Conservative History Journal

Yesterday marked the 200th anniversary of the legislation that abolished slave trade in the British Empire and marked the beginning of the fight the Royal Navy waged for a long time against other slavers, particularly Arab ones.

There has been a great deal written about the subject, some sensible some completely nonsensical like the calls for Britain to apologize (to whom is not made clear) for being one of just about every country and civilization in owning and trading slaves, though, clearly there was something different about a country that firmly proclaimed that owning and trading slaves was actually wrong. That is what makes this anniversary so right and worthy of celebration.

Tory Historian saw about half of a new exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery (half because closing time approached), called “Between Worlds – Voyagers to Britain 1700-1850”. There will be a return visit and a posting on the basis of that. There are many fascinating portraits and stories in the exhibition.

However, as we are celebrating the end of the slave trade, one particular portrait (and various copies and etchings made from it) needs to be mentioned. It is that of William Ansah Sessarakoo, the son of a wealthy West African slave trader, whose father sent him to Europe in 1749 to be educated.

En route he himself was put into slavery by the treacherous (and, one assumes, European) captain of his ship. Sessarakoo was rescued by the British government, brought to Britain, introduced to George II and generally treated like a prince (which he may or may not have been). He was compared to Oroonoko, the eponymous hero of Aphra Behn’s play.

Oroonoko is a noble prince who is wrongly sold into slavery. To say that a noble man or a rich one should not be sold into slavery is not quite the same as to say that slavery is wrong.

There was a comment to that effect in the visitors’ book, though the author of it clearly misunderstood a great deal. He or she thought that describing somebody as being wrongfully enslaved was very odd as there could be no rightful enslavement. As a matter of fact William Ansah Sessarakoo would not have agreed with that. There is no evidence that he was in any way like John Newton the author of “Amazing Grace”, who had been a slave trader and accepted the wrongness of it, trying to expiate his own guilt.

A comment like that misunderstands and does not acknowledge how astonishing, historically speaking, was the idea that we take for granted: no man or woman has the right to own another man or woman.