English Common Law, African Enslavement and Human Rights

This book is an expanded version of an essay by the author published in Texas Wesleyan Law Review "English Common Law, Slavery, and Human Rights" 13 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 659 (2007), which was developed from a paper presented by the author at a conference in Gloucester, England in 2006 "Too Pure an Air: Law and the Quest for Freedom, Justice, and Equality"; it discusses villeinage in England and the regal age of African history, with particular reference to Kemet (Ancient Egypt), its influence on Greek and Roman law and consequently on European and English Law; the legal aspects of "human chattel" African enslavement as it applied to English plantations in the Americas, with examples from Guyana, South America; the way in which English Common Law dealt with the issue of African enslavement when faced with court applications by Africans who sought emancipation on English soil; the African holocaust e.g. the Zong maritime genocide and insurance claim; the development of human rights in England and on the plantations in Guyana, notably the 1763 Berbice Revolutionary War of Independence led by Kofi against the Dutch colonists, during which an African revolutionary government was formed, believed to be the first of its kind in the region, preceding the American Revolutionary War of Independence (1775-1783), The French Revolution (1789-1802) and the Haitian Revolutionary War of Independence (1791-1804); the Demerara Uprising in 1823, led by Jack Gladstone, son of Quamina, during which 13,000 enslaved Africans sought unconditional emancipation from the British, greatly influencing the abolition cause in England; the Essequibo protest led by Damon in 1834 against the apprenticeship system which was introduced by law in most of the British colonies on emancipation; and the incorporation of several Articles of the European Convention on Human Rights in the domestic law of the UK in 2000.