Artful Dodger:

>  The British left the slave trade kicking and screaming.

Is there a country that didn't?  I think all countries that had slaves were very reluctant to give up the slave trade.  In the end slavery was a very inefficient economic system.  Capitalism superseded slavery because slavery is not very profitable.  People might think that free labour is profitable but in the long run it fails because if people have no salaries, can they buy anything?  Karl Marx (I hate quoting the guy) pointed out in Capital that capitalism required as a prerequisite a freely mobile labour force.  The British parliament passed the Slavery Trade Act of 1807 to stop the trading of slaves by British merchant ships, and then they passed the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 to completely abolish slavery in the British Empire.

Another interesting thing was slavery in France.  They abolished slavery in 1894, then reinstated slavery in 1804.  They finally abolished slavery in 1848.  They had to do it twice!

Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962, kind of late for one of our favorite alies.

Then some countries never abolished slavery and still have slaves.  In Congo the Pigmy people are kept as slaves in the homes of the wealthy.  The Congolese call it a "time-honoured tradition".  Some countries like Sudan still have a thriving slave trade.  There is also sexual slavery in many countries.  It is estimated that today as many as 29 million people are slaves.

I think we should impose capital punishment on slave traders, and make it a crime against humanity.  But then, we should do the same with illegal weapons traficking too.