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Slavery was also a form of power relations, so slaves by and large did not have an equal voice in articulating a view of their condition. Their actions, however, spoke loudly of their innermost thoughts and represented their reflections on, and reactions to, the world in which they found themselves. Columbus thought the people he encountered in the Caribbean in 1492 might make good slaves, as he seemed to infer in his log of October 10, 1492, when he wrote: "They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think that they can easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases Our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highness when I depart, in order that they may learn our language" (Columbus, p. 77).

The transatlantic slave trade formally began in 1518, when King Charles I of Spain sanctioned the direct importation of Africans to his colonies in the Americas, finally acknowledging that the potential supply of indigenous slaves was inadequate to maintain the economic viability of his fledgling overseas colonies. Shortly thereafter, the Portuguese started to import Africans to Brazil to create a plantation society and establish an Atlantic bulwark against other Europeans intruding along the coast. As the demand for labor grew, the number of Africans imported as slaves increased, and manual labor throughout the Americas eventually became virtually synonymous with the enslavement of Africans. The transatlantic slave trade became a lucrative international enterprise, and by the time it ended, around 1870, more than ten million Africans had been forcibly transported and made slaves in the Americas. Many millions more died in Africa or at sea in transit to the Americas.

The slave trade responded to an interrelated series of factors operating across Africa, at the supply side, and also in the Americas, at the market level. The trade can be divided into four phases, strongly influenced by the development of colonialism throughout the hemisphere. In the first phase, lasting to about 1620, the Americas were the domain of the Spanish and the Portuguese. These Iberian powers introduced about 125,000 slaves to the Americas, with some 75,000 (or 27 percent of African slave exports of the period) to the Spanish colonies, and about 50,000 (18 percent of the trade) to Brazil. This was a relatively small flow of about 1,000 slaves per year, most of whom were supplied from Portuguese forts along the West African coast. But slavery in the towns, farms, and mines of the Americas then employed less African slaves (about 45 percent of the total Atlantic trade) than in the tropical African islands of Fernando Po and Sâo Tomé, Europe proper, or the islands of the Madeiras, Cape Verdes, and the Azores (about 55 percent of trade). Indeed, the small island of Sâo Tomé alone received more than 76,000 African slaves during the period, exceeding the entire American market.

The period between 1701 and 1810 represented the maturation of the slave system in the Americas. This third phase witnessed the apogee of both the transatlantic slave trade and the system of American slavery. Altogether, nearly six million Africans—amounting to nearly 60 percent of the entire transatlantic slave trade—arrived in American ports. Brazil continued to be the dominant recipient country, accounting for nearly two million Africans, or 31 percent, of the trade during this period. The British Caribbean plantations (mainly on Barbados and Jamaica) received almost a million and a half slaves, accounting for 23 percent of the trade. The French Antilles (mainly Saint-Domingue on western Hispaniola, Martinique, and Guadeloupe) imported almost as many, accounting for 22 percent of the trade. The Spanish Caribbean (mainly Cuba) imported more than 500,000 slaves, or 9.6 percent of the trade. The Dutch Caribbean accounted for nearly 8 percent of the trade, but most of those slaves were re-exported to other areas of the New World. The British North American colonies imported slightly more than 300,000, or slightly less than 6 percent of the trade, while the small Danish colonies of the Caribbean bought about 25,000 slaves, a rather minuscule proportion of the slaves sold in the Americas during this period.

The attack on the slave trade paralleled growing attacks on the system of slavery throughout the Americas. The selfdirected abolition from below that occurred in Saint-Domingue in 1793 was not repeated elsewhere, however. Instead, a combination of internal and external events eventually determined the course of abolition throughout the region. The issue of slavery became a part of the struggle for political independence for the mainland Spanish American colonies. Chile (1823), Mexico, and the new Central America States (1824), abolished slavery immediately after their wars of independence from Spain. The British government abolished slavery throughout its empire in 1834, effectively ending the institution in 1838. Uruguay legally emancipated its few remaining slaves in 1842. The French government ended slavery in the French Antilles in 1848. Colombia effectively abolished slavery in 1851, with Ecuador following in 1852, Argentina in 1853, and Peru and Venezuela in 1854. The United States of America abolished slavery after the U.S. Civil War in 1865. Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico in 1873 and in Cuba in 1886. Finally, Brazil abolished slavery in 1888.

