Catalogue Number
NMLH.1992.917
Object Name
Shackle
Title
HAITI WARRANTED WROUGHT. PLOVEITT [P. LOVEITT]
Place
Africa; America: North America; Caribbean & West Indies; Haiti
People
enslaved people
Description
These shackles were used on enslaved people so that they could not escape. It is believed that these came from the country Haiti. Haiti was the first country to eradicate slavery, a result of the Haitian Revolution - an uprising of self-liberated people against French colonial rule in what was then known as Saint-Domingue. The revolt lasted from 1791 until 1804, when the Haitians won freedom and independence. In 1791, in the quest for liberty and inspired by the French Revolution and the prinicples of the rights of man, armies of enslaved people were established under Touissaint Louverture - a free man who had been born enslaved. They fought for over a decade, initially winning emancipation in 1794 and fighting off Napoleon's forces in 1802.
Haiti was first colonised by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and was ruled by the Spanish until around 1697, when the island was divided between the Spanish and French. The French colonists created sugar and coffee plantations, which were worked by vast numbers of enslaved people who had been forcibly transported from Africa in part of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, also known as the 'Triangle Trade'.
Slave trading across the Atlantic was conducted for hundreds of years, with tens of thousands of ships transporting men, women and children from their home countries in Africa to the Americas. Britain was one of the leading powers in the slave trade, and one of the first English slavers, John Hawkins, sold enslaved people in St Domingo - a port on the Eastern side of the island (now the Dominican Republic)- on his first voyage. British involvement continued to grow, until it became the most dominant country in the trade for over 150 years.
Britain abolished the slave trade within its empire in 1807 - over a decade after emancipation in Haiti - and would not abolish slavery itself until 1833. Until this time, cruel punishments such as the use of these shackles continued.
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