Abolition of Slavery-

ENLIGHTENMENT The Enlightenment (1687-1789) was one factor that paved the way for the abolition of slavery. According to Lamm and Cross (1993) in The Humanities in Western Culture, this remarkable period ‘was a self-conscious and extremely articulate movement that was to transform all Western societies. It had its roots in France and England, but its branches extended throughout Europe and into the New World.’ People started to question the Church as well as the status quo. Franklin Knight in “The Disintegration of the Caribbean Slave Systems, 1772-1886”notes that during the Enlightenment the writings and ideas of number of ‘exceptionally articulate international scholars’ like Jean Jacque Rousseau (1712-78) and Adam Smith (1723-90) ‘had a veritable revolutionary impact on the general consciousness of Europeans and Americans....Within the metropolitan societies serious questions arose about the moral, religious and economic justifications for the institution [of slavery].…During the eighteenth century slave sympathizers began to exert some powerful pressures locally on the social, political and economic systems’. Knight insists that the ‘both the slave trade and slavery in the colonies began with the challenges on moral and legal grounds in the various metropolises. In this respect the Enlightenment was extremely important in creating the necessary pre-conditions for attacking the institution of slavery.’ In his article Knight captures the change that was occurring during this eccentric era. He quotes from historian David Brion Davis: ‘What was unprecedented by the 1760s and 1770s was the emergence of a widespread conviction that New World slavery symbolized all the forces that threatened the true destiny of man.’ HUMANITARIAN/ABOLITIONISTS’ EFFORTS Another factor that led to the abolition of slavery was the untiring efforts of a number of humanitarians such as Sharpe, Clarkson and Wilberforce. 1. Sharp and Somerset case: Knight says Granville