Interrogates the development of the world's first international courts of humanitarian justice and the subsequent "liberation" of nearly two hundred thousand Africans in the nineteenth century.
In 1807, Britain and the United States passed legislation limiting and ultimately prohibiting the transoceanic slave trade. As world powers negotiated anti-slave-trade treaties thereafter, British, Portuguese, Spanish, Brazilian,French, and US authorities seized ships suspected of illegal slave trading, raided slave barracoons, and detained newly landed slaves. The judicial processes in a network of the world's first international courts of humanitarian justice not only resulted in the "liberation" of nearly two hundred thousand people but also generated an extensive archive of documents. Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896 makes use of theserecords to illuminate the fates of former slaves, many of whom were released from bondage only to be conscripted into extended periods of indentured servitude.
Essays in this collection explore a range of topics relatedto those often referred to as "Liberated Africans"-a designation that, the authors show, should be met with skepticism. Contributors share an emphasis on the human consequences for Africans of the abolitionist legislation. The collection is deeply comparative, looking at conditions in British colonies such as Sierra Leone, the Gambia, and the Cape Colony as well as slave-plantation economies such as Brazil, Cuba, and Mauritius. A groundbreaking intervention in the study of slavery, abolition, and emancipation, this volume will be welcomed by scholars, students, and all who care about the global legacy of slavery.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: "Liberated Africans" and Early International Courts of Humanitarian Effort - Henry B. Lovejoy
Introduction: "Liberated Africans" and Early International Courts of Humanitarian Effort - Richard Anderson
Part One. Origins of Liberated Africans
Precedents: The "Captured Negroes" of Tortola, 1807-22 - Sean Kelly
The Impact of Liberated African "Disposal" Policies in Early Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone - Suzanne Schwarz
Visualizing Abolition: Mapping the Suppression of the African Slave Trade, 1810s-90s - Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
Visualizing Abolition: Mapping the Suppression of the African Slave Trade, 1810s-90s - Katelyn E. Ziegler
Part Two. Sierra Leone
Liberated African "Children" in Sierra Leone: Colonial Classifications of "Child" and "Childhood," 1808-19 - Érika Melek Delgado
New Insights on Liberated Africans: The 1831 Freetown Census - Allen M. Howard
Ali Eisami's Enslavement in Jihad and Emancipation as a Liberated African - Paul Lovejoy
Part Three. Caribbean
The Misfortune of Liberated Africans in Colonial Cuba, 1824-76 - Inés Roldán de Montaud
Household Labor and Sexual Coercion: Reconstructing Women's Experience of African Recaptive Settlement - Laura Rosanne Adderley
Gavino of the Lucumi Nation: David Turnbull and the Liberated Africans of Havana - Randy J. Sparks
Part Four. Lusophone Atlantic
British Antislavery Diplomacy and Liberated African Rights as an International Issue - Maeve Ryan
Producing "Liberated" Africans in Mid-nineteenth Century Angola - José C. Curto
The Paquete de Benguela: Illegal Slave Trade and the Liberated Africans in Rio de Janeiro - Nielson Rosa Bezerra
Part Five. Liberated Africans in Global Perspective
Liberated Africans in the Indian Ocean World - Matthew S. Hopper
Liberated Africans at the Cape: Some Reconsiderations - Chris Saunders
Liberated African Settlers on St. Helena - Andrew Pearson
"Fugitive Liberated Congoes": Recaptive Youth and the Rejection of Liberian Apprenticeships, 1858-61 - Sharla M. Fett
Part Six. Resettlements
"Perpetual Expatriation": Forced Migration and Liberated African Apprenticeship in the Gambia - Kyle Prochnow
"Promoting the Industry of Liberated Africans" in British Honduras, 1824-41 - Tim Soriano
Diaspora Consciousness, Historical Memory and Culture in Liberated African Villages in Grenada, 1850s-2014 - Shantel George
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
