Parliament Abolishes the British Slave Trade
Twenty years of campaigning by Wilberforce and allies ends Britain's legal role in trafficking enslaved people
Quick facts
- Royal assent
- March 1807
- Trade made illegal from
- 1 May 1807
- Campaign length
- 20 years, led by William Wilberforce
- Full colonial emancipation
- 1838
What happened
William Wilberforce led a parliamentary campaign against Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade for two decades before Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act, which the National Archives records received royal assent in March 1807 and made the trade illegal from 1 May 1807. Royal Museums Greenwich states that legislation was finally passed in both the Commons and the Lords which brought an end to Britain's involvement in the trade, making it against the law for any British ship or British subject to trade in enslaved people. The Act ended the trade itself but did not end slavery in Britain's colonies, where enslaved people continued to be held; full emancipation across the British Empire was not achieved until 1838.
Why it matters
The 1807 Act ended Britain's direct legal participation in one of history's largest forced migrations, though it took another three decades of continued campaigning to achieve full emancipation for enslaved people already held in British colonies. Wilberforce's long parliamentary campaign became a model for later reform movements and cemented abolition as a defining episode in British political memory.
How we know
The Slave Trade Act 1807 survives as original parliamentary legislation, and the campaign leading to its passage is documented extensively in Parliamentary records, Wilberforce's own papers, and the records of abolition societies preserved by the National Archives and Royal Museums Greenwich.
Sources
- The National Archives (UK). Slavery and the British transatlantic slave trade (research guide) · Primary sourcenationalarchives.gov.uk · The domain "nationalarchives.gov.uk" is on our Primary source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Royal Museums Greenwich. How did the slave trade end in Britain? · Reputable sourcermg.co.uk · The domain "rmg.co.uk" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Related timelines
- The British Empire → · The slave trade and its abolition were central to the economics of the British Empire; see the British Empire timeline for the wider imperial context.