Opposition to SlaveryThe eighteenth century formed the watershed in the system of American slavery. Although individuals, and even groups such as the Quakers, had always opposed slavery and the slave trade, general disapproval to the system gained strength during the later eighteenth century, primarily due to the growth of the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on rationality, and British Evangelical Protestantism. Opposition to slavery became increasingly more coordinated in England, and it eventually had a profound impact, with the abolition of the English slave trade in 1807. Before that, prodded by Granville Sharp and other abolitionists, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield declared slavery illegal in Great Britain in 1772, giving enormous impetus to the British antislavery movement. The British legal ruling, in time, freed about 15,000 slaves who were then in Britain with their colonial masters, who estimated their "property loss" at approximately £700,000.

In 1776 the British philosopher and economist Adam Smith declared in his classic study The Wealth of Nations that the system of slavery represented an uneconomical use of land and resources, since slaves cost more to maintain than free workers. By the 1780s the British Parliament was considering a series of bills dealing with the legality of the slave trade, and several of the recently independent former North American colonies—then part of the United States of America—began to abolish slavery within their local jurisdictions. After 1808—when Great Britain and the United States legally abolished their component of the transatlantic slave trade—the English initiated a campaign to end all slave trading across the Atlantic, and to replace slave trading within Africa with other forms of legal trade. Through a series of outright bribes, diplomatic pressure, and naval blockades, the trade gradually came to an end around 1870.

Slavery Scholarship and the Place of the Slave in the WorldThe topic of slavery has attracted the attention of a very large number of writers. Before the 1950s, writers tended to view slavery as a monolithic institution. Then, as now, there was much discussion of slavery, and less of the slaves themselves. Standard influential American studies, such as U. B. Phillips's American Negro Slavery (1918) and Life and Labor in the Old South (1929), Kenneth M. Stampp's The Peculiar Institution (1956), and Stanley Elkins' Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959), misleadingly described slaves as passive participants to their own cruel denigration and outrageous exploitation. In Phillips's world, everyone was sublimely happy. In the world of Stampp and Elkins, they were not happy—but neither could they help themselves. Apparently neither Stampp nor Elkins read much outside their narrow field—or if they did, they discounted it. Certainly the then available scholarship of Eric Williams, C. L. R. James, or Elsa V. Goveia is not evident in their works. Herbert Aptheker in American Negro Slave Revolts (1943), Gunnar Myrdal in An American Dilemma (1944), and Frank Tannenbaum in Slave and Citizen (1946) had tried, in those three intellectually stimulating works, to modify the overall picture, but without much success.

Then, in 1956, Goveia published an outstanding book, Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century. As Francisco Scarano notes of Goveia's work: "Goveia's sensitive and profound study of slave society in the British Leewards … is doubtless one of the great works of Caribbean history in any language. The Guyanese historian revealed the ways in which, in a racialized slave society, the imperative of slave subordination permeated all contexts of social interaction, from legal system to education and from religion to leisure. Everything was predicated on the violence necessary to maintain slavocratic order" (Scarano, p. 260). Goveia's approach inculcated the slaves with agency, a fundamental quality of which earlier writers seemed incredibly unaware. Slaves continuously acted in, as well as reacted to, the world in which they existed.

But slavery was not only attacked from above. At the same time that European governments contemplated administrative measures against slavery and the slave trade, the implacable opposition of the enslaved in the overseas colonies increased the overall costs of maintaining the system of slavery. Slave revolts, conspiracies, and rumors of revolts engendered widespread fear among owners and administrators. Small bands of runaway slaves formed stable black communities, legally recognized by their imperial powers in difficult geographical locations such as Esmeraldas in Ecuador, the Colombian coastal areas, Palmares in Brazil, and in the impenetrable mountains of Jamaica. Then, in 1791, the slaves of Saint-Domingue/Haiti, taking their cue somewhat from the French Revolution, staged a successful revolt under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) and a number of other local leaders. The radical French commissioner in the colony, Léger Félicité Sonthonax (1763–1813) saw the futility of trying to defeat the local revolt and declared the emancipation of all slaves and their immediate admission to full citizenship (1793), a move ratified the following year by

