Compensation Payments to Slave Owners

The 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act provided for the payment of £20 million in compensation to slave-owners, financed by a British government loan. The loan was, in 1835, converted into a long-term government debt, repayable from the British Treasury; the debt was, in 2015, finally paid off, with the Treasury writing the final cheque of £17.7 million to the successors of the original lenders. The total cost of the compensation scheme, including interest, has been estimated at more than £17 billion in present-day terms. The compensation scheme was, as Catherine Hall has argued in Legacies of British Slavery (2014), the largest single transfer of wealth in nineteenth-century British history. It was also, in its design and its long-term consequences, one of the most important pieces of slavery-related legislation in the history of the British Empire.

The compensation scheme rested on a single legal principle: the British government recognised the enslaved as the property of the slave-owners, and the slave-owners as the holders of a property right that the British government was bound to compensate. The principle was a substantial victory for the planters’ lobby in Parliament. The principle was, in its application, the foundation of the modern slavery-compensation system that distributed £20 million to slave-owners in the 1830s, and that shaped the political economy of the British Caribbean for the next century.

The Structure of the Scheme

The 1833 Act provided for the appointment of a Slave Compensation Commission, with commissioners drawn from the principal slave-holding colonies. The Commission was chaired by Lord Cottenham, the Lord Chancellor. The Commission sat from 1834 to 1837, processing some 46,000 claims and distributing some £20 million. The Commission’s records, the Slave Compensation Commission Papers in the National Archives at Kew, are the documentary basis of the modern Legacies of British Slavery database.

The most important feature of the compensation scheme was the principle of “vested interest” — the principle that the British government should compensate the slave-owners for the loss of their property in the enslaved, but should not compensate the enslaved people themselves. The principle was, in its design, a recognition of the existing law. The principle was, in its operation, a substantial defeat for the principle of universal human rights. The 1833 Act provided for the compensation of the slave-owners but not for the compensation of the enslaved. The enslaved were, in the eyes of the law, property, and property could not be compensated for the loss of itself.

The Largest Recipients

The largest single recipient of compensation under the 1833 Act was the heirs of the Earl of Elgin, who received £26,292 for 1,643 enslaved people on five Jamaican estates. The second-largest single recipient was the heirs of Lord Mulgrave, who received £22,194 for 1,386 enslaved people on three Jamaican estates. The third-largest single recipient was John Gladstone (the father of the future Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone), who received £9,805 for 1,261 enslaved people on three Jamaican and one Demerara estate.

The compensation scheme was, in its distribution, a substantial redistribution of wealth from the British Treasury to the slave-owning interest. The 46,000 recipients included not only the West Indian planters but also the British mercantile, professional, and aristocratic families who had invested in West Indian property. As Nick Draper has shown in The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Owners, English Law and the £20 Million Compensation (2010), the compensation scheme distributed substantial sums to families whose descendants would, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, be among the wealthiest and most influential in the United Kingdom.

The most important recent scholarship on the compensation payments is the work of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London, established in 2013. The UCL Centre has published the Legacies of British Slavery database, which identifies the 46,000 slave-owners who received compensation under the 1833 Act. The database has been used by Catherine Hall, Nick Draper, and other historians to demonstrate how deeply implicated British mercantile, professional, and aristocratic families were in the slavery-compensation system. The findings of the UCL Centre have, since 2015, been the subject of sustained public discussion in the United Kingdom. The Guardian, the Financial Times, the BBC, and other British media outlets have published substantial series of articles based on the UCL Centre’s findings. The 2020 report on the connections between British slavery and the modern financial sector, and the 2023 report on the connections between British slavery and the British country house, have been particularly influential.

The Compensation Commission

The Slave Compensation Commission was, in its design, a substantial administrative innovation. The Commission processed some 46,000 claims in three years, and the Commission’s records are a remarkable documentary achievement. The Commission’s records have been digitised by the UCL Centre and are now freely available online. The records are the basis of the Legacies of British Slavery database, which is one of the most important scholarly resources on the history of British slavery.

The 1835 conversion of the British government loan into a long-term government debt was, in its financial design, a substantial innovation. The debt was, in 2015, finally paid off, 180 years after the original loan was taken out. The 2015 final payment of £17.7 million to the successors of the original lenders was the subject of substantial public discussion. As the journalist Jason Hickel and others have argued, the final payment was a striking example of the long-term persistence of the slavery-compensation system: 180 years after the original loan, the British government was still paying off the debt to the successors of the original lenders.

The Contemporary Debate

The compensation scheme has been the subject of a long and serious scholarly debate. The 2015 Guardian report on the 2015 final payment of the British government debt was the contemporary moment. The 2020 report by the UCL Centre on the connections between British slavery and the modern financial sector was the academic moment. The 2023 CARICOM Reparations Commission report, which argued for reparations from the British government to the Caribbean for the legacy of slavery, was the international moment.

The contemporary debate has focused, in particular, on the question of whether the British government should make any further reparations for slavery. The 2023 CARICOM Reparations Commission report argued for reparations in ten areas: public health, education, cultural deprivation, illiteracy, the historical debt, the devaluation of Caribbean currencies, the brain drain, the cost of natural disasters, the foreign debt, and the trade preferences. The British government has, to date, declined to make any such reparations. The 2006 statement by the British High Commissioner to Jamaica, that the British government had “no plans” to make further reparations, has been the operative policy.

A Primary Source: The 1833 Act on Compensation

The 1833 Act provided: “That the Sums of Money so to be paid by Way of Compensation as aforesaid shall be paid in such Manner, at such Times, and in such Proportions, as shall be directed by the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury; and that the same shall be charged upon and paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.” The passage is a striking example of the legal formalism of the British state. The “Compensation” was not, in the eyes of the law, a payment to the enslaved for the loss of their freedom; it was a payment to the slave-owners for the loss of their property. The distinction was the foundation of the British slavery-compensation system.

A Primary Source: The 1833 Parliamentary Debate

The 1833 parliamentary debate on the compensation scheme, in the House of Commons on 26 July 1833, was a substantial moment in the history of British political thought. Thomas Spring Rice, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, defended the scheme on the grounds that the British government had a duty to recognise the property rights of the slave-owners. The opposition, led by the Whigs and the Radicals, argued that the compensation was a substantial defeat for the principle of universal human rights. The debate was, in its substance, the political expression of the moral compromise of which the 1833 Act was the product.

The Afterlife of the Compensation Scheme

The compensation scheme has had a substantial afterlife. The 2015 final payment of the British government debt, 180 years after the original loan was taken out, was the contemporary moment. The 2020 report by the UCL Centre on the connections between British slavery and the modern financial sector was the academic moment. The 2023 CARICOM Reparations Commission report was the international moment. The contemporary debate has focused, in particular, on the question of whether the British government should make any further reparations for slavery. The British government has, to date, declined to make any such reparations.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the compensation scheme has been transformed since the 1940s. Eric Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery (1944), treated the compensation scheme as a political event, the consequence of the planters’ lobby in Parliament. Seymour Drescher, in Econocide (1977), challenged the Williams thesis. The most important recent contribution is the work of the UCL Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, and the books by Catherine Hall (Legacies of British Slavery, 2014) and Nick Draper (The Price of Emancipation, 2010). The unresolved question is the relative weight of the economic and the moral in the 1833 settlement; the consensus, as Madge Dresser has argued in Slavery and the British Country House (2013), is that the answer is a question of the political standpoint chosen.

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