Regulated Slave Trade from the Evidence of Robert Stokes, Esq. (1851)

Regulated Slave Trade from the Evidence of Robert Stokes, Esq. (1851)

Author: Robert Stokes

Year: 1851

Stokes, Robert. Regulated Slave Trade from the Evidence of Robert Stokes, Esq.: Given Before the Select Committee of the House of Lords, in 1849; with a Plate Showing the Stowage of a British Slave Ship During the Regulated Slave Trade. 2nd ed., James Ridgway [London], 1851. 1. Historical Context This testimony was delivered in 1849, decades after Britain outlawed the slave trade (1807) and slavery itself (1833), yet when illegal slave trading still persisted, especially with Brazil. Stokes, a veteran abolitionist and official, testified to counter proposals that England should regulate or tolerate Brazil’s slave trade. The historical backdrop includes the humanitarian shift in British policy, the lingering horrors of slave ships, and British naval efforts to suppress transatlantic trafficking. 2. Core Issues Presented The text confronts the moral failure of the “regulated” slave trade, showing that even with parliamentary limits, the system inflicted severe physical and psychological abuse. It challenges the economic rationalization that self-interest would lead slave traders to treat captives humanely, arguing that profit incentives always led to overcrowding, disease, and death.