City and River 1820 -1840 at Museum of London Docklands

This gallery covers the period 1800 1840. This relatively short period of time was a watershed for the docks, and London as a whole. It was characterised by powerful economic, technological and social change. The wide variety of displays in the gallery bares testament to this. The West India docks were established to accommodate trade from the West Indies. This was built on the back of thousands of slaves forcefully, and horrifically, transferred from Africa to the Caribbean. The slave trade was abolished in Britain in 1807. It was abolished in all British colonies in 1834.