By Eric Phillips

EMANCIPATION was the term used for the abolishment of slavery resulting from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which lasted from the 16th to 19th Centuries.
Captured Africans were forced to labour on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, cotton and sugar plantations, toil in gold and silver mines, in rice fields, the construction industry, timber for ships, or in houses to work as servants.
Slavery was the first ‘nuclear bomb’ the world has ever experienced. Slavery annihilated Africa, African culture, African family structure, African institutions, African commerce, African growth, African history, African pride and African economic development.
Slavery stole Africa’s light, and replaced it with darkness. The slave traders were, in order of scale: The Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch and Americans.
Slavery was officially abolished in most of the British Empire on August 1, 1834. This was legally done through THE SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT 1833 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. In practical terms, only slaves below the age of six were freed in the British colonies, as all former slaves over the age of six were re-designated as ‘apprentices’.
Emancipation was, therefore, legislated to have an “Apprenticeship Period” of four to six years before total freedom was achieved.

RIGHT OF COMPENSATION
The Emancipation Act also included the right of compensation for slave owners who would be losing their property. The amount of money to be spent on the compensation claims was set at “the Sum of Twenty Million Pounds Sterling”. Under the terms of the Act, the British government raised £20M to pay out in compensation for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves. In all, the government paid out over 40,000 separate awards. The £20M fund was 40% of the government’s total annual expenditure.
In the United States of America, slavery was abolished through THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION which was an executive order issued by United States President, Abraham Lincoln, on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War, using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states then in rebellion, thus applying to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the US at that time.
The Proclamation immediately freed 50,000 slaves, with nearly all the rest of the 3.1 million slaves being freed as Union armies advanced. The Proclamation did not compensate the owners; did not itself outlaw slavery; and did not make the ex-slaves, called freed-men, citizens.
The Portuguese, who were the initial creators of chattel slavery, and who started the slave trade in 1550, did not end slavery in Brazil until 1888. Brazil received 35 – 40% of captured Africans during the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade. Slavery was a mainstay of the Brazilian economy, especially in mining cotton and sugar cane production. There was never any formal Emancipation associated with the Arab Slave Trade from East Africa, which predated the Atlantic Slave Trade by 700 years.

ARAB SLAVE TRADE
It has been claimed that over 25 million Africans were enslaved during the Arab Slave, compared to 16 million for the Atlantic Slave Trade. The Arab Slave trade lasted for 11 centuries, starting in 650 AD.
Wrote one historian: “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab world was to exploit them for sexual purposes. One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than nine or ten years old, to create eunuchs who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created “eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in insanitary conditions. Gordon estimates that only one out of every ten boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery.”
Emancipation came about for two main reasons: Advocacy and slave rebellions, even though some would make the tainted argument that slavery had become unprofitable.
Quakers played a major role in the abolition movement against slavery. The Quakers were the first whites to denounce slavery in the American colonies and Europe. Quakers began denouncing slavery as early as 1688, when four German Quakers started protesting near Philadelphia. In 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society was founded in England. Members included Joseph Sturge, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Henry Brougham, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Elizabeth Heyrick, Mary Lloyd, Jane Smeal, Elizabeth Pease and Anne Knight.
After the formation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787, William Wilberforce led the cause of abolition through Parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire with the Slave Trade Act 1807.
He continued to campaign for the abolition of Slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
Emancipation ended centuries after chattel had been created through the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Today, in the former British colonies, August 1 is a national holiday. It is called Freedom Day in some of these countries. (Reprinted from the book, “Know Thyself A-Z)