French colonies. Napoleon Bonaparte revoked the decree of emancipation in 1802, but he failed to make it stick in Saint-Domingue, where the former slaves and their free colored allies declared the independence of Haiti—the second free state in the Americas—in 1804.The fourth and final phase of the transatlantic trade lasted from about 1810 to 1870. During that phase approximately two million Africans were sold as slaves in a greatly reduced area of the Americas. With its trade legal until 1850, Brazil imported some 1,145,400 Africans, or about 60 percent of all slaves sold in the Americas after 1810. The Spanish Antilles—mainly Cuba and Puerto Rico—imported more than 600,000 Africans (32 percent), the great majority of them illegally introduced to Cuba after an Anglo-Spanish treaty to abolish the Spanish

he revolutionary government in Paris, which extended the emancipation to all

1919 Slavery became a major international concern from the day in 1807 when the British outlawed their own slave trade. Once this step was taken it was clearly in Britain's interest to get rival colonial and maritime powers to follow suit in order to prevent this lucrative trade from passing into foreign hands and providing foreign colonies with needed manpower. In 1815 the British tried to get other powers to outlaw it and even to establish a permanent committee to monitor progress. However, their rivals saw this as an attack on their commerce and on their colonies. They would only agree to append a declaration to the Treaty of Vienna proclaiming that the slave trade was 'repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality'. This was an important step in the direction of the present human rights movement, but it had no practical value. There followed a long and bitter campaign, during which, by bribery and cajolery, the British secured a network of treaties giving the Royal Navy unique powers to search and seize suspected slavers flying the flags of other nations. 1 As the result of this campaign, the British came to view themselves as the leaders of an international 'crusade' against slavery, the burden of which they had borne almost alone. British statesmen recognized that the cause was popular with the electorate and that Parliament would sanction expenditure and high handed action against foreign countries if these were presented as anti

became

lavery became a major international concern from the day in 1807 when the British outlawed their own slave trade. Once this step was taken it was clearly in Britain's interest to get rival colonial and maritime powers to follow suit in order to prevent this lucrative trade from passing into foreign hands and providing foreign colonies with needed manpower. In 1815 the British tried to get other powers to outlaw it and even to establish a permanent committee to monitor progress. However, their rivals saw this as an attack on their commerce and on their colonies. They would only agree to append a declaration to the Treaty of Vienna proclaiming that the slave trade was 'repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality'. This was an important step in the direction of the present human rights movement, but it had no practical value. There followed a long and bitter campaign, during which, by bribery and cajolery, the British secured a network of treaties giving the Royal Navy unique powers to search and seize suspected slavers flying the flags of other nations.As the result of this campaign, the British came to view themselves as the leaders of an international 'crusade' against slavery, the burden of which they had borne almost alone. British statesmen recognized that the cause was popular with the electorate and that Parliament would sanction expenditure and high handed action against foreign countries if these were presented as antiSLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE AS INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

a major international concern from the day in 1807 when the British outlawed their own slave trade. Once this step was taken it was clearly in Britain's interest to get rival colonial and maritime powers to follow suit in order to prevent this lucrative trade from passing into foreign hands and providing foreign colonies with needed manpower. In 1815 the British tried to get other powers to outlaw it and even to establish a permanent committee to monitor progress. However, their rivals saw this as an attack on their commerce and on their colonies. They would only agree to append a declaration to the Treaty of Vienna proclaiming that the slave trade was 'repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality'. This was an important step in the direction of the present human rights movement, but it had no practical value. There followed a long and bitter campaign, during which, by bribery and cajolery, the British secured a network of treaties giving the Royal Navy unique powers to search and seize suspected slavers flying the flags of other nations.As the result of this campaign, the British came to view themselves as the leaders of an international 'crusade' against slavery, the burden of which they had borne almost alone. British statesmen recognized that the cause was popular with the electorate and that Parliament would sanction expenditure and high handed action against foreign countries if these were presented as antiSLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE AS INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

Though slavery in Africa dates back to the periods of ancient Egypt, Roman imperialism in North Africa, and the epoch of ceremonial kingship of ancient empires of Sudan, it became a terrible experience only during the external slave trade.

