Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807 — but not slavery itself

On 25 March 1807, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade received royal assent, making it illegal for any British ship or subject to trade in enslaved people. The ban took effect on 1 May 1807, ending Britain’s legal participation in a transatlantic traffic that had forcibly carried millions of African men, women and children across the ocean.

The Act capped a long parliamentary campaign associated with William Wilberforce and a wide abolitionist movement of petitions, boycotts and testimony from formerly enslaved people.

Ending the trade did not end slavery.

Those already held in Britain’s colonies remained enslaved. It would take the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 — and a transition period after it — before emancipation followed. The 1807 law nonetheless marked a turning point, and Britain went on to pressure other states to abandon their own slave trades.