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Since 1772, it had been legally recognised that individuals could not be slaves in Britain. Despite this, in the later eighteenth century, Britain dominated the international trade in slaves. Between 1782 and 1807, it is estimated that Britain traded in over 1,000,000 human lives.There was little public discontent in Britain concerning the traffic before the early nineteenth century but, in 1807, the slave trade was abolished within the British Empire.A concerted campaign, led by William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, then followed and, in 1833, slavery itself was abolished within the British Empire (though not within British protectorates, such as Sierra Leone). £20,000,000 in compensation had to be paid to the plantation owners in the Caribbean.
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