The operation of the abolition ordinance was stagnant and erratic until the late 1920s, when pressure from foreign anti-slavery societies led to revisions, making it more viable as an instrument of legal status abolition. First, there was the Slave-dealing Abolition Ordinance of 1928 that strengthened the previous Ordinance. 27 Second, the 'Reafflrmation of the Abolition of Slavery Ordinance, 1930' clearly stated that 'slavery in any form whatsoever was unlawful and that the legal status of slavery did not exist

The Ordinance was to apply to the Gold Coast Colony and the 'Protected Territories'. It also stated that henceforth slaves who entered the Protectorate and the Colony would be automatically free. 20 Thus Strahan's policy sought modification of servile institutions rather than their elimination. 21

During the first decade of the twentieth century, the number of European and African administrators increased, and the work of the DCs became purely administrative, devoid of the legal work that had encumbered it in the past. By 1905, there were Detective Branches at Accra, Cape Coast, and Sekondi, all coastal towns. Accra had the highest number of detectives with the most superior ranks. This is perhaps reflected on the statistics for crime for 1905, which recorded four slave-dealing cases in Accra and one at Cape Coast." Reinforced by additional personnel, provincial courts began to assume responsibility for administering the abolition ordinance. However, this did not bring any marked change in their administration

hus British resources were stretched to the limit in the Gold Coast. Shortage of colonial officials limited the geographical extent of British administration and led to a policy of conciliation towards the Protectorate states, thereby facilitating slavery there. 56 It was also the chief reason that enforcement of abolition laws was confined to the Colony until the early decades of the twentieth century. 57 Until the 1880s, the colonial government tacitly supported the Basel Mission in its struggle to emancipate slaves and pawns in Akyem Abuakwa. 58 Colonial policy was to 'maintain political peace in the country at any price'. 59 There was a similar British policy in the Praso and Voltaic regions. 60 This made it possible for slave-dealers to continue to bring slaves into the Gold Coast from the interior ports of trade well into the early twentieth century." Allowing slavery to thrive in the Protectorate permitted it to survive in the Colony.

One major gap in the historiography is how Africans responded to the ordinance and its impact on the effectiveness of the abolition. Indeed, Africans responded ingeniously to the operation of the abolition ordinance. Slave-holders and dealers adopted innovative measures to counter the abolition ordinance, hence making it difficult for colonial officials to detect enslaved persons. 98 Most cases of enslavement were brought to the attention of colonial officials through African informers or by the slaves themselv

Communal religious practices and sanctions also served the interests of slave dealers and holders. 107 Slaves were made to swear oaths and 'drink fetish', ritually binding them to stay and refrain from reporting their servile status to colonial officials. For example, in 1875 a holder took a freed slave to 'King Tackie for the purpose of administering fetish oath so as to declare that she will no longer go back to the government'. 108 This bound the slave to the holder, as slaves feared that a breach of the oath or the 'fetish' would be catastrophic. Again, how prevalent this was is difficult to gauge. However, the 'fetish' and oathing sanctions have been powerful agencies of social and political control throughout Ghanaian history.

Black intellectuals and activists in the Americas rejected the idea of slavery existing in Ethiopia: Ethiopia, the beacon of Pan-Africanism and the archetype of many black identities could not be a slave society. 83 Sla very must belong only to European imperialism and the American plantations, and not to this territory, royalty, and lineage enshrined in the Bible. Following that logic, Ethiopia, a state that promoted and hosted the foundation of the Organization of African Unity in 1963, could not be associated with issues of servitude and exclusion. Even in the 1980s, when a military junta ruled the Ethiopian state, the Därg gave much attention to the tyranny of the former regime, and radically transformed the system of land tenure, but the complexities of local slaving societies were overshadowed by the “national question” and the liberation of cultures from the feudal order. Class distinctions as well as political afffijiliations obstructed the discussion on slavery. Ethiopian intellectuals, who have so often been at the forefront of social and political change, seem to be still refusing the idea that slavery

there are still estimated 50 million people across the world in slavery today, forced to work for little or no pay, trafficked with deceptive promises of jobs, relationships, and greener pastures only to find themselves trapped in lions’ dens, forced to sell their bodies for sex, working as drugs transporter bags, having their body organs ‘stolen’ and sold, debt bondages, and many other debasing and inhuman activities.

Reflecting on the situation in Tanzania, both slavery aftermaths and modern slavery still haunt our society. Modern forms of slavery can be witnessed in factories, farms, small businesses and side hustles, due to inexistence of effective labour protection policies and regulations.

There are also incidences whereby young girls have been transported from neighbouring countries like Malawi and Zambia for the same.

