The World Turned Upside Down on the Long Parliament and Slavery (pasted notice)

 

How the Interregnum Parliament boosted the slave trade - an untold story?

While terms such as “slavery” and “liberty”, frequently occur in parliamentarian rhetoric, particularly when damning their enemies, ever-increasing numbers of West African people were actually being transported across the ocean to colonies in the Caribbean. According to distinguished parliamentary historian, Dr Stephen Roberts, it was during the Interregnum that the foundations of Britain’s leading role in the slave trade were established. Dr Roberts emphasizes that there was early and sustained parliamentary involvement in the development of slavery in the Atlantic World in the seventeenth century. Caribbean colonies were engines of trade, and in terms of the labour market, large-scale white labour rested on the principle of indentured servitude. But neither the scale of white immigrant labour, nor the principles on which it rested, were enough to service the new and profitable boom industry of sugar production. By the mid-1650s the scale of the industry accounted for nearly half the cargoes imported into England’s second largest port, Bristol. The processes required to produce sugar included crushing and boiling the crop in continuous, 24-7 shift operations. Back-breaking cultivation in searing, humid heat meant that cheap and expendable labour was urgently needed. West Africa provided the answer. The forced importation of slave labour grew in parallel with the scale of sugar production. So, the colonization of Jamaica from 1655, following Cromwell’s Western Design, increased the demand for slaves. This programme explores Parliament’s part in this story.

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