AHC: Prolong and/or Intensify Transatlantic Slave Trade in 19th Century

[John Fredrick Parker]

An interesting, and tragic, bit of history to take note of -- while the UK and the USA abolished their nations’ participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade circa 1807-08, it took considerably longer to end elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, with Cuba continuing legal importation of slaves through to 1820 (and almost as many under the books to circa 1850), while Brazil did so formally to 1830 (and continuing to 1850).

With no PoDs prior to 1775 -- how could the Transatlantic Slave Trade have seen as many people as possible deported in chains from Africa during the 19th Century, and/or lasted for as long as possible?

 

[raharris1973]

1775 still gives you a chance for a PoD in the Anglosphere, with potential knock-on effects elsewhere.

If there is a last minute compromise preventing the American Revolution or fighting at Lexington and Concord and Breed's Hill, or ending the fighting soon afterward, via a quick British victory or a quick British concession of de facto independence or full independence the year it is declared, instead of the 8 years additional ordeal of the American Revolutionary War throughout the Middle and Southern Colonies, there were be substantially less tactical and opportunistic freeing of slaves for recruitment purposes by both side's armies, and less marination, on the northern partiot side, in the ideal of liberty and manumission being a good deed. Also, a resumption of unrestricted and peaceful martime trade between New England, old England, Africa, the Caribbean, and the southern colonies in the mid-to-late 1770s would reintegrate market ties between these areas that were economically disrupted, and partly impoverished by wars and blockades and raids. Interests in slave grown produce from the south, importing more slave hands from Africa, and profiting from shipping the slaves by New England and old England shippers could all increase in a positive feedback loop with a hasty restoration of peace.

From there, if knock-ons delay the next round of Anglo-French wars and then France's terminal fiscal condition and the French Revolution, you can delay the wars of the French revolution, and prevent the peninsular war and ruination of Spain entirely. Bourbon Spain can perfect its administration of Spanish America, and both the ideological liberty-based impetus for emancipation could be less, along with the practical, tactical impetus that the wars of independence caused with the demand of both independence rebels and the Spanish Crown for soldiers of all colors.

If you judge1775 too late to stop the American revolution and independence struggle, even just keeping the Bourbons out of it to cut off the French revolution or delaying it helps.

Or even with having American and French revolutions, avoiding the peninsular can take you a long way.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Let me ask a more general question - - let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the British Empire’s participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade continues for another quarter century, only formally ending in the early 1830’s.

Would you guys say that in itself is enough to Atlantic Slave Trade at scale continues de facto into the 1870’s, given it took over four decades after the UK/US Abolition of OTL to fully crack down? And if so, that large scale racial chattel slavery is still practiced in many parts of the Western Hemisphere at the dawn of the 20th Century?

*oh, the American Revolution is crushed TTL, so OTL’s USA is still part of British North America