The historical bigger picture of slavery is that of foreign nationals with guns in our country, but deep within our communities, slavery in its modern forms is rampant and has mature roots.

gleefully

cowrie

y been published.6 It begins at the end of the eighteenth century with the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the French revolutionary wars, the Industrial Revolution and Britain's official conversion to anti-slavery-and ends with the European revol

During the past twenty years historians have given a great deal of increasingly sophisticated attention to the rich and complex history of African slavery in Brazil-in all periods (from its beginnings early in the sixteenth century to its termination at the end of the nineteenth centur

a 'proletarian necess

865. Moreover, slavery still persisted, indeed flourished, in Brazil and Cuba and in the United States (although confined, of course, by this time to the South). Indeed, as a result of the expansion of the frontier in all these remaining slave states during the first half of the nineteenth century, slavery existed over a larger area geographically than at any time in its history. And more Africans and Afro-Americans, some six million, were held in captivity; that is to say, more than twice as many as at the time of the 'first emancipation' in Haiti in 179

r mula

nomic imp

traffic. The first step in this direction was the incorporation of the Imperial British East Africa Company in i888, which was quickly followed by the transfer of a large portion of the Zanzibar mainland dominions to the German Government, by the establishment of a British Protectorate in Uganda, and by the extension of European administration throughout the central regions of the African Continent

are two names which stand out by themselves-that of Sir John Kirk, who laboured in Zanzibar from 1868 to 1887, and that of the late Sir Lloyd Mathews, who for over twenty-five years occupied

earlier anti-slavery enactments was due.

A Treaty was signed by Seyyid Barghash bin Said in 1873 providing that the export of slaves from the African mainland, whether designed for transport from one part of His Highness's dominions to another or for conveyance to foreign ports, should entirely

cease. It was also agreed that the main slave-market in Zanzibar (on the site of which the English Cathedral now stands), as well as any other public markets in the Sultanate for the buying or selling of imported slaves, should be closed, and this measure was carried into effect in the course of the same year.

In 1876 a Proclamation was issued by Seyyid Barghash abolishing slavery on the Benadir Coast and in the district of Kismayu, which were then administered by His Highness. Two further Proclamations published the same year made it an offence to bring slaves from the interior and sell them at the Coast for conveyance to Pemba, and forbade the fitting out of slave caravans by* His Highness's subjects. In 1885 Seyyid Barghash issued a Proclamation confirming his previous orders and prohibiting all exportation of slaves from his dominions.

Zanzibar, the Sultan himself being influenced by t

the

It appears, then, that Frere's promises to the mission were not immediately fulfille

diction. Th

of Zanzibar was technically sovereign in the coastal area, although in practice, even before 1888, some of his subjects did not necessarily accept his auth

e coast. Kirk also wrote to the Society condemning the mission for harbouring fugitives, but he indicated that the blame lay with Binns not Streeter. In the end the mission was forced to release most of the fugitives, leaving only those who had belonged to the

There was less conflict with the missions in the years 1881-2 during which time Price had rejoined the missions as superintendent, replacing Streeter, whose management, especially his method of carrying out discipline, had led the Society to concur with Kirk that he needed to be replaced

t is clear that personal disagreements between missionaries themselves made their task of maintaining a common mission policy on many issues difficult.

in a few

to gav, they cannot go awar too fast; for, even here, my Lady Dedlock has been bored to death. * Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing is new to mv Lruiy, under tiio worn-out heavens. On last .Sunday, when poor wretches were gay—within tho walls, playing with

