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160 Chapter 8 Toward the Eradication of the Overland Slave Trade? The British and French policies discussed in the last ¤ve chapters were celebrated by turn-of-the-century historians as the gradual unveiling of great philanthropic plans, of which the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in the¤rst decades of the nineteenth century had been the ¤rst major step.1 If we were to judge solely from the tone of their accounts and the text of their reports, the decrees in 1834 and 1848 abolishing slavery and the extension of emancipation policies to the Gold Coast Protectorate in 1874 would seem to be consecutive rungs on a ladder reaching toward the total elimination of slavery in Senegal and the Gold Coast. This notion is, however, entirely fallacious. The settlements on the Gold Coast were excluded from Britain’s emancipatory policies between 1834 and 1874. The French emancipation of 1848 did take effect in the minuscule colony of Senegal; however, even the politicized slaves of St. Louis and Gorée simply became clients in a less formalized but still dependent relationship with their former masters. Perhaps the extension of British hegemony over the Gold Coast in 1874 was expected by some to transform slave owning, but the watered-down measure eventually handed to the colonial administration by the Colonial Of¤ce resulted for most slaves only in a gradual reevaluation of dependent status rather than massive liberations. Meanwhile, resistance by slave owners in Senegal was so effective that the French authorities there did not even attempt to emulate the Gold Coast policies after the disastrous failure of a prototype policy in Waalo in the 1880s. You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Toward the Eradication of the Overland Slave Trade? 161 In fact, as the nineteenth century drew to a close, it became apparent that even the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade had been limited both in its scope and in its results. Although the last ships smuggling slaves to the New World appear to have sailed in the 1860s, thousands of individuals in the African interior were still kidnapped, captured in wars, or otherwise enslaved. Not only did the still vigorous caravans of the trans-Saharan slave trade pass through (and, more rarely, originate from) Senegal, but in both regions captives still made the terrible and often fatal journey to urban and rural slave markets. Increasingly, however, they were sold before the horri¤ed eyes of a growing number of missionaries and civilian, rather than military, administrators. Thus, as the century came to a close, the French and British both came under renewed agitation de¤nitively to end the institution of slave trading within their possessions. Their dissimilar responses to this pressure would indicate both a departure from and a continuation of the policies of tolerance toward slavery that had exempli¤ed European colonialism in West Africa in the preceding century. Why Target the Slave Trade? The long-distance slave trade into the Senegal and Gold Coast regions was perceived by European observers as a traditional “custom,” existing since “time immemorial .”2 However, although early European travelers to the Gold Coast had noted the high proportion of slaves from the interior, a comparable proportion of the region’s slaves had been acquired locally. Similarly, in Senegal, prior to the Atlantic slave trade, the commerce in slaves had generally run south to north rather than from the interior to the coast. During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, however, the long-distance slave trade had shifted radically and de¤nitively in both regions. In the Gold Coast, well-positioned states such as those of the Fante and, for a period, Akwamu, had gained power as “the brokers of those of the interior who supply slaves.”3 Similarly, during this period the Senegalese coastal entrepôts traf¤cked largely in slaves from Gaajaga and other regions in the interior.4 The abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and the subsequent development of legitimate commerce on the coast had reinforced the demand for slaves from the interior, a region usually outside direct colonial control, both for use as ¤eld laborers and as domestic slaves. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, concurrent with increasing liberalization in Europe and growing colonial responsibilities in Senegal and the Gold Coast, this trade...

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