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But British opposition to slavery did not pick up steam in earnest until the late 18th and early 19th century, and at first was mostly limited to opposition to
by whakim 3y ago
But British opposition to slavery did not pick up steam in earnest until the late 18th and early 19th century, and at first was mostly limited to opposition to slavery in the British home islands and the transatlantic slave trade. Neither of those practices were particularly lucrative. Only once sugar plantations in the Caribbean ceased to be lucrative was slavery abolished in the 1830s. While it's almost impossible to argue a "what if," the fact that British economic interests were so intertwined with British positions on slavery suggests that Britain would not have willingly freed slaves in the colonies.
- eesmith 3y agoIn a comment proposing a counterfactual world where all of the North American colonies stayed with the US, surely it's important to consider how that would have affected British support for slavery, rather than skip the topic altogether and imply that the additional ... years? ... decades? of British slave trade and use of slave labor would be "Perhaps not such a bad outcome".
- whakim 3y agoI'm pretty sure we agree; I misread your statement about "inherent differences in their respective support for slavery" as an implication that Britain would have been just as opposed to the slave trade (and later slavery) in this counterfactual scenario.