Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896 ed. by Richard Anderson and Henry B. Lovejoy (review)

Following parliament's abolition of the British Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thousands of slaves were rescued from slave ships and transformed into "liberated Africans." Britain's abolition of the slave trade sustained the belief that the British empire was a liberal one, which has been continuously celebrated in the recent nostalgic accounts of the British empire and its legacies. Henry Lovejoy and Richard Anderson's Liberated Africans challenges this rose-tinted view of British abolition. Through a close analysis of a wide range of primary sources from traditional and digital archives, the authors of the various contributions successfully trace the "human consequences for the supposed beneficiaries of this campaign…the immediate and complex human impact of abolition" from 1807 to 1896 (4). They thoroughly examine the lived experiences of liberated African men, women, and children in various colonial settings relating to the British, Spanish and Portuguese empire as well as Brazil and Liberia.

From the outset, the authors caution us that the term "liberated Africans" should not be taken for granted, "especially surrounding any implications associated with freedom" (3). The authors' remark draws the reader's attention to the central argument of the collection; that slave trade suppression did not lead to "a state of total freedom"(3). Most Africans who were "freed" were forced to work as apprentices for a period of seven to fourteen years, were recruited or forcibly enlisted in the armed forces or the navy, and faced involuntary migrations to the British West Indies and other places (4-5).

Liberated Africans is organized geographically and thematically into six parts, which support the authors' major argument. Part one, "Origins of Liberated Africans," focuses on the earliest policies that were developed in Tortola and Sierra Leone, which defined the legal status of liberated Africans. It sheds light as well on liberated Africans' responses to their new situation following the abolition of the slave trade. In this respect, Suzanne Schwarz shows that liberated Africans resisted "disposal" policies in early nineteenth-century Sierra Leone. The author argues persuasively that "running away was a common response among Africans released in different jurisdictions" (47). Those who remained in the colony were not merely passive victims of the post-abolition circumstances (50).

Part two considers Sierra Leone. It pays close attention to the experience of liberated African children, the 1831 Freetown census, and the case of the liberated African, Ali Eisami of Borno or William Harding. Part three addresses the experiences of liberation in the British Caribbean colonies of Antigua, the Bahamas, and Tortola. The cases of liberated girls and young women and the emancipado of Gavino of the Lucumi offer further persuasive evidence on the limits of post slavery freedom. Part four, "Lusophone Atlantic," considers British actions against the slave trade in Brazil and Cuba. Interestingly, Maeve Ryan notes that the "high profile examples" of British abolitionists Robert Madden and David Turnbull and the diplomatic crisis of the "Christie Affair in Brazil in Brazil in the early 1860s, ought not to give the misleading impression that group and individual level liberated African rights are a significant priority of nineteenth-century British foreign policy even at the expense of good relations with rival colonial powers" (216). In contrast to the anti-slavery humanitarian rhetoric, Britain's actions on the ground were characterized by "adherence to process, and marked unwillingness to sacrifice wider interests by forcing treaty partners' compliance to secure the freedom of every liberated African" (216). The part deals also with the status of libertos in mid-nineteenth-century Angola and the treatment of liberated Africans in Rio de Janeiro.

Part five, "Liberated Africans in Global Perspective," shifts the focus to the Indian Ocean world with chapters on liberated Africans in East Africa and the Cape. The final part "Resettlements" concentrates on those Africans who were liberated in one place and forcibly relocated elsewhere such as the Gambia, British Honduras and Granada...