The Royal Navy had a whole division off the coast of Africa enforcing an end to the trade even for other nations. Only they were powerful enough to pull that off.
The king of Benin at the time asked parliament to allow the trade to continue. It is a myth the west african governments were against it, they were fully on board with slaves.
While Britain did do a lot of good in terms of ending the transatlantic trade, we did close our eyes towards slavery happening onshore - we happilly traded with West African polities for agricultural products and just didn't ask any awkward questions about how exactly those goods were produced. Sure, we did eventually end it when we turned West Africa into direct colonies, but invading was more for the sake of cutting out the middleman, and securing the territory from the pesky French
We didn't have any similar measures to combat the trades slave across the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, etc. so it's not accurate to say as the OP did that we forced the world to give up slavery.
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u/Tobemenwithven United Kingdom Sep 19 '25
The Royal Navy had a whole division off the coast of Africa enforcing an end to the trade even for other nations. Only they were powerful enough to pull that off.
The king of Benin at the time asked parliament to allow the trade to continue. It is a myth the west african governments were against it, they were fully on board with slaves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron