AHC: Pro-Slavery Britain & *ACW

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
The challenge is to make Britain a pro-slavery (you can interpret that term however you like) nation at least until the *ACW. You can choose the POD, but the US must still experience a North-South civil war mostly over the issue of slavery. Good luck.
 
would butterflying away William Wilberforce be enough?

No. It's just about possible to imagine a POD whereby Britain supports the CSA for cynical reasons of realpolitik, but because Britain itself is supportive of slavery? No way. To achieve that you'd need a POD far enough in the past that the ARW probably gets butterflied away, never mind the ACW.
 
I think the definition of slavery in England can be legally reworded to make it easier to ignore slavery especially when one doesn't have to see it. In a colony or an ally for example.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
I think the definition of slavery in England can be legally reworded to make it easier to ignore slavery especially when one doesn't have to see it. In a colony or an ally for example.

I've wanted a way to make the sugar lobby stronger so some form of slavery is kept in the Caribbean colonies, but the sugar lobby was apparently pretty damn strong OTL and fought tooth and nail to keep what they had, which seems to be why it took as long as it did OTL.
 

Deleted member 14881

I've wanted a way to make the sugar lobby stronger so some form of slavery is kept in the Caribbean colonies, but the sugar lobby was apparently pretty damn strong OTL and fought tooth and nail to keep what they had, which seems to be why it took as long as it did OTL.

maybe they recive more sugar colonies in war?
 
I've wanted a way to make the sugar lobby stronger so some form of slavery is kept in the Caribbean colonies, but the sugar lobby was apparently pretty damn strong OTL and fought tooth and nail to keep what they had, which seems to be why it took as long as it did OTL.
I've been playing around before with various PoD's involving a weakened abolitionist movement not aligning such a strong coalition against the sugar lobby, and I think that's your best bet. Perhaps Wilberforce dies; perhaps political winds mean he's not in such a good position; perhaps worse Napoleonic Wars cause the British government to see abolitionist propaganda as too revolutionary... There're any number of ways to weaken the abolitionist movement. It might only hold things back a decade or two, but that provides plenty of room for butterflies (especially with the American South growing in militancy.)
 
800s - Arab geographer Al-Yaqubi reports that African tribes sell their own people without justification or cause of war. Africans are then exported to other Muslim nation starting an international slave trade.
Middle Ages - Feudalism exists allowing lords in Europe to enslave their own people.
1444 - Portuguese slavers capture 225 people in west Africa to force into labour. The pope allows and promote European slavery of anyone who is not Catholic.
1450 - The Number of Enslaved Africans in Portugal grows to 1,000
1619 - The first slaves were brought to the English colonies by the Dutch.
1650 - There are over a million and a third African slaves from Angola alone alone. Spain introduces slaves to the Canary and Balearic islands.
1663 - British merchants join the African slave trade.
1679 - Hebeas Corpus is not universally ratified in to law, there are some exceptions made.
1688 - Aphra Behn passes away before her novel Oroonoko Or, The Royal Slave could be written.
c1700 - Laws pass that make punishments for bond-servants no different than impressed sailors (they are universally harsh)
18th c. - The triangle trade route was developed.
1743 - John Newton avoids the ferries when visiting some friends and is not pressed into service. He would not go on to become a preacher nor speak out about the horrors of the slave trade.
1765 - Granville Sharp attempts to take an owner to court for assaulting a slave, the owner filed a counter suit that Sharp stole his property (the slave). The case is dismissed because there was no formal agreement that Jonathan Strong was a slave.
1770 - 15,000 slaves reside in England alone. Several thousand more in Scotland. The Methodist movement is suppressed for not being Anglican, the Wesley brothers flee the country, losing a major supporter of abolition.
1771 - James Somersett escaped from his master but was recaptured.
1772 - Granville Sharp attempts to secure the release of Somersett under Hebeas Corpus but fails to do so due to loopholes.

OR

1772 - Granville Sharp secures the release of Somersett under Hebeas Corpus, a landmark case begins where he quotes a case 200 years earlier where Queen Elizabeth said "England was too pure an air for slaves to breathe in." He fails his case setting a president in England to permit slavery in statutes.
1776 - Adam Smith states in his book The Wealth of Nations that slave labour is preferable over free labour because it keeps expenses down, thus maximizing profits.
1787 - The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade is established but it faces an uphill battle.
1789 - Thomas Clarkson sails to revolutionary France to include abolition in their charter of liberties. They fail to comply. Clarkson's health fails dramatically and he is forced to return to England, he dies on the return voyage before he could recruit a young William Wilberforce to his cause.
1796 - John Graves Simcoe attempts to make Canada the first British colony to abolish slavery, but an armed revolt by plantation owners forces him to back down.
1799 - The French Revolution come to an end and the Revolutionary Wars begin. The focus of parliament is shifted on the growing threat rather than social issues.
1815 - The Revolutionary Wars come to an end and abolitionists head to Vienna to influence the treaty, with the absence of several key figures ITTL, their clauses fail to be added and the politicians there split France up into Orleans, Brittany, Normandy and France so they could never join forces and take over Europe again. English Radicals like William Blake and Thomas Paine say that after the wars, their social justice movements never picked up steam again and despite their petitions, they were forgotten.
1823 - An uprising in slaves in Dutch Guiana sees many deaths, abolitionist John Smith is hanged for his involvement in the rebellion giving abolitionists a bad reputation.
1832 - Jamaica secedes from Great Britain and joins the united states in order to deregulate trade, it was a successful venture. Great Britain increases the slave trade to their other holdings and give incentives to trade with their colonies instead to discourage any more secessions and to try and economically strangle Jamaica.
1840 - The World Antislavery convention had to be held in private for fear of violence against them.
1861 - The South Carolina secession crisis was nearly averted but with the exile of Quakers and Methodist and their diaspora growing ever larger, they pressed the issue and it blew up. The grandson of Charles Wesley wrote to Britain for them to "keep up their good fight". The war rages for about a year, but then popular interest turns and the federal forces stand down. The north sued for a white peace, to many down the line the war is declared inconclusive.
1890 - Zanzibar becomes a British holding, politicians there took advantage of the preexisting slave structure set up by the Muslims and the export of slaves for the colonies skyrocketed.
 
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The challenge is to make Britain a pro-slavery (you can interpret that term however you like) nation at least until the *ACW. You can choose the POD, but the US must still experience a North-South civil war mostly over the issue of slavery. Good luck.

It might take a pretty substantial POD, TBH; anti-slavery sentiment was already beginning to develop in Britain even before the Revolutionary War got started.
 
It might take a pretty substantial POD, TBH; anti-slavery sentiment was already beginning to develop in Britain even before the Revolutionary War got started.

Not at all, have a larger exodus of Methodists and Quakers to America maybe even have the Wesley brothers flee there for safety. You remove some of the early voices who inspired the later voices and the domino stack remains. Also sending abolitionists to America would make them stronger overseas and weaker in the UK.
 
Not at all, have a larger exodus of Methodists and Quakers to America maybe even have the Wesley brothers flee there for safety. You remove some of the early voices who inspired the later voices and the domino stack remains. Also sending abolitionists to America would make them stronger overseas and weaker in the UK.

I guess that makes some sense, IMO. :)
 
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