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16th Century |
| 1502 |
First enslaved Africans in the Americas. |
| 1564-69 |
Sir John Hawkins, the first English slave trader, makes four voyages to Sierra Leone River, taking a total of 1200 Africans across the Atlantic to sell to the Spanish settlers in the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. |
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| 17th Century |
| 1607 |
Colony of Virginia is founded – the first permanent English settlement in North America. Virginia soon becomes one of the main areas for the arrival of enslaved Africans. |
| 1625 |
Barbados becomes an English Caribbean colony. |
| 1655 |
England seizes Jamaica from Spain. |
| 1672 |
The Royal African Company is formed to regulate the English slave trade. |
| 1698 |
Royal African Company monopoly is ended. The slave trade is opened officially to private traders. |
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| 18th Century |
| 1702-13 |
War of the Spanish Succession. In 1713 Britain gains all of St. Kitts, and the right (asiento) to import enslaved people to Spanish America is granted to the South Sea Company. |
| 1705 |
The Virginia General Assembly declares: 'All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves ...shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resist his master ...correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction...the master shall be free of all punishment’. |
| 1719 |
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is published. |
| 1720 |
The South Sea Bubble: South Sea Company share prices become enormously inflated before collapsing in September, resulting in a stock market crash. |
| 1729 |
Ignatius Sancho is born (probably on board a slave ship). |
| 1730-39 |
First Maroon War in Jamaica. British agree a treaty with the Maroon leader Cudjoe in 1739. |
| 1735-36 |
Tackey’s slave rebellion in Antigua. |
| 1745 |
Olaudah Equiano (author of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African) is born. |
| 1756-63 |
Seven Years War. Britain gains Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and Tobago. |
| 1759 |
William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, is born in Hull. |
| 1760 |
Slave rebellion in Jamaica led by Tacky. |
| 1760 |
Thomas Clarkson, the abolitionist, is born. |
| 1770s |
The abolitionist campaigner Granville Sharpe collects evidence showing that slavery is incompatible with English Law. |
| 1772 |
The Somerset case in London. Chief Justice Lord Mansfield rules that enslaved people in England cannot be forced to return to the West Indies. |
| 1772-73 |
John Stedman joins a military expedition to suppress a slave rebellion in Surinam, South America and is appalled by the inhumanity shown to Africans. In 1796 he publishes a full account of his experiences that becomes a classic of abolitionist literature. |
| 1775-83 |
American War of Independence. France seizes Grenada, Tobago and St Kitts from Britain but retains only Tobago after the Peace of Versailles. |
| 1778 |
The Knight vs Wedderburn legal case in Edinburgh rules that enslavement is incompatible with Scots law. |
| 1783 |
The Zong case: 131 Africans were thrown overboard from the slave ship Zong, but the case is heard as an insurance dispute not a murder trial. The case causes outrage and strengthens the abolition campaign. |
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