The theme of the development of Africa by Europeans is synonymous with the problem of the slave trade, and the colonialists took an active part in it. The occupation of the slave trade is certainly a gross violation of human rights to freedom. The colonialists significantly increased the demand for enslaved people, thereby stimulating the local tribal elite to increase their efforts to sell living people into slavery. Although slavery already existed before the colonizers began to explore Africa, nevertheless, the locals perceived the colonizer sharply negatively, and a wave of discontent and protests broke out in Africa.
The weakness of the political administration and statehood helped the colonizers easily gain a foothold on the occupied lands by creating ports and trading colonies and taking local trade into their own hands. In Europe, by the beginning of the XIX century, a wave of protests against the gross violation of human rights in Africa was growing more and more. Enslaved people were used in such industries, in such inhuman conditions, where there was no free worker. Olaudah Equiano states: At length, after many days travelling, during which I had often changed masters, I got into the hands of a chieftain…” (Equiano 8). These were vast plantations in America, the cultivation and processing of sugar cane, etc., where the mortality of enslaved people due to inhumane working conditions was extremely high.
The reason for the unfolding struggle against slavery and the slave trade in Europe lay in the plane of morality. The leaders and kings of local State entities continued to take an active part in the violation of human rights in Africa. They managed to achieve only a ban on human trafficking, but slavery was not completely eradicated. Thomas Phillips claims: “This man carry’d about [the bell] and beat with a stick, which made a small dead sound…” (Phillips 218). Over time, it became increasingly clear that without the complete abolition of slavery, the fight against the slave trade would be endless and ineffective.
Works Cited
Equiano, Olaudah. Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Written by Himself. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
Phillips, Thomas. A Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal of London. 1732.