workingclasshistory:

On this day, 1 August 1834, slavery in the British Caribbean officially ended, and the 800,000 enslaved people owned by Britons were “freed”. However the government compensated the former owners, at taxpayers’ expense, for the loss of their “property”: paying them £20 million at the time. This sum constituted 40% of the total government budget that year, and was the largest ever state bailout until the 2009 bank bailout. Formerly enslaved people were also forced to work unpaid for 45 hours every week for their former masters for four years. Often this is referred to as the date the British Empire abolished slavery, but in fact the institution continued in other colonies for many years.
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