The Slavery Abolition Act, also known as the Emancipation Act, was an act of Parliament that legally abolished slavery in most British colonies. The act received Royal Assent on August 28, 1833, and took effect the following year on August 1. In Eleanor Shearer's debut novel, River Sing Me Home, this event serves as a catalyst for the plot, which follows Rachel, a previously enslaved woman in Barbados, on a journey she undertakes after abolition to find her five children who were sold away from her.

The main aim of the act was to dismantle the plantation system in the Caribbean. The evolving international economy had rendered the sugar production industry in the region less efficient and profitable in recent years. There was also increasing pressure on the British government to end slavery in its colonies from both abolitionists in Britain and large-scale slave revolts on the islands. These included Bussa's Rebellion in Barbados in 1816, involving hundreds of enslaved people on...