Emancipation

Definition

The act of freeing people from slavery, whether by law, war or individual action. Legal emancipation did not automatically bring equal rights: in the British Empire, The National Archives records that the 1833 Act first turned enslaved people into apprentice labourers, and that apprenticeship ended in 1838. Freed people often faced poverty, coercive labour and exclusion from land and political rights. See also: abolition, apprenticeship system, manumission, and the guide Abolition Movements and the End of the Trade.