LANCASTER BLACK HISTORY GROUP

Ann Morgan

In August 2020, Lancaster Quakers held a meeting to discern how we might be led to witness in relation to the Black Lives Matter Movement. Part of our Minute reads:

“We have explored what slavery and racism mean to us as individuals and how they have created a structural problem in our society in terms of prejudice and inequality. We acknowledge that these are deep seated issues the result of centuries of white privilege and the development of an economy based on exploitation.

We will develop as clear a picture as is possible of the past of Lancaster Quakers in relation to these matters. We will use this information to acknowledge our past.”

By 2020, I had been looking at the history of Lancaster Quakers involvement in slavery for about a year as an interested historian. There is a gallery at the Lancaster Maritime Museum devoted to 3 Lancaster Quakers and others who were involved which provides a brief overview. I was to go on to discover the involvement of others not mentioned there and from the Meeting’s archive to find that some of those involved undertook significant roles in the running of the Monthly (Area) as well as Preparative (Local) Meeting as Clerks, Elders or Overseers.

Initially I was profoundly shocked that Quakers were involved in the treatment of fellow human beings as commodities throughout the 18th century. I was applying my 21st century Quaker belief in equality to the situation, a testimony that was only really accepted as such in the second half of the 20th century by our church decision making body Britain Yearly Meeting. I needed to look with a different lens.

The database available with Lancaster University History Department identifies 9,500 people in Britain involved in investing in the transatlantic slave trade. I have identified 18 Lancaster Quaker merchants who were involved. In addition, two Quaker women had shares in their family slave-trading company. The records I have reviewed suggest that this group of Quakers shipped at least 3,916 enslaved people from West Africa to the West Indies (corresponding to the geographical area of the Caribbean) and America and one extended family owned 7 plantations.

It is clear that the enslavement of West African people and the colonisation of America and the Caribbean were felt to be absolutely necessary for a flourishing economy in that century. These Quakers were in accord with the prevailing economic ideology of the time, difficult as that is to accept. This fact does not excuse their involvement but goes some way to explaining it.

The root of this economic ideology goes back to 1325 and the arrival of Genoese traders in the Canaries followed by Portuguese and Spanish expeditions. A Papal Bull of 1403 classified the natives of the Canaries as infidels which made them liable for enslavement and to be traded. The Spanish set up a system there that was to provide a model for future slave trading. The Portuguese found a system of slavery well established by Africans further south and by 1450 a trade in enslaved Africans had become Portugal’s most profitable commerce with Africa. Conflict between Spain and Portugal settled by a treaty gave Portugal a sphere of influence in Sub-Saharan Africa that effectively cut Spain off from the main supply of African slaves. The treaty, drafted prior to the discover of the Americas in 1492, left both able to claim rights to the Americas. The Papacy acted as arbitrator and issued two new bulls in 1493 dividing the Atlantic world between the two Iberian powers. These gave a spiritual, political and legal justification to enslavement of infidels and colonisation of non-Christian countries. The opportunities that this offered were embraced by other countries including Britain and underpinned attitudes towards enslavement across 18th century British society. By that time the exploitation of people in West Africa as slaves and free labour had been developing for 200 years with the Papacy as arbitrator. It had become an entirely acceptable process to develop the new economies in the Caribbean and across the Americas both north and south.[1]  

What did George Fox, the founder of the Quaker Church, say about slavery I wondered? He had visited his stepdaughter on her plantation in Barbados in 1671 and witnessed enslaved people working on it. Whilst there he had not called for an end to slavery as a practice. He had urged Friends (Quakers) to provide time for the enslaved to worship; to provide them with a Christian education, to treat them well and to introduce them to Quakerism, to ensure they were law abiding. He did not however envisage a shared Meeting for Worship for the Quaker household and their enslaved.[2]  Fox was concerned with their spiritual lives, his overriding concern was that they, as all men and women, should be offered spiritual equality before God. I was astounded to find that George Fox did not condemn slavery, but, as Stuart Masters said in the Salter Lecture of 2020, found “a way to justify slavery in the form of a covenant slavery.”

