Working a minimum of 3,000 unpaid hours yearly, they generated much of the wealth from which the new manufacturing economy would be created. There were over a million enslaved Africans in the British West Indies. In 1781 the Solicitor-General John Lee, commenting on the Zong Massacre in which 122 Africans were thrown overboard in order to save water rations, stated: ‘Blacks are goods and property.’īy the end of the 18th century Britain was the leading trader in human lives across the Atlantic. Sometimes described as ‘slave-servants’, they were often of indeterminate status. Even at the height of the abolition movement there were spaces where Africans trained in domestic service could be bought. The sale of individual young African men and women was a feature of port city life – particularly in London. Success of this kind was unusual, though, and for black people of every rank it was the shadow of slavery that had shaped their lives.
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