William Wilberforce

Slavery in British India - Bengal

Slaves during the great Famine of Eastern India(above). Bengal trade, 1640-85. In Bengal the East India Company had established a factory at Hughly, hard by the dismantled Portuguese fortress; but were exposed to so much insolence and extortion from the Mogul authorities that they were prepared to leave Bengal rather than tamely submit to further oppression. The trade was enormously profitable, and had helped to defray the cost of the fortifications at Madras and Bombay. Saltpetre had been in large demand ever since the breaking out of the civil war between Charles the First and his parliament. Raw silk and opium were equally marketable, and all three products could be brought from Patna to Hughly by the river Ganges. At Dacca, the old capital of Bengal to the eastward of the Ganges, muslins were manufactured of so fine a texture that a piece sufficient for a dress might be passed through a wedding ring; and every young lady in the British Isles who aspired to be a bride w...

The atlantic slave trading route

The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th through the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported to the New World , mainly on the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage , were Africans from the central and western parts of the continent who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders (with a small minority being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids), and brought to the Americas. The South Atlantic and Caribbean economic system centered on producing commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe, and increasing the numbers of African slaves brought to the New World. This was crucial to those western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires.

slavery of the world

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