Abolition, and the First International Concern

What the record also shows

The 1833 Act compensated the owners and not the enslaved, and the sum borrowed to pay them was very large. Whose property interest the legislature recognised is written into the statute.

The Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885 condemned the slave trade and partitioned a continent, in the same process and among the same powers. That coexistence is not an incidental irony; it is the context in which the vocabulary of humanity was being used, and [The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919] shows the same powers voting thirty-four years later.

And abolition was not disinterested. Economic and strategic motives are documented alongside the moral campaign and the historiography is contested, so presenting it as a pure triumph of conscience overstates the record.

Include all three. A candidate who can hold the achievement and the qualification together is doing the work the subject requires, and an answer that gives only one half is weaker whichever half it gives.

Slavery in the order today

Article 4 of the Universal Declaration: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

The words "in all their forms" are what carry the prohibition forward to debt bondage, forced marriage, trafficking and forced labour, and the 1956 Supplementary Convention names them.

In India, article 23 of the Constitution prohibits traffic in human beings and begar and other similar forms of forced labour, and makes a contravention an offence.

And the prohibition is one of the few in this book with genuinely universal reach: it binds as custom, it is non-derogable, it is a peremptory norm from which no derogation by agreement is permitted, and it grounds universal jurisdiction over the trade.

Worked example

A question asks what the nineteenth century contributed to the international order for human rights, given that it produced no declaration of rights.

Refuse the premise first. A declaration is not the only form a contribution takes, and the century produced three things a declaration cannot: a subject-matter, a method and a machinery.

Then give abolition with the dates, and identify the conceptual move: the internal treatment of persons became a subject of treaty.

Then give the method and the machinery, the campaign repertoire and the mixed commissions.

Then give the qualifications without softening them: owners compensated, a continent partitioned by the same conference, and motives that were not purely moral.

Close with what 1945 did with it. The Charter generalised the move that abolition made about one practice, and the Declaration's article 4 is the direct descendant of the campaign.

What it does NOT mean

It does not mean the nineteenth century recognised human rights. It did not use the term and its practitioners would not have recognised the framework.

It does not mean the treaties ended slavery. They ended the legal status in most places and the practice survives, which is why the 1956 Convention was needed and why forced labour is still a treaty subject.

And it does not mean abolition is only a first generation matter. The campaign is the ancestor of the whole advocacy method, and [Non-Governmental Organizations as a Protection Mechanism] shows it operating in this paper's own machinery.

Quick revision

• Dates: 1807 trade abolished in Britain; 1815 Congress of Vienna, repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality; 1833 Empire abolition from 1834, compensating the owners; 1848 France; 1865 Thirteenth Amendment; 1885 Berlin Act; 1890 Brussels Act; 1926 Slavery Convention; 1956 Supplementary Convention.
• Four contributions: the subject-matter, making internal treatment a matter of treaty; the method, which is the modern advocacy repertoire; the machinery, naval patrols and mixed commissions, the first international tribunals in the field; and the vocabulary of an absolute.
• Three qualifications: owners compensated, not the enslaved; the Berlin Conference condemned the trade and partitioned Africa; and the motives were not purely moral.
• Today: UDHR article 4, slavery and the slave trade prohibited in all their forms; ICCPR article 8, non-derogable; article 23 of the Indian Constitution; and a peremptory norm grounding universal jurisdiction.

Test yourself

1. What is the single conceptual move abolition made, and why does this paper depend on it? That how a State treats people inside its own territory can be the subject of an international obligation. Before the abolition treaties, international law regulated relations between States: war, peace, treaties, territory, envoys and the sea. The treaties on the slave trade, from the bilateral treaties of search through the Berlin Act of 1885 to the Brussels Act of 1890, made a practice occurring inside a State's own borders and affecting its own inhabitants a matter about which States owed each other obligations. Every later development in this paper presupposes that move. The Charter's articles 55 and 56 generalise it from one practice to human rights as a whole. The narrowing of article 2(7) in Module III assumes it. Every regional system in Module II is built on it. And the treaty bodies exist to examine precisely the conduct that the classical law of nations regarded as beyond its reach. It was made about a single institution, a century before the Charter, and by States most of which were then colonial powers.

2. What method and machinery did abolition create? The method was the transnational campaign: petitions, consumer boycott, pamphlets, sustained parliamentary lobbying, survivor testimony and a network of corresponding societies across several countries. Read as a list, it is exactly the repertoire a human rights organisation uses today, and the descent is direct rather than analogical. The machinery was naval and judicial. Bilateral treaties of search allowed one State's ships to stop another's, and captured vessels were adjudicated by mixed commissions composed of judges from both States, which sat, received evidence, and condemned or released vessels by decisions binding on the States that created them. Those commissions are the first international tribunals in this field, and nothing comparable existed for any other subject at the time. Together the method and the machinery show that the nineteenth century's contribution was practical rather than declaratory: it produced no bill of rights and it produced the two things a bill of rights cannot supply.

3. What qualifications must an honest account include? Three, and they belong in the same answer as the achievement. The Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire and compensated the slave-owners rather than the enslaved, with a very large sum borrowed to do it, which records whose property interest the legislature recognised. The Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885 undertook the suppression of the slave trade and produced the framework for the colonial partition of Africa, in the same process and among the same powers, so the vocabulary of humanity was being used by governments engaged in the opposite of humanity elsewhere. And abolition was not disinterested: economic and strategic motives are documented alongside the moral campaign and the historiography remains contested, so presenting it as a pure triumph of conscience overstates what the record supports. Including all three is not a concession that weakens the argument; an answer that can hold the achievement and the qualification together is doing the work the subject requires.

4. Why is the prohibition of slavery unusual among the rights in this book? Because it is genuinely absolute and genuinely universal in a way very few provisions are. It binds by treaty in every general instrument: article 4 of the Universal Declaration, which prohibits slavery and the slave trade in all their forms, article 8 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 4 of the European Convention, article 6 of the American Convention and article 5 of the African Charter. It binds as customary international law regardless of ratification. It is non-derogable, appearing in the article 4(2) list of the Covenant, so no emergency reaches it. It is a peremptory norm, so no agreement to the contrary is valid, which is why a contract of self-enslavement is void rather than voidable and why the quality of the consent is irrelevant. And it grounds universal jurisdiction over the trade. The phrase in all their forms is what carries it forward from chattel slavery to debt bondage, serfdom, servile marriage and trafficking, which the Supplementary Convention of 1956 names expressly and which article 23 of the Indian Constitution prohibits domestically.