West India Interest
The West India Interest lobbied on behalf of the Caribbean sugar trade in Britain during the late eighteenth century. Beginning in the 17th century, Caribbean colonies appointed paid lobbyists, who were called colonial agents, to act on behalf of the legislatures in the colonies. These local legislatures represented the interests of the plantation owning class in the colonies. The agents, who lobbied to protect the interests of plantation owners, were often members of the British Parliament. Lillian Penson identified three distinct interest groups in London, who decided to work together: agents from the West Indian colonies, merchants who traded with the colonies and plantation owners who lived in London. This group supported the Molasses Act of 1733, which sought to tax molasses that was shipped to New England from the Caribbean. This tax was supposed to be collected from the American people. When tensions between the American colonies and the British Crown increased in the yea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sugar Plantations In The Caribbean
Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of the islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most Caribbean, Caribbean islands were covered with Sugarcane, sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. The main source of labor, until Abolitionism, the abolition of chattel slavery, was Atlantic slave trade, enslaved Africans. After the abolition of slavery, Indentured servitude, indentured laborers from India, China, Portugal and other places were brought to the Caribbean to work in the sugar industry. These plantations produced 80 to 90 percent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe, later supplanted by European-grown sugar beet. The sugar trade Sugar cane development in the Americas The Portuguese introduced sugar plantations in the 1550s off the coast of their Brazilian settlement colony, located on the island Sao Vincente. As the Portuguese and Spanish maintained a strong colonial presence in the Caribbean, the Iberian Peninsula amassed t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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London Society Of West India Planters And Merchants
The London Society of West India Planters and Merchants was an organization established to represent the views of the British West Indian plantocracy, i.e. the ruling class who owned and ran the slave-based plantations in what is now the Caribbean. The organization played a major role in resisting the abolition of the slave trade and that of slavery itself. The Society was formed in 1780, and brought together three different groups: British sugar merchants, absentee planters and colonial agents. Background Estimates of the size of the West India Lobby vary between 20 and 60 members of parliament, the wide variance arising from whether tight or loose criteria are used to define what was an informal lobby. This informal way of organizing was effective prior to 1763 while their interest was aligned with the mercantilist approach which dominated British thinking: by supplying tropical staples, they did not compete with produce grown in Britain, and they provided a market for the produ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lobbying
In politics, lobbying, persuasion or interest representation is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agency, regulatory agencies. Lobbying, which usually involves direct, face-to-face contact, is done by many types of people, associations and organized groups, including individuals in the private sector, corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or advocacy groups (interest groups). Lobbyists may be among a legislator's Electoral district, constituencies, meaning a Voting, voter or Voting bloc, bloc of voters within their electoral district; they may engage in lobbying as a business. Professional lobbyists are people whose business is trying to influence legislation, regulation, or other government decisions, actions, or policies on behalf of a group or individual who hires them. Individuals and nonprofit organizations can also lobby as an act of vo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago. The subregion includes all the islands in the Antilles, plus The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the North Atlantic Ocean. Nowadays, the term West Indies is often interchangeable with the term Caribbean, although the latter may also include some Central and South American mainland nations which have Caribbean coastlines, such as Belize, French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as the Atlantic island nations of Barbados, Bermuda, and Trinidad and Tobago, all of which are geographically distinct from the three main island groups, but culturally related. Origin and use of the term In 1492, Christopher Columbus became the first European to record his arri ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Abolitionism In North America
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British abolitionist movement started in the late 18th century when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery. James Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanitarian grounds, and arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause. Soon after Oglethorpe's death in 1785, Sharp and More united with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect. The Somersett case in 1772, in which a fugitive slave was freed with the judgement that slavery did not exist under English common law, helped launch the British movement to abolish slavery. Thou ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Loyalists In The American Revolution
