Abolition of Slavery in Britain and the Issue of Compensation to Slaveholders
Poet involved
What happened
The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery in the British Empire but controversially awarded £20 million in compensation to slaveholders — not the enslaved — a state-administered loss adjustment that has been extensively debated as a moral obscenity.
Literary impact
The abolitionist poetry of Cowper, Blake, and Clare preceded the Act; afterwards, the injustice of compensating enslavers became a persistent theme in Victorian moral discourse, shaping the political poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and later postcolonial writers grappling with this history.
Source: Wikipedia
