Foreign Slave Trade Prohibition Act (1806). An Act To Prevent The Importation Of Slaves, By Any Of His Majesty's Subjects, Into Any Islands, Colonies, Plantations Or Territories Belonging To Any Foreign Sovereign, State, Or Power; And Also To Render More Effectual A Certain Order, Made By His Majesty In Council On The Fifteenth Day Of August One Thousand Eight Hundred And Five, For Prohibiting The Importation Of Slaves (Except In Certain Cases), Into Any Of The Settlements, Islands, Colonies, Or Plantations On The Continent Of America, Or In The West Indies, Which Have Been Surrendered To His Majesty's Arms During The Present War; And To Prevent The Fitting Out Of Foreign Slave Ships From British Ports. British Colonial Slave Trade. Great Britain. Parliament. Great Britain Colonial Slavery

Folio (11 inches). 46 George III, Chapter 52. Caption title, pages 365-378. Woodcut Royal coat of arms. Neatly extracted from a bound volume. Numerous Bills aimed at abolishing the British slave trade were tabled in parliament between 1790 and 1805, but all ended in failure. Undeterred, abolitionist lawmakers turned their attention to the lucrative foreign slave trade, and drafted a Bill to prevent the importation of slaves by British traders into territories belonging to foreign powers. Its reasoning was largely economical: by not allowing British slave traders to supply foreign plantations with slave labour, there would be less competition from produce grown on foreign plantations. At the time, a large part of the British slave trade was dependent on trading slaves to colonies of other countries on behalf of foreign clients. The proposed anti-slave trade legislation passed, and the Foreign Slave Trade Prohibition Act, 1806 had an immediate impact by eliminating between two-thirds and three-quarters of the foreign British slave trade business. The 1806 Act set the scene for abolition of the entire British slave trade the following year when the Slave Trade Abolition Act, 1807 was approved and became law.