This prompted me to begin to research what The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) nationally had said about slavery in the 18th century, only to find that London Yearly Meeting (the decision-making body of Quakers in Britain) had first spoken out against slavery in 1727:

“It is the sense of this meeting, that the importing of negros from their native country and relations by Friends, is not a commendable nor allowed practice, and is therefore censured by this meeting.”

23.24 of Quaker Faith & Practice

What prompted the discernment leading to this minute I wondered?

In 1688, Germantown Quaker Meeting in Philadelphia developed a petition to abolish slavery. It argued that every human, regardless of belief, colour, or ethnicity had rights that should not be violated. The document asked readers to put themselves in the position of slaves and to take the ethics of equality seriously. Francis Daniel Pastorius and three other Quakers, signed it on behalf of the Germantown Meeting.

It was the first protest against the enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in America and is now regarded as one of the first written public declarations of universal human rights.

Germantown Friends forwarded the petition to their Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings without either approving or rejecting it, it was said to be ‘too weighty a matter to be discerned’. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting minuted that they would send the petition to London Yearly Meeting without passing judgement on it. This would have contributed to any discernment about slavery being undertaken by Quakers in Britain but it clearly took time to be considered by a London Yearly Meeting.

Concern about Quaker’s involvement in slavery is minuted by London Yearly Meeting throughout the century, although at roughly 10 – 20 year intervals, so not with any real sense of urgency. In 1747, the importation of slaves is minuted as “not commendable or allowed.” In 1758, Friends are told they should avoid profits from dealing in ‘negros’. In 1761, Friends found to own slaves were to be disowned. By 1783, London Yearly Meeting was becoming more concerned. They called for the abolition of slavery throughout the world. Then, in 1784, there was a request to ‘labour’ with any Friends involved and report back to Yearly Meeting in 1785. In 1785, as so few replies had been received that the request was repeated.

In our archive, I have found no reference till 1785 to any investigation of Lancaster Friends’ involvement and even then, the ownership of a plantation appears to be excused in the Lancaster Preparative Meeting minute as it had been inherited!

None of the Lancaster Monthly Meeting Quakers involved were chastised or disowned for their involvement in slave trading or ownership of slaves. It was startling to find that in the 1790s, one Lancaster Friend acquired a 50% share in 3 more plantations to add to his portfolio. Some were disowned but for being out of unity by ‘marrying out’; repeatedly getting into debt or privateering with an armed vessel and Letter of Mark. Lancaster Meeting may have discussed the London Yearly Minutes but clearly ignored the minutes instruction to take action against those involved. Why we will never know and conjecture feels inappropriate.

Quaker involvement in the Abolition Movement from 1787 is what we are known for but this darker side of our history needs to be brought into the light and acknowledged.

The legacy of the racist attitudes developed in the 18th century remain to this day in the racism encountered by people of colour living in Britain. Finding that some 18th century Lancaster Quakers contributed to the development of those attitudes has not been easy.

In 2022 at Britain Yearly Meeting I presented this research and asked “what do love and justice require of us.” After deep discernment the meeting minuted that:

“…love and justice require us to tell the truth, as best we can, about historical and contemporary injustices.”

“…to consider deeply how the Society of Friends in Britain might make financial and other reparation for our part in the wrongs of the transatlantic slave trade…”

Extracts from Minute 27 Action: learning uncomfortable lessons and taking forward our witness

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REFERENCES

[1] Summarised from James Walvin, 2022. A World Transformed – Slavery in the Americas and the origins of global power, University of California Press Books.

[2] Katherine Gebner, 2019, Slavery in the Quaker World.https://www.friendsjournal.org/slavery-in-the-quaker-world/ (Accessed September 2022)

How to cite

Ann Morgan (2022) 18th century Lancaster Quakers involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Ownership of the Enslaved, Lancaster Slavery Family Trees (Blog), available at https://lancasterblackhistorygroup.com/2022/06/01/18th-century-lancaster-quakers-involvement-in-the-transatlantic-slave-trade-and-ownership-of-the-enslaved/