Slave Trade Act 1807

Slave Trade Act 1807
Act of Parliament
Long titleAn Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
Citation47 Geo. 3 Sess. 1. c. 36
Introduced byWilliam Grenville
Territorial extent British Empire
Dates
Royal assent25 March 1807
Repealed6 August 1861
Other legislation
Repealed byStatute Law Revision Act 1861
Status: Repealed
Text of statute as originally enacted
William Wilberforce, the leader of the British campaign to abolish the slave trade.
Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville by Sir Thomas Lawrence
Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion created as part of anti-slavery campaign by Josiah Wedgwood, 1787.

The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,[1] was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not automatically emancipate those enslaved at the time, it encouraged British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades. It took effect on 1 May 1807, after 18 years of trying to pass an abolition bill.[2]

Many of the supporters thought the Act would lead to the end of slavery.[3] Slavery on English soil was unsupported in English law and that position was confirmed in Somerset's case in 1772, but it remained legal in most of the British Empire until the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hansard was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Parliament abolishes the slave trade". UK Parliament. Retrieved 18 March 2023.
  3. ^ "Mar 2, 1807: Congress abolishes the African slave trade", This Day in History.