14. Abolition of the slave trade occurred during the Napoleonic Wars… but the abolition of slavery itself was still an issue.
In 1807, the British Parliament abolished the slave trade, though not slavery, within the British Empire. The following year, the colony of Sierra Leone was established as a Crown Colony. It was designated as a refuge for freed slaves. Throughout the British Empire, the practice of slavery continued, though both Great Britain and the United States patrolled the coasts of Africa to suppress the trade in human beings. Many of the lucrative sources of income for the British Empire remained labor intensive, such as the sugar plantations in the Caribbean and the emerging tobacco and coffee plantations in Africa. The abolition movement in Great Britain, and in the northern United States, continued to lobby for the end of slavery, though it continued as “economic necessity” for many years.
