Moral and economic motives in British abolition

Did Britain fight the slave trade partly to weaken rivals and protect its own economic position?

Yes. In this account, abolition combined genuine moral pressure with economic and strategic benefits arising from several motives.

British abolition cannot be reduced to purely moral or purely strategic motives in this account. The economic argument is that wage labourers buy goods in ways enslaved people generally cannot, giving industrial interests a reason to favour free labour and larger consumer markets. Suppressing the international slave trade also pressured other states to follow Britain's policy and made continued slave systems more costly and unstable. Later discussion stresses that parliamentary abolitionists and industrial supporters could sincerely hold moral convictions while recognising those material advantages. A policy can be ethically important and simultaneously useful to national economic and diplomatic power.