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 Abolition in Britain during the 19th century:After a series of delays caused by Wilberforce's health, stonewalling in the House of Lords, the war with France, a British bill was finally passed in 1806. It prohibited the sale of slaves by the British into other countries, and prohibited the importation of additional slaves into the new British colonies in the Caribbean. A second bill was passed in 1807 in which "all manner of dealing and trading in slaves...[was] utterly abolished, prohibited and declared to be unlawful." A final bill in 1811 made slave trading punishable by execution or exile. By this time, about 2.8 million slaves had been transported by the British. Although the British slave trade had now ended, slavery itself continued in various British colonies. An Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1823. It was successful in forcing the government to pass laws to improve the treatment of slaves. After some slave revolts and mass executions, outraged public opinion in Britain forced passage of a Bill for the Abolition of Slavery in 1833. This ended slavery in Britain and all of its colonies, including Canada. Through a series of treaties and the capture of over 1,000 slave ships, the slave trade was finally snuffed out by 1865, the same year that the U.S. civil war ended.
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Abolition in the U.S. during the 19th century:Anti-slave activity in the U.S. lagged significantly behind that of Britain, Canada, and other British colonies. Some milestones were:
The cost in human suffering and lives:
According to a "Chronology on the history of slavery and racism:"
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Subsequent Developments:Slavery in North America was closely connected to race. P.E. Lovejoy writes:
Elsewhere in the world, slaves were often of the same race and same or similar culture as the slave owners. An ex-slave could mix freely into society. A generation later, their former slave status would be forgotten. This is not so in North America. The effects of slavery lived on in the form of racial segregation and racial intolerance; both are still plaguing the nation today. An estimated 30% of the population of Brazil and the United States were descended from slaves, as of 1950. In Cuba and the West Indies, it is estimated to be 15%. 1 Slavery was abolished in most of the world during the 19th century. It has been outlawed by a number of international conventions: 9
In 1962, Saudi Arabia became the last country in the world to officially abolish slavery. However, forms of slavery continue today in a few countries:
Slavery is still advocated in North America by some Reconstructionist Christians and a few racist fringe groups within the Christian Identity movement.
2017: Current levels of human slavery in the world:An estimate by the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the Walk Free Foundation issued a joint report on slavery. It is called: "The 2017 Global Estimates of Modern Slavery." 12,13 They define modern slavery as:
The report estimates that there were a total of:
That is about 20% more than the total population of Canada. Of these, across the entire world:
Fiona David, the executive director of global research for Walk Free Foundation, said:
The website www.theclever.com contains an article called: "15 Countries Where Slavery Is Still Legal." Actually, the title is misleading because various forms of slavery has been outlawed in India and in some of the other countries listed. "15 Countries Where Forms of Slavery Are Still Practiced" would be a more accurate heading. Listed below are the main countries where slavery continues. 14 Included are the estimated total number of slaves, and percentage of the total population who are enslaved. They are listed In order of decreasing percentage of slaves in the total population, they are:
An earlier article by the Walk Free Foundation, published in 2013 estimated that there were a total of about 60,000 slaves (0.02%) in the U.S. In Canada, western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the number of enslaved persons was fewer than 5,000 per country.
References used:
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