1733

The Molasses Act attempted to stop the triangular trade between the Americas, Europe, and Africa trade fueled by West Indies slave trade requiring more slaves to harvest sugar destined to colonial ports to be converted into rum for shipment to England as a European trade commodity.

In Rhode Island, the Nantucket Quaker Elihu Coleman publishes A testimony against that anti-christian practice of making slaves of men. Although this does not circulate widely, it is nonetheless the first officially sanctioned antislavery text in the Quaker tradition.

A group of at least 150 enslaved Africans on the Danish Caribbean island of St. John take control of the colony’s sugar plantations.