Loyalists were colonists in the Thirteen Colonies who remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War, often referred to as Tories, Royalists or King's Men at the time. They were opposed by the Patriots, who supported the revolution, and called them "persons inimical to the liberties of America." Prominent Loyalists repeatedly assured the British government that many thousands of them would spring to arms and fight for the crown. The British government acted in expectation of that, especially in the southern campaigns in 1780–81. Britain was able to effectively protect the people only in areas where they had military control, and in return, the number of military Loyalists was significantly lower than what had been expected. Due to the conflicting political views, loyalists were often under suspicion of those in the British military, who did not know whom they could fully trust in such a conflicted situation; they were often looked down upon. Pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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African Slave Trade
Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa in ancient times, as they were in much of the rest of the Ancient history, ancient world. When the trans-Saharan slave trade, Indian Ocean slave trade and Atlantic slave trade (which started in the 16th century) began, many of the pre-existing local African slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa. Slavery in contemporary Africa is still practiced despite it being illegal. In the relevant literature African slavery is categorized into indigenous slavery and export slavery, depending on whether or not slaves were traded beyond the continent. Slavery in historical Africa was practised in many different forms: Debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, slavery for prostitution, and enslavement of criminals were all practised in various parts of Africa. Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughou ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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West India Dock
The West India Docks are a series of three docks, quaysides and warehouses built to import goods from and export goods and occasionally passengers to the British West Indies on the Isle of Dogs in London the first of which opened in 1802. Following their commercial closure in 1980, the Canary Wharf development was built around the wet docks by narrowing some of their broadest tracts. History Early history Robert Milligan, of a Scottish family, (–1809) was largely responsible for the construction of the West India Docks. He was a wealthy West Indies merchant, slave trader and ship owner, who returned to London having managed his family's Jamaica sugar plantations. Outraged at losses due to theft and delay at London's riverside wharves, Milligan headed a group of powerful businessmen, including the chairman of the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants, George Hibbert, a merchant, politician, and ship-owner, who promoted the creation of a wet dock circled by ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Plantocracy
A slavocracy, also known as a plantocracy, is a ruling class, political order or government composed of (or dominated by) slave owners and plantation owners. A number of early European colonies in the New World were largely plantocracies, usually consisting of a small European settler population relying on a predominantly West African chattel slave population (as well as smaller numbers of indentured servants, both European and non-European in origin), and later, freed Black and poor white sharecroppers for labor. These plantocracies proved to be a decisive force in the anti-abolitionist movement. One prominent organization largely representing (and collectively funded by) a number of plantocracies was the " West India Interest", which lobbied in Parliament against the abolition of slavery. It is credited with delaying the abolition of the slave trade from the 1790s until 1806–1808, and likewise with respect to emancipation in the 1820s (instead, a policy known as "Ameliorati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Slavery Abolition Act
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) was an Act of Parliament, Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire. It was passed by Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, Earl Grey's reforming administration and expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807 and made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company", Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Saint Helena. The Act was repealed in 1998 as a part of wider rationalisation of English statute law; however, later Abolitionism in the United Kingdom, anti-slavery legislation remains in force. Background It is important to note the long history of efforts to end or limit the practice of slavery. In 1080, William the Conqueror banned the slave trade between Bristol and Ireland upon the urging of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester. In 1102, the eccl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lillian Penson
Dame Lillian Margery Penson, DBE (18 July 1896 – 17 April 1963) was a professor of modern history at the University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ..., and the first woman to serve as Vice-Chancellor of the university. Early life She was born in Islington, London, the eldest daughter of a wholesale dairy manager. She was educated privately and then first attended Birkbeck College and then University College, London where she graduated Bachelor of Arts, BA in 1917 with a British undergraduate degree classification#First-class honours, first and in 1921 one of the earliest PhDs. Career A full professor at the age of 34, Lillian Penson served as a member of the University of London senate for 20 years. She was a member of the University Court, Dean of the F ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Abolitionists
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British abolitionist movement started in the late 18th century when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery. James Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanitarian grounds, and arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause. Soon after Oglethorpe's death in 1785, Sharp and More united with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect. The Somersett case in 1772, in which a fugitive slave was freed with the judgement that slavery did not exist under English common law, helped launch the British movement to abolish slavery. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |