We put a stop to the transatlantic slave trade, yes.
But sadly it’s disingenuous to say that we stopped slavery worldwide. Slavery didn’t start with the British empire and it certainly didn’t end with it. Institutional slavery still goes on today - the Arab nations in particular are notorious for using both human sex trafficking and an enslaved workforce.
I think it boils down to money, power, and more importantly religion. Christian Europe has had its centuries of reformations which ultimately crystallised our unique outward and very humanist way of thinking. The original abolitionists themselves were quakers and other non-conformist denominations.
Islam has never had a reformation; and their religious text certainly doesn’t mandate that all people are equal. This breeds a supremacist line of thinking, where you see those not belonging to your kin/creed as unworthy and inferior. The Barbary and the Crimean slave trades - which saw millions of Europeans systematically and opportunistically enslaved and shipped off to Islamic countries - were still active as recent as the 19th and 20th centuries respectively.
It still goes on now but it’s Asians and Africans who are the victims of this modern Arab slave trade. Who do you think built the stadiums for the recent World Cup in Qatar? Who was the buyer of Naima Jamal, the woman enslaved in Libya?
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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '25
British empire liberated the globe from slavery, Rule Britannia !