“Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves; Britons, never, never, never, shall be slaves.” So ran the popular eighteenth-century, nationalistic, freedom song. The people of Britain were proud of their liberties and would fight to uphold them against the hated French enemy. But would slaves ever be Britons? Would slaves ever be free? These questions were very real because during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries hundreds of thousands of black, African slaves were transported to the British West Indian colonies, where the majority labored on sugar plantations.