Peace:May 1787
TONIGHT I will be Talking about a journey. The journey we all take together, as a species. How we, as a human race, can literally change the world.
On May 22, 1787 twelve men met to abolish the slave trade worldwide. In one short generation the British Empire abolished slavery, paving the way for worldwide abolishment of slavery.
A world without war is possible.
Contents
The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade
In 1787, approximately three quarters of the people on Earth lived under some form of enslavement, serfdom, debt bondage or indentured servitude. There were no slaves in Britain itself, but the vast majority of its people accepted slavery in the British West Indies as perfectly normal.
The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was a British abolitionist group, formed on 22 May 1787, by twelve men who gathered together at a printing shop in London, England. Within their lifetimes they saw slavery be abolished in Britain.[1]
- A Call to Action
This effort can be repeated today with American Foreign Policy. This can be done by actively positively encouraging our leaders to instead invest the money into our communities. Start with your congressional district today. Ask your leader to support peace, and tell them if they continue to vote for war you will reluctantly start a guerrilla marking campaign to alert the public that this congressman is someone who does not support bringing our war dollars home to your community.
The Idea That Brought Slavery to Its Knees
- 2 George Yard, London, England
The reverberations from what happened on this spot, on the late afternoon of May 22, 1787, eventually caught the attention of millions of people around the world, including the first and greatest student of what today we call civil society. The result of the series of events begun that afternoon in London, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville decades later, was "absolutely without precedent...If you pore over the histories of all peoples, I doubt that you will find anything more extraordinary."
The building that once stood at 2 George Yard was a bookstore and printing shop. The proprietor was James Phillips, publisher and printer for Britain's small community of Quakers. On that May afternoon, after the pressmen and typesetters had gone home for the day, 12 men filed through his doors. They formed themselves into a committee with what seemed to their fellow Londoners a hopelessly idealistic and impractical aim: ending first the slave trade and then slavery itself in the most powerful empire on Earth."[2]
Notes
- ↑ The Society achieved abolition of the international slave trade in 1807, enforced by the British Navy. The United States also prohibited the African slave trade that year, to take effect in 1808. Within their lifetimes these twelve men abolished slavery. It later was superseded by development of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823, which worked to abolish the institution of slavery throughout the British colonies. Abolition was passed by parliament in 1833 with emancipation completed by 1838. 1833-1787 = 46 years
- ↑ Hochschild, Adam. (January 25, 2005) The Idea That Brought Slavery to Its Knees Retrieved from: http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/25/opinion/oe-hochschild25
Further Information
- Britain's legacy of slavery
See also
External links
- Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and sometimes referred to as the Abolition Society or Anti-Slavery Society, was a British abolitionist group formed on 22 May 1787.
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