February 21, 2013

Sugar merchant takes stand against slave trading

Amazing bit of history via Slate: an English merchant publishes his reasons for refusing to sell sugar from the West Indies:

Merchant James Wright recounts his reasons: the “extreme Cruelties” of the slave trade, the changes the trade had wrought in African societies, and the dire conditions of the plantations of the “West-India Islands.” Wright had become convinced of his own complicity: “While I am a Dealer in that Article, which appears to be a principal Support of the Slave-Trade, I am encouraging Slavery.”

Read more: Sugar boycott