the British Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, the French colonies re-abolished it in 1848 and the U.S. abolished slavery in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In the 1770s, blacks throughout New England began sending petitions to northern legislatures demanding freedom; by 1800, all of the northern states had abolished slavery or set measures in place to gradually reduce it. While free, blacks often had to struggle with reduced civil rights, such as restrictions on voting, as well as racism, segregation, or physical violence. Vermont abolished slavery in 1777, while it was still independent, and when it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791 it was the first state to have done so. All the other Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution". Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1780, and several other Northern states adopted gradual emancipation. In 1804, New Jersey became the last original Northern state to embark on gradual emancipation. Slavery was proscribed in the federal Northwest Territory under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The free black population increased from 8% to 13.5% from 1790 to 1810; most of whom lived in the Mid-Atlantic States, New England, and the Upper South, where most of the slave population lived at the time.
The Somersett Case in 1772, in which a fugitive slave was freed in England with the judgement that slavery did not exist under English common law and was thus prohibited in England, helped launch the British movement to abolish slavery. Though anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, the colonies and emerging nations that used slave labour continued to do so: Dutch, French, English, Spanish and Portuguese territories in the West Indies; South America; and the Southern United States. After the American Revolution established the United States, northern states, beginning with Pennsylvania in 1780, passed legislation during the next two decades abolishing slavery, sometimes by gradual emancipation. Massachusetts ratified a constitution that declared all men equal; freedom suits challenging slavery based on this principle brought an end to slavery in the state. Vermont, which existed as an unrecognized state from 1777 to 1791, abolished adult slavery in 1777. In other states, such as Virginia, similar declarations of rights were interpreted by the courts as not applicable to Africans and African Americans. During the following decades, the abolitionist movement grew in northern states, and Congress regulated the expansion of slavery in new states admitted to the union.
In the 1770s, blacks throughout New England began sending petitions to northern legislatures demanding freedom. Five of the Northern self-declared states adopted policies to at least gradually abolish slavery: Pennsylvania (1780), New Hampshire and Massachusetts (1783), Connecticut and Rhode Island (1784). Vermont had abolished slavery in 1777, while it was still independent, and when it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791, it was the first state to join untainted by slavery. These state jurisdictions thus enacted the first abolition laws in the Americas. By 1804 (including, New York (1799), New Jersey (1804)), all of the northern states had abolished slavery or set measures in place to gradually abolish it.