The abolition of the Atlantic slave trade by the British government in 1807 was prompted by a confluence of geopolitical developments and concerns about reproduction. Shifts in the Atlantic world sugar economy had led to a glut on the British sugar market, and boosting production was therefore less of an economic concern than safeguarding reproduction. After 1807, demographic and financial calculations regarding the future of the plantation system intensified with the institution of a registry system designed to track slave populations. By 1823, British politicians, both abolitionists and West Indian planters, agreed to further radical reform: they hoped that encouraging Christian marital mores would finally bring about economically beneficial population growth. Acts legalizing Afro-Caribbean marriage were subsequently passed throughout the Caribbean. The outcome of this new emphasis on family life was ironic: as slavery gave way to wage labor, the costs of reproduction were shifted to Afro-Caribbean parents.
For Love alone
