The name Wilberforce will be forever associated with the abolition of Britain’s Atlantic slave trade. But what about the name Clarkson? Thomas Clarkson was the investigator whose detailed research and hard-to-get facts powered William Wilberforce’s political campaigns and led to Britain’s historic anti-slavery legislation:

• Slave Trade Act (1807) – banning buying and selling enslaved people
• Slavery Abolition Act (1833) – outlawing slavery in most British territories

Slavery: A common institution for millennia

Now, in the Twenty first century, we accept that slavery has been a feature of human society for thousands of years, across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the Far East, Africa and the Americas. It’s all well-documented, although most interest appears to focus on the Atlantic slave trade taking Africans to the Americas. Opinion against any slavery, but really aimed at the African trade, began with the Quakers in the Seventeenth century. Widespread public interest and a push to abolish slavery through legislation, anywhere in the world, at any time, arose in the later Eighteenth century in Britain and America (once again led by Quakers and Grenville Sharp).

Slavery was going on in other parts of the world during the Eighteenth century:

• Ottoman: enslaved Eastern Europeans, Caucasus and Africa
• Barbary: enslaved Europeans from ships and coastal communities
• Arab Trans-Saharan: Africans moved over the desert to North Africa
• Indian Ocean: peoples from the region sold in East Africa and Asia
• Red Sea: peoples moved from the Horn of Africa to Arabia
• Indigenous American: indigenous people enslaved in the Americas
• Intra-African: African kingdoms enslaved neighbouring people
• Russian Serfdom and Slavery: domestic slavery

Few people knew much about these slave trades. This was something, of course, to be avoided, a peril and sometimes a political hot topic. But in the Eighteenth century, as part of the Enlightenment movement (which generated discussions about individual freedom and equality), an abolitionist movement began to gain momentum, led by religious individuals. Their interest was passionate and as the century entered its second half it began to grow in power. Thomas Clarkson was part of this late Eighteenth century movement.

Clarkson’s passion to bring slavery to an end

In 1785, Thomas Clarkson, a 25-year-old from Wisbech south of The Wash, entered a Cambridge University, Latin-language essay competition (he graduated there in 1783), entitled: Anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare. I had to look it up. It means: “Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?” He won the competition. He was so revolted by what he discovered in his researches, that he was convinced to make it his life’s work to abolish the institution of slavery.

Of course, Clarkson’s essay concluded that it was NOT lawful to make slaves of people against their will. He had synthesised existing information, added new detail based on his own research and composed his arguments in so compelling a way that he picked up more interest in the essay beyond the university. He translated it into English and published it himself in 1786, as “An essay on the slavery and commerce of the human species, particularly the African, translated from a Latin Dissertation“. The widespread interest he gained brought him to the attention of the anti-slavery movement. For decades it had been developing slowly, but it was about to experience a spurt in growth and impact.

Slave trade awareness in Britain in the 1780s

Back in the Eighteenth century what did the average person know of slavery? It’s likely everyone in late Eighteenth century Britain knew about slavery in the Americas. If a person was religious, especially Quaker, evangelical or Methodist, they would likely have known a lot about it, since these religious denominations featured it a lot in sermons and discussions. If a person could read they might learn about the experiences of some former slaves, like Ignatius Sancho or Olaudah Equiano. If they frequented coffee houses and taverns they might overhear or participate in conversations about it or read about it in the newspapers available there.

If they travelled about the country, they might take newspapers and broadsheets with them for their hosts to read stories about the trade, slave ships and court cases. If a person was wealthy/landed/aristocratic, then the chances are they heard of, knew people, or were themselves investors in the business and so the topic would feature in conversation. If a person indulged in any form of social chat and gossip, in the villages, towns and cities of Britain they would pass on information about the trade that people picked up in songs, poems, stories, reports and novels. The fact is, that by the mid 1780s the slave trade was a reasonably well-known topic of discussion among much of the population.

The anti-slavery campaign needed facts not chat

In 1787, William Wilberforce, MP for Yorkshire, was convinced to lead the abolitionist campaign in parliament by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and MP William Grenville. He was already passionately interested in the anti-slavery movement and was acquainted with Clarkson. There were plenty of others contributing to the movement, but for the sake of this blog post, let’s just say it was recognised that while Wilberforce would be the public face of the campaign, it needed facts, Facts, FACTS! And Clarkson would become one of the main contributors.

There was lots of information around, some of it factual, but much of it anecdotal. What the campaign needed was more detail about the business, the investors, the ports, the trade, the ships and the sailors. So Clarkson did what he knew best: find things out. He’d done it for his winning essay, now he was doing it for real…doing it to help the campaign.

Clarkson was journalist, investigator & researcher

I think I’ve got a clue about Clarkson’s skills. I became a journalist back in 1991. Those were the days of newspapers made of paper full of print (before the WWW). We had to get out and meet people, gain their trust, ask questions, persuade them to tell us awkward details and encourage them to reach out with more information. We learned the importance of digging, of thinking about the details we had in relation to telling the full story, and developing a plan for filling in the blanks. I think this is what Clarkson did.

I can see him travelling to Liverpool and Bristol, Britain’s largest slave trading ports, making contacts with the community, persuading them of the importance of giving information or contributing witness statements. He would have had to put himself in danger. He was chased by a gang of sailors at one point. He would have to immerse himself in the sickening world of slavery, to learn, to know which questions to ask: about ship names, voyages, muster rolls, wages, conditions and so on. He would have to overcome fear and intimidation to get his facts and his stories. Clarkson was able and up to the task: he was in his late 20s, healthy, strong, passionate about the topic and religion (he was a close ally of the Quakers), an unbeatable configuration for an anti-slavery investigator.

The anti-slavery bid launches in Parliament

Wilberforce gave his first real anti-slavery speech in Parliament on Tuesday 12 May, 1789. (The first real success towards their goal of abolition was in 1807 – that’s 18 long years of campaigning.) Wilberforce, Clarkson and their fellow abolitionists had a long, long road ahead of them. In his speech, Wilberforce mentioned Clarkson twice:

“…by the indefatigable industry, and public spirit of Mr. Clarkson, the muster rolls of all the slave ships have been collected and compared with those of other trades; and it appears, in the result, that more sailors die in one year in the Slave Trade, than die in two years in all our other trades put together.”

And the second namecheck for Clarkson: “Thus do we see how Mr. Clarkson’s account of the muster-rolls is verified, and why it is that so vast a proportion of sailors in the slave ships is lost to this country.”

Wilberforce was crediting Clarkson with facts about mortality rates and experiences of the slavery ship crew. That must have been among the toughest details to uncover.

Notes
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Olaudah Equiano (1789)
Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African, Ignatius Sancho (1782)
William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner, William Hague (2008)