The Slave Trade Act of 1807 was a landmark piece of legislation that made Britain the first major slave-trading nation to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. It came into force on 1 May 1807 and made it illegal for British subjects to engage in the slave trade or to equip ships for it.
The Act was the culmination of two decades of sustained campaigning by the abolitionist movement. William Wilberforce had first introduced a bill to abolish the slave trade in 1791. It was defeated. He tried again in 1792, 1793, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1804, and 1805. Each time it was defeated or talked out by a Parliament in which powerful slave-trading and plantation-owning interests had significant representation.
The persistence of the abolitionist campaign in the face of repeated defeat is itself remarkable. The movement maintained public support through pamphlets, public meetings, petitions, and the testimony of formerly enslaved people including Olaudah Equiano, whose autobiography brought the reality of slavery to a wide British audience. By the early 1800s, the political climate had shifted enough for the bill to pass.
The 1807 Act applied to the trade only. Enslaved people already in British colonies remained enslaved. The Act represented an enormous step, but the full abolition of slavery in British territories would take another 26 years.
Penalties for violating the Act were initially financial, but were strengthened in 1811 when slave trading was made a felony punishable by transportation. From 1827 it was made a capital offence, reflecting the seriousness with which Britain was now treating enforcement.
