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

by David Olusoga

The act also imposed a legal requirement that every slave ship sailed with a doctor on board and that a log be kept detailing illnesses and mortality rates among the captives. Historians disagree as to the effectiveness of the Dolben Act but it was at least a form of governmental oversight imposed upon a trade that had been an unregulated free-for-all ever since the Royal African Company had lost its monopoly in the early eighteenth century. Some abolitionists feared the Dolben Act might confer the legitimacy of legal oversight upon the slave trade, and thereby weaken the case for outright abolition, but the Sons of Africa disagreed. They regarded it as a first step forward. Writing to Dolben they thanked him for his ‘benevolent law . . . by which the miseries of our unhappy brethren, on the coast of Africa, may be alleviated’.