Last showing - "I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO" documentary film
In only 1 location: Electric Cinema - Shoreditch, 64-66 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London E2 7DP,
Sunday 16th July 2017, at 14:45
Click on link for additional info
CHRONOLOGY OF THE ABOLITIONS OF SLAVERY
In the Americas, Caribbean Islands and Indian Ocean
In 1441, Portuguese sailors brought back the first African slaves to Portugal. That year is considered the starting point of 447 years of European slave trading. Seventy years later in 1511, the Spanish Crown licensed the dispatch of fifty African slaves to the island of Hispaniola, afterwards named Saint Domingue and then Haiti, for work in the mines. The solution to the labour problem in the New World was solved. Later on, gradually or hastily the kingdoms of the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Sweden and England would embrace this mercantile venture. Globalisation had begun.
We cannot omit from these pages the abolition of slavery in Africa practiced by the Africans themselves and the Arabs. Though hardly stressed by the historians and Arab themselves, from the 7th to the 20th century, Arab Muslims raided and traded for black African slaves in West, Central, and East Africa, sending thousands of slaves each year to North Africa and parts of Asia. This part of history deserve our attention.
In the best of our abilities, we have compounded the dates from various sources which may have resulted in conflicting data. The road to freedom took centuries of long and painful resolves linking and opposing slaves, heads of states and kingdoms, Christians and non Christians, slave traders and slave owners.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Vermont, 1777, Slavery abolished—Pennsylvania: 1780, Gradual emancipation—Massachusetts and New Hampshire: 1783, gradual emancipation—Rhode Island and Connecticut: 1784, Gradual emancipation—1808, Prohibition of the Slave Trade by the USA.
ST DOMINGUE (HAITI) : 1 January 1804, Slavery abolished by the Haitians by a declaration of independence after a war of attrition started in 1802.
Compensation to the planters
In 1825 France demanded that Haiti pay the French government 150 million gold francs to "compensate" French plantation slave-owners for their "financial losses" and in exchange for France's recognition of Haiti's independence. Years later, the amount was reduced to 90 million gold francs.
MEXICO: 6 December 1810 Abolition of slavery. 29 January 1813, repeated. 1829 Decree abolishing slavery is signed.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC:: No Act. 1822 The newly formed independent state of Haiti fearing the French would fight on the eastern part of the island, Hispaniola that was once under the Spanish, outlawed slavery after invading it.
CHILE: 1823, Abolition of Slavery.
COSTA RICA, HONDURAS, PANAMA, BELIZE, EL SALVADOR, GUATEMALA, NICARAGUA: 1824.
BOLIVIA: 1826 Slavery abolished, reestablished in 1830, and abolished again in 1831. However, until 1952, when the Land Reform took place, Afro-Bolivians continued to be employed in Los Yungas as slaves in haciendas.
BRITISH COLONIES: 1807 Slave trading abolished. 28 August 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act came into force on 1 August 1834 in Anguilla, Belize, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, Grenada, Antigua, St Lucia, Canada and the Bahamas. Slavery ends in Seychelles (formerly French Séchelles) on 11 February 1835. 1838 Final abolition in Guiana and Mauritius. The abolition came in 1860 to India.
Compensation to the planters.
Offer of £20 million worth of compensation ( £16.5 billion in today's money) by an Act of Parliament, “The Slave Compensation Act 1837 (1 & 2 Vict. c. 3)” signed into law on 23 December 1837.
Compensation to the Slaves
A period of 'apprenticeship' (in the Act's final draft, a six-year term was agreed on) during which planters had the right to the continuing labour of their ex-slaves).
SWEDISH COLONIES: 1813 slave trading abolished. 1842 Abolition of slavery in the colony Saint Barthélemy.
URUGUAY: 1825 Free Womb Law (under which children of slave mothers were born free, though obligated to serve their mother’s master until they reached the age of majority). 1842 Final abolition of slavery.
DANISH COLONIES: 16 March 1792 Slave trading prohibited. Came into effect 1 January 1803. Third July 1846 Emancipation of the slaves in St Thomas, St John, and St Croix. (Known as Virgin Islands, USA’s property).
