Was America the first country to outlaw slavery?

No – England was in 1833.

No, England outlawed slavery and the slave trade in 1833 well before the USA did.

That is one of the main reasons that England did not give the Confederacy more aid during the American civil war. It is also the primary reason Lincoln issued the Emmancipation Proclamation when he did.

Well, England isn’t a very large country though… but yes. It was the first to outlaw slavery.

No, France was, in 1794, though Napoleon reinstated it in 1802. But, the 8 years really helped promote the idea of total abolition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline
First Persian Empire, 550 BCE

@MilkyWay England and France, or that matter, loomed large in influence at that time so it was a big deal.

Actually England made slavery illeagal on the 6th of April 2010. It’s a long story mainly due to the hilariously complicated nature of English (British) law.

@Lightlyseared I had actually thought it was around then too but then when I looked it up, it said 1833. Not disputing, I will just have to research what the vagaries of the process were.

@janbb I think the 1833 act prohibited the sale and transportation of slaves, not actual ownership. But if you can’t buy slaves or move them, you have effectively banned slavery without using so many words.

@ragingloli
I guess that describes it best.

Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807, and the practice in 1833.

Not the first to do so, however the massive guilt trip the nation was experiencing at the time led them to basically ban slavery in the world, and it was the task of the most powerful force on the globe at the time, the Royal Navy, to try and prevent the trade in slaves.

By the way, I find your suggestion that America might ever have somehow been at the global forefront of human rights absolutely hilarious.

As I understand it though it may not have been formally outlawed throughout Europe there was nothing even remotely approaching level of slave dependency in the United States. They just didn’t depend on it economically. I’ve gotten the impression that though they were still plenty racist in Europe they thought themselves morally superior to American countries where slavery was the foundation of most agriculture. They saw it as a barbaric relic.

Yes, it was repeatedly judged that there was no provision for the ownership of another human being in English Common Law, making slavery (in the sense New Worlders would have it) de facto illegal, as false imprisonment or something similar.

Very contradictory, these judgements were made at the same time slaves were being bought and sold, by Englishmen, on English territory…

In fact, most people were quite disgusted by the trade in slaves, and the slave-based economy of some of the colonies, but it was extremely difficult to outlaw, because so many rich and powerful people were making mint – directly or indirectly – from it. So basically, for the general population, it was “out of sight, out of mind.” That said, the ethics of how the British made money and ran their Empire were continually debated by the intelligentsia and parliament, and occasionally in the justice system.

Most at home strongly opposed it on moral grounds, but little could be done, for fear of alienating the colonists. America was renowned for being “Land of the Free” because of how little the British government interfered with their societies (compared to most other nations of the time, Britain really was a bastion of personal freedom).

For the colonists, that meant freedom to use slave labour, and to steal land from Indians, the fundamental drivers of the local economy in many parts. After the British banned expansion into Indian territory (amongst imposing other things), the colonists rebelled, to make their own “Land of the Free”, and promptly set about exterminating the Indians and conquering the entire continent.

It took a lot of moral pressure, and a civil war, for the colonists to give up their freedom to own slaves, and they still yet haven’t given up their freedom to unreservedly exploit all that lies within reach.

Wait a minute. The English made a ton of money in the slave trade and many cities in England such as Bristol thrived on it before it was outlawed. And there were those in the United States who opposed slavery on moral grounds as well. Your analysis seems a little one-sided. The British Empire was surely as immoral when it was the empire du jour as America is in its day.