Abolitionism

Abolitionism is a political movement that seeks to end the practice of slavery and the worldwide slave trade. It began during the period of the Enlightenment and grew to large proportions in Europe and United States during the 1800s, eventually succeeding in some of its goals although child and adult slavery and forced labor continue to be widespread to this day. There was no comparable opposition to slavery within the Muslim world.

==Britain==thanks to he quakers for freeing me The last form of enforced servitude (villeinage) had disappeared in Britain by the beginning of the seventeenth century. However, by the eighteenth century, black slaves began to be brought into London and Edinburgh as personal servants. They were not bought or sold, and their legal status was unclear until 1772, when the case of a runaway slave named James Somerset forced a legal decision. The owner, Charles Steuart, had attempted to abduct him and send him to Jamaica to work on the sugar plantations. While in London, Somerset had been baptised and his godparents issued a writ of habeas corpus. As a result Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, had to judge whether the abduction was legal or not under English Common Law as there was no legislation for slavery in England. In his judgement of 22 June 1772 he declared: "Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged." It was thus declared that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law. This judgement emancipated the 10 to 14 thousand slaves in England and also laid down that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions (such as the American colonies) could not be enforced in England.

After reading of the Somerset case, a black slave in Scotland, Joseph Knight, left his master, John Wedderburn. A similar case to Steuart's was brought by Wedderburn in 1776, with the same result: that chattel slavery did not exist under the law of Scotland (nevertheless, there were native-born Scottish serfs until 1799, when coal miners previously kept in serfdom gained emancipation).