family; above all. of my Lady, whom the world jfdmires; hut if my lady would only ho “a little more tree,” not quite so cold and distant. Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be moro affable. “ Tis almost a pity.” Mrs. Rouncewell adds—only “almost," because it borders on impiety to suppose that anything could bo bettor than it is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedloek affairs ; “that my lady has no family. lishe had had a daughter now, a grown young lady, to interest her, I think sho would have had tho only kind of excellence she wants.” “ Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother ?” says Watt; who has been home and come back again, ho is such a good grandson. TO BE CONTINUED. MADAME ALBONI. Wo have already announced tho arrival in this country of Madame Alboni, tho famous European songstress, who is to fill a prominent place in musical comments and criticism, in America for tho next few months.— Our reader willho glad to learn who she is, what sho has done, and what are her pretensions ; and wo copy for their benefit tho following from tho .Vein York Times: Marietta Alboni was horn in Cesena, in 1820, of respectablo parentage. Her scholastic education was necessarily limited, as at tho age of eleven she was placed under the musical pupilage of the famous master Bagioli, one of the first musicians of tho day, from whom sho acquired tho rudiments of her art. For some timo sho enjoyed tho instruction of Rossini, at the Bologna Lycum, and eventually made her debut, about ton years sinco, at the great Theatre of La Seala, inMilan. Her success was brilliant, and was conformed by a run of four successive seasons. Following tho usual path of artistic merit, sho next commenced a series of engagements at Vienna, whence, after the most triumphant reception, she was carried off to >St. Petersburg by the# Czar.— 1ho famo of tho cantatrice, established at Vienna, was fully confirmed at the Russian capital, and given to Europe as a fixed fact. She turned her face Praiseward, giving concerts and entertainments of tho rarest excellence as sho pursued a circuitous journey through Germany, and was hailed at the centre of European taste with unqualified admiration. With tho exception of occasional engagements in London, and a recent journey to Brussels, sho has made her head-quarters at the French capital for tho past two years. One of tho scenes of her residence in Paris was a grand fete at Versailles, at which sho and the Prince President were the ruling spirits. Signorini Alboni is not a handsome woman: hut lias what is better—an untainted reputation, and a character for many virtues, among which liberality is not the least. She brings her train Signors Rove re and Sangoivanni, a tenor and baritone, accustomed to support her admirable voice. The voice of this celebrated cantatrice is, in musical parlance, contralto. Itisofwonderful compass, embracing, with perfect ease, the extreme upper and lower notes, and is managed with a skid and grace only surpassed by its rich melody and power. Though assigned to the contralto parts, at Her Majesty s Theatre, during tho great season of the World's Exhibition, she was the reigning attraction ot that aristocratic establishment. American Influence in Europe. —“ I onnnot help taking a very warm and eager interestin tho fortunes of yourpeople. There is nothing, and tltero never was anything so grand and so promising as the condition and prospects of your country; and nothing I conceive morecertain than that in severity years after this itscondition w illbe by furthe most important element in tho history of Europe. Itis very provoking that wo cannot live to seo it; hut it is very plain to me that the French revolution, or rather perhaps tho continued operation of tho causes which produced that revolution, has laid the foundations all over Europe, of an inextinguishable and fatal struggle between popular rights ami ancient establishments—between democracy and tyranny—between legitimacy and representative government, which may involve the world in sanguinary conflicts for fifty years, and may also end, after all, in the establishment of a brutal and military despotism fora hundred more, hutmust end. I think, in tho triumph of reason over prejudice and tho infinite amelioration of all politics, and the elevation of all national character. Now I cannot help thinking that the example of America, and tho influence and power which sho will every year be more and more able to exert, willhave a most potent and incalculably beneficial effect, both in shortening this conflict, in rendering it less sanguinary, and in insuring and accelerating its happy termination. Itake it for granted that America, either as ono or as many states, will always remain free, and consequently prosperous and powerful. She will naturally take the side of liberty, therefore. in the great European contest—and w hile her growing power and means of compulsion willintimidate i'.s opponents, the example not onlv of the practicability, but of the emin nt advantages, ofa system of perfect freedom, and a disdain and objuration of all prijudiees, cannot fail to incline the great body of all intelligent communities fur its voluntary adoption.’— Jahil J<j '»ry. It 5s surprising our statesmen »'o not s.*e. that is in tJw ir power to give mi ttlrnmt imineufeurabtu increase to the power *>t our nation in Eurep. by simply establishing Cheap f > o:(agc on the Ocean. — linh'fJt ndent. From the Iwlepeodent. I WISH 1 COLLD DU SOBETBIM. ** llare tou read Inclo Tom’s Cabin said a lady to her friend, a few days since. “Yes,” was the reply, “and O, how it makes me long to do something. Men ought to read it. AU mm ought to read it—they can do something.” Rut cannot woman do something? True she cannot nor does she wish to go to the ballot-box. but lies there not a power kick of this? Was not Hannibaleveran enemy to the Homan name?— When only nine years old, his father made hi m take a solemn oath never to he at peace with Rome. Isnot slavery afar greater foe toour country than was [hunt to the Carthaginian nation? And 0 mothers, as we wish our country free ofher greatest enemy, a« we wish bur children to enjoy the blessings of life, liberty, and happiness, temporal and eternal, let us follow the example of liainilcar, and early and parseveringly teach our Abucrtisemcnts. < ASH IVUD I7OR rags, canvas*, Kentucky bagging anil wood, delivered at the (iene»«e Paper Mills, Rochester, .\. V. October 30th, IB.il. PAPER HAMiIVG

Johnson offers one of the clearest explications of Christianity's uncontestