Abolition
The Anti-Slavery movement in Seychelles led by William Wilberforce grew in power in the early 19th century. Even though slave trading by this time has been outlawed, settlers in Seychelles were permitted slaves and eventually the number of slaves outnumbered white settlers by ten to one. An 1827 census in Seychelles revealed that the population consisted of 6,638 slaves and only 685 "masters" or those who were free. Slavery was finally abolished in 1835. The civil administrator at the time, Mylius recalled that on Emancipation Day on February 11 the freed slaves responded with "peaceable demonstrations of joy".
The slave owners, particularly the plantation owners expressed a degree of contempt for the new law, asking Mylius to impose a poll tax which would require the slaves to work to raise money to pay it. As a result the moitie system was implemented, a system where workers were allocated land to farm in return for three days of solid work a week. Labor conditions in Seychelles were particularly uneasy following the abolition of slavery but by the late 1840s, ships filled with hundreds of liberated Africans freed by Arabic slave traders in Zanzibar saw a major migration to Seychelles to fill in the labor market. Many of the migrants began work on coconut plantations.
Read more about this topic: Slavery In Seychelles
Famous quotes containing the word abolition:
“It was a marvel, an enigma in abolition latitudes, that the slaves did not rise en-masse, at the beginning of hostilities.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)
“... this nation is rotten at the heart, and ... nothing but the most tremendous blows with the sledge-hammer of abolition truth, could ever have broken the false rest which we had taken up for ourselves on the very brink of ruin.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)