Blog 12 - Amazing Grace

The main reason I feel that it is so hard to stop the international trade of slaves is simple; the reason is money. The English empire became powerful because of the Slave trade. The logic is fairly simple; slaves work on crop plantations, then plantations grow crops, crops sell for money and are traded for other crops, which then supply the English empire and earn it capital. Another reason that I can think of that was an obstacle to William Wilberforce was that many of the noblemen that were in the House of Congress had at least some money in the slave trade. Because of this William Wilberforce has such a hard time trying to convince the House of Commons to ban slavery. The English empire rose to prominence after they found a cash crop in the Americas. This cash crop was tobacco and was discovered by John Rolfe in Virginia. After Bacon’s rebellion indentured servants went into decline and the need for slaves increased. These events made the English think that slavery was the cheapest and most effective way to gain capital. I think the English believed in the phrase if it isn’t broken don’t fix it. Production wise slavery worked for the English, it made them lots of money, however, ethically slavery is horribly wrong. This year I have taken a personal finance class, in this class one of the points that was stressed was that money brings the worse out of anyone and everyone. I believe that this happened to the English. The English were only thinking economically and let money control them. They didn’t really think of slaves as people. I do not know if this was because of propaganda or because people just didn’t ever think beyond economics. At the time this movie is set in which I believe the movie said it was about 1782, the English empire held a lot of territory. Even though the English empire had lost the colonies in America they still had a great amount of land. European countries held the Caribbean and other places. These islands had slaves and plantations. They grew sugar cane and many other cash crops that made the English a great deal of money. The only thing they need for the plantations are more slaves. Because of this the international slave trade thrived. When the English can get the Africans to turn on themselves and fight each other it is easy to get slaves. England and the other European countries had England set up perfectly for them. They can get as many slaves as they want for cheap. The English and the Europeans had Africa in the perfect situation for them and because of this international slave trade thrived and there was no real end in sight until the abolition movement started and eventually they got followers. My second point of why it took so long to change the international slave trade was because many of the politicians had money in the salve trade. This point is mainly based off of this movie, but it makes a great deal of sense to me. I thought about this point logically and I mirrored the situation to America. Many of the politicians in the South had plantations. This was why America had as many problems as it did getting rid of slavery in the United States. In England I imagine it is mainly the same. Even though there were definitely less plantations in England then in America, their was still merchants and slave traders in England. Merchants relied on the plantations to make money and sense slaves worked on the plantations it is simple logic why they wouldn’t want to get rid of international slave trade. Economically it makes sense, but like I have mentioned earlier ethically it is not. This is one thing I can’t understand is how most of the English did not think about the issue of slavery ethically. The beginning of the movie stated that there were few abolitionists at this time, and historically there weren’t that many abolitionists till later. So eventually the ethical part of it caught on but it wasn’t for a while. Because the majority people did not think of the issue slavery ethically, of course they couldn’t stop international slave trade. In conclusion, the international trade thrived in this environment. The abolitionists had to work extremely hard to change the reasoning of the English majority. The abolitionist movement had to soften the hearts of the English people to start getting an antislavery fervor in England. I feel that the international slave trade would have probably gone on forever if it wasn’t for the abolitionists and I am glad that the abolitionist eventually won the battle over slavery. I am glad that there is slavery in America, however, as one of our TA’s reminded us with the picture from New York, slavery is still going on and we need to work hard to stop it.