Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

Britain’s anti-slavery patrols were intended to stop British slave-trading, but their mission expanded rapidly. Through a series of bilateral treaties negotiated over the next half-century, the patrols targeted the slave ships of other trading powers. At times their mission was extended into the Caribbean and during the 1850s they loitered off Brazil, intercepting slave ships at sea and burning others that were caught at anchor. In the latter half of the nineteenth century Britain’s crusade against the slave trade turned to the East, and British warships surged into the Indian Ocean, where they pursued the dhows of the Muslim slavers, who continued their ancient trade in human flesh long after the Atlantic trade was reduced to a trickle. They were not stopped until the twentieth century and even then not comprehensively. It is one of the great questions of British history: why was it that the nation that had refined and perfected the slave trade, and become the dominant player in that global industry, turned her back on its profits, and committed herself to its suppression?