Britain did more to abolish slavery than any other nation

You might argue that this approach is too gradualist, and too favourable to the slave owners, but what would be the alternative and how moral would that outcome be?

Between 1861 and 1865 the United States fought a civil war over slavery which resulted in the deaths of between 600,000 and 1,000,000 men – a greater proportion of the population by far than the USA has lost in any other war.

They destroyed their economy and created enmities that exist to this day. Sometimes there is no perfect way.

The British achieved their emancipation without a war, although at some cost. The compensation was 20 million pounds sterling, or 40% of the British budget. While government revenue was smaller then, amounting to around 12.5% of GDP, it is the equivalent $450 billion AUD as a percentage of Australia’s budget.

This money was borrowed and only completely repaid in 2015.

They also used the Royal Navy to actively supress the slave trade, and much of their interference in Africa was directed to this end. Generally, this was under treaty agreements with other countries but in 1850 the Royal Navy blockaded Brazil to pressure it to ban the trade. Wanting to avoid war with Britain it did this in 1850.

So for every year it was a slaver the Empire spent roughly another year doing its best to eradicate slavery.

Without this effort would the trade have ended? Probably. Other major countries were moving in that direction at the same time. Would it have ended as soon? Definitely not. No other country appears to have put as much effort into suppressing it as the UK, or to have had the same moral sensibility.

The British Empire has faded into the mists of time so we have forgotten how it tended to fill the role of the world’s policeman.

Today we look towards international forums and institutions to protect our rights, and when these fail, we fall back on the Pax Americana, as currently evidenced in Ukraine.

At the height of the empire Britain controlled 25% of the world and the Pax Brittanica dwarfed that of the Pax Americana.

When it abolished slavery a new era in human rights had arrived which within another century leads to the United Nations declaration of the Universal Rights of the Human Being.

That’s something to be celebrated. That’s why my think tank, the Australian Institute for Progress, will be celebrating Emancipation Day this August 1, because seldom has there been progress like this.

The slave trade may never have been instituted in Australia, but we are still inheritors and beneficiaries of the will and moral impulse that defeated it as an internationally acceptable form of commerce or an acceptable treatment of a fellow human being.