FRENCH COLONIES: 4 February 1794 (16 Pluviôse Year II), Decree of the Convention abolishing slavery. Slavery restored 20 May 1802 (by the Law of 30 Floréal Year X) in the French colonies according to the previous legislation of 1789. 29 March 1815, Prohibition of the slave trade. Slavery definitely abolished in 1848 in Martinique, Guadeloupe, St Martin, French Guiana and Ile Bourbon (Réunion) in the Indian Ocean. France will abolish slavery in 1896 in Madagascar.
Compensation to the planters
A law voted on 30 April 1849 compensated former slaves owners. One-eighth of the indemnities was to be paid in shares to create the colonial banks. In Martinique, with a population of over 40,000 slaves, slave owners received the equivalent of 40,000 € (£32,480 in today’s money ) for each freed slave.
Compensation to the slave
Freed slaves were required to go back to work on the plantations unless they be condemned for vagrancy.
ECUADOR: 1851, Abolition of slavery.
NEW GRENADA (COLOMBIA): Gradual abolition starting in 1821 with the law pronouncing children born of slaves free, the en of manumission and the slave trade to final abolition of slavery on 21 M ay1851 (Then New Granada) abolishes slavery.
ARGENTINA: Law “Freedom of Wombs” passed on February 2 1813. The law stated that those born after January 31, 1813 would be granted freedom when contracting matrimony, or on their 16th birthday for women and 20th for men, and upon their manumission would be given land and tools to work it. 1853, Abolition of slavery. During the 1820s, the freed blacks were grouped by “nation” in “African societies”, a social control means of the colored population.
VENEZUELA: 1854 abolition of slavery.
PERU: 5 December1854 Freedom Declaration for the Afro-Peruvian ethnic groups and Abolition of Slavery.
Compensation to the planters
The government of President Ramon Castilla made available 7,651,500 pesos for the loss of their slaves.
THE NETHERLANDS COLONIES: 1814, Prohibition of the Slave Trade. 1 July 1863 slavery abolished in Suriname all its colonies: Curaçao, Saba, Saint Eustatius, Aruba, Bonaire, St Marteen.
Compensation to the planters
To compensate, slave owners received 300 guilders per freed slave from the Dutch government.
Compensation to the slaves
Freed slaves in Suriname were required to work for their former owner for ten years (so effectively they remained slaves until 1873).
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1807: Prohibition of the importation of captives and slaves by the United States. 1 January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation except in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri which had not seceded from the Union, nor did it apply to those parts of the confederate States of America (such parts of Virginia (later admitted to the Union as West Virginia) and Florida which had been occupied by and remained under the control of US forces. 6 December 1865 Prohibition of slavery with the 13th Amendment to the Bill of Rights.
Compensation to the planters
In the 1860s U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had requested many millions of dollars from Congress with which to compensate slave owners from the Confederate States for the loss of their slaves. On July 9, 1868, Section 4 of the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment dismissed all of the claims that slave owners in the Confederate States had been injured by the freeing of their slaves.
PORTUGAL: 1869 Portugal is the last European country to abolish the Slave Trade
SPAIN: 22 March 1873 Abolition of Slavery in its colony Puerto Rico. 7 October 1886, Abolition of slavery in its colony Cuba.
Puerto Rico
Compensation to the planters
If the former slave decided not to work for his former master, the Protectors Office would then pay the former master 23% of the former slaves estimated value.
Compensation to the slaves
They had to buy their own freedom, at whatever price was set by the previous owners. The law required they work for three years. The Protectors Office would pay the difference owed to the former master once the contract was expired. The majority of the free slaves received a salary for their labour.
BRAZIL: Gradual abolition. 1850 Slave trade halted. 1871, Legislation was passed for freeing the children of slaves. After 1885, Emancipation of elderly slaves. 13 May 1888 Total abolition of slavery without compensation to slave owners or aid to newly slaves (Golden Law). In 1891, the Minister of Finance, Rui Barbosa, issued circular No 29 of May 13, 1891, which ordered the destruction by fire of all historical documents and files that related to the slave trade and to slavery.
“Nothing, which has happened to man in modern times has been more significant than the buying and selling of human beings out of Africa.” W. E. Du Bois
THE
DIASPORA
