The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated
As it Exists Both in Law and Practice, and Compared with the Slavery of Other Countries, Antient and Modern

A key abolitionist text, exposing the cruelty of colonial slave laws, by one of the nineteenth century's most brilliant lawyers.

James Stephen (Author)

9781108020831, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 September 2010

502 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.2 cm, 0.89 kg

The lawyer and leading abolitionist James Stephen (1758–1832) published Volume 2 of The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated in 1830. The volume is an exposure of the cruel and oppressive practice of slavery in the British West Indies. It investigates the living conditions, feeding and clothing of slave populations; the brutal practices, such as 'slave driving', involved in forcing labour; and, by comparisons of forced and free labour, argues for the complete abolition of slavery. Stephen had been the legal mastermind of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the British Empire but not slavery itself. This important work was influential in directing public opinion against slavery and helped lead towards the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. It is a key text of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement and is vital for understanding the arguments and debates that led to abolition.

Preface
Book II. Delineation of the State of Slavery in our Colonies, in its Ordinary Practical Nature and Effects: 1. Reasons for resuming this work
2. Of agricultural labour in the torrid zone, and the pernicious effects of its excess when forcibly exacted
3. The high probability that the amount of forced labour on sugar plantations is oppressively and destructively excessive, deduced from the natural tendency of the system, and confirmed by the decline of population among the predial slaves
4. The actual ordinary details and general amount, in point of time, of forced labour on sugar plantations particularly stated and proved, and the cruel excess demonstrated
5. The labour shewn to be excessive also, for the most part, in point of intensity, or the degree of actual exertion
6. Comparison of the amount of slave labour on sugar plantations with that of agricultural labourers in England
7. The means by which labour is enforced on sugar plantations greatly aggravates its severity, and are in their nature and effects extremely cruel and pernicious
8. The maintenance of the plantation slaves is in a very oppressive and cruel degree parsimonious and insufficient
9. The allowances of clothing to the field negroes by their owners is also in a shameful degree penurious and insufficient
10. The slaves are very badly lodged
11. The slaves are also treated with great harshness, neglect, and inhumanity when sick
12. The whole expense of the maintenance of plantation slaves estimated and compared with the cost of free labour
13. Concluding and practical reflections
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH]