In another outlandish post, US-based billionaire (who comes from a settler colonial family in South Africa) and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk did a quote retweet endorsing the claim that the ‘British Empire was, in some ways, a force for good’ concerning the European slave trade inappropriately and cleverly referred to as transatlantic slave trade. Musk added in his retweet that ‘the British Empire was the driving force behind ending the vast majority of global slavery.’
Given Musk’s well-known and documented political views, his claim is not surprising but still factually wrong.
Firstly, while it is true that the British did play a role in ending slavery, they were not the driving force, and secondly, the act was not out of benevolence but driven by various external factors. The real driving force was the enslaved African people themselves. From the day that the first enslaved people were forcibly loaded onto boats to be taken across the Atlantic, they resisted and fought against the enslavers. The rebellions against slavery continued aboard the ships; there were numerous incidents of revolts by enslaved Africans against their captors and tormentors. Some estimates suggest that about 8 to 10 per cent of boats carrying enslaved people experienced some form of revolt.
Even after arriving on the plantations on the other side of the Atlantic, the resistance against slavery continued. Some of the most notable rebellions include the 1760 Tacky’s revolt in Jamaica, the largest uprising of enslaved people against the British empire in the 18th century. The most significant revolts occurred in the then-French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1791 when enslaved people rose and defeated French government forces. The revolt’s success led to establishing the first Black republic in the world, Haiti. Similar rebellions raged across the Americas. These revolts planted fear in the hearts of the plantation owners and the British Empire, making them think twice about slavery.
The second factor that made the British Empire abandon slavery was economic and not moral reasons.
By the 1800s, the sugar industry, which was one of the most significant users of slave labour, especially in the Caribbean, became unprofitable due to overproduction, which resulted in higher supply than demand. In simple terms, slavery was no longer making economic sense. Also, the rapid colonialisation drive in Africa meant that Britain and other colonisers wanted Africans to stay on the continent so that they could be exploited there.
The empire found it cheaper and less cumbersome to use indentured labour from India on the Caribbean plantations than using enslaved Africans.
If morality were the driving reason, then the British government would have compensated the formerly enslaved people instead of paying millions of pounds to the enslavers. In fact, the Africans did not only walk away empty-handed; they had to raise £27 million of the 47 million pounds that was paid to the enslavers by working for an additional four years after the British parliament had abolished slavery. Is this the ‘driving force’ Musk wants more people to know?
https://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0032
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z732pv4/revision/5
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/11/lets-end-delusion-britain-abolished-slavery
https://x.com/jasonhickel/status/1533092897213583366?lang=en
https://archives.history.ac.uk/history-in-focus/Slavery/articles/walvin.html
https://www.historyhit.com/reasons-why-britain-abolished-slavery/
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/06/myth-britain-slavery-clean-break-afua-hirsch-british