Britain did more to abolish slavery than any other nation

Accounts of sexual slavery are also documented in Australia amongst Aboriginal people.

No doubt as a result of American exceptionalism and cultural dominance, as well as Eurocentrism, Australians are fascinated by the Transatlantic Slave Trade more than any other.

This started when the Portuguese, the only Western European slave economy of the time, purchased Africans for sale and shipped them to Brazil in 1526.

Britain was not a slave economy in the 16^th century, but prior to the Norman Conquest in 1066, 10 to 30 per cent of the population had been slaves. The Normans opposed slavery. William the Conqueror’s Ninth Law banned the export of slaves and in 1102 the Church Council in London condemned slavery. By 1200 it had died out.

Subsequent court cases affirmed that there was no status of slavery under the Common Law, so slaves could not exist in Great Britain and any slave brought there was free.

Nevertheless in 1562 John Hawkins, later an English Vice-Admiral and cousin of Francis Drake, embarked on a slave-trading expedition in three ships: the Salomon, Jonas and Swallow. This went so well that in 1564 he conducted another, persuading Queensland Elizabeth I to be an investor.

The return on this voyage was 60%, a high reward denoting a commensurately high risk, but attractive to speculators.

How culpable were the British for the slave trade? Well at this stage, as a nation, not at all. While British nationals were involved in it, including the Queen, they were doing so as individuals.

This was a very different world to today’s where private interests sometimes carved out international niches for themselves outside of what we think of as the norms of nations.

Although perhaps not so different.

Prigozhin and the Wagner group, as well as other mercenary outfits, operate very similarly to the Elizabethan privateers.

However, by 1663 Britain was indeed a slaving nation with the Royal African Company granted a royal monopoly over West Coast African slavery. Subsequently the East India Company was given a monopoly over the East Coast African slave trade.