Conclusion: ‘Do Justice to India’: Abolitionists and Indian Slavery, 1839–1843

Summary

In June 1840, abolitionists and their sympathisers from across Britain and America met at the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Having finally achieved full emancipation for slaves in the British colonies in August 1838, the anti-slavery movement turned its attention to ‘the universal Abolition of Slavery and the Slave trade’. To this end, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which sponsored the conference, had been formed in 1839. It would become one of the most enduring human rights organisations in history, and continues today as the Anti-Slavery Society. Around 400 British and Irish delegates attended the convention, with more than fifty others coming from around the world: from places as diverse as Canada, Mauritius, Haiti, Sierra Leone and especially the United States. Among their number was Professor William Adam, a former British missionary who had spent many years living in India. On the evening of 13 June, he delivered a lecture to the delegates in which he highlighted the continued existence of slavery in the EIC's Indian territories and called for renewed abolitionist efforts to complete the work of emancipation in the British Empire. ‘After the labour and sacrifices of the people of Great Britain’, he remarked, ‘by which it has been supposed by many, that the crime and curse of slavery had been for ever banished from the British dominions; it may well excite astonishment and indignation to learn the fact of the existence of slavery under the British government in India.’