Staffordshire? pottery unattributed earthenware sugar box

This rare sugar box and cover bears the inscription ' East India Sugar not made by Slaves'. During the Abolition campaign this referred to the fact that sugar from East Indian plantations was produced by free labourers. The East India Company promoted its sugar specifically as an alternative to slave-produced West Indies sugar. Instead of slaves, the East India Company used Javanese and Indian free labourers in the Far East. These workers were not well paid, nor worked in particularly enlightened conditions, and so it depends on one's point of view how one sees this slogan. In the context of its time it was enlightened, in that anything which encouraged consumers to think about the source of their goods (a rather more novel concept then than today) was worthwhile, and anything which helped the progress of abolition on its way was to be welcomed. However, the slogan was certainly not motivated entirely by altruism, and the lives of the free workers were not ideal, though it could also be argued that neither were the lives of any manual workers of the time!

The people of Norfolk apparently reacted with enthusiasm to the sugar campaign and Norwich was specially noted for its refusal to use West Indies sugar. There were several noted Abolitionists in Norwich, many from Quaker families, including Amelia Opie, Elizabeth Fry and her brother John Joseph Gurney.