British Policy and Ottoman Slavery

Abstract

After the overthrow of colonial slavery, Britain engaged in a worldwide crusade and doubtless wanted to see both slavery and the slave trade cease to exist. However, official British policy was directed against the slave trade rather than against the institution itself in foreign countries. In this context, Britain’s policy with regard to the Ottoman Empire was to seek a bilateral agreement which would give the right of search and seizure to the British navy to suppress the slave trade. The history of British efforts to induce the Ottomans to take measures against the slave trade is fairly well-known, thanks to the work of Toledano. Thus, most of the measures against the slave trade by the Ottoman government were taken as a result of British diplomatic initiative. In a nutshell, these were the suppression of the slave trade in the Gulf area in 1847, the prohibition and discouragement of the white slave trade from the Georgian and Circassian coast in 1854, the prohibition of the black slave trade to Crete and Janina in 1855, the general prohibition of the black slave trade in 1857, and the signing of the Anglo-Ottoman slave-trade convention in 1880. As we shall see in Chapter 6 during our discussion of Ottoman policy, the British were also instrumental in the passing of a law against the black slave trade in 1889. Consequently, only two of the Ottoman measures — at least formally — were undertaken as a result of the Ottoman’s own initiative.