Anti-slavery mug, early 1800s
The poem on this mug is written like a toast said by the person drinking from it. The poem has been hand painted onto the mug and calls for slaves to be set free.
Anti-slavery pottery was made in Britain in the early 1800s to support the anti-slavery campaign. Many people opposed the enslavement of African people on Caribbean and American sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations. Ordinary people supported the campaign by buying pottery decorated with anti-slavery verses and symbols.
There had always been opposition to slavery, but in the 1700s more people called for abolition. Enslaved people, freed ex-slaves and British Members of Parliament played an essential role in abolition.
The Quakers were the first religious group to speak out against slavery. They banned their members from owning slaves. They first petitioned Parliament against the slave trade in 1783. Slave uprisings in the Caribbean also made an impact on the British public and Parliament. These included the Saint Dominque (Haiti) rebellion in 1791 and the Jamaican revolt in 1831-1832.
Throughout the abolition campaign there was great social and political unrest in Europe. Events included the French Revolution, Britainâs loss of the American Colonies and the threat of invasion by Napoleonâs forces. These events made Britainâs upper classes nervous of social reform. Britain also relied on slavery for the enormous wealth it generated from the trade in slaves and related products.
Despite this, laws were passed in Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and slavery in 1833.
William Wilberforce led the Parliamentary campaign to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. He first became interested in the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the 1780s. Wilberforce made his first abolition speech in Parliament in 1789. For many years he presented the abolition bill to Parliament and it kept being defeated, until it was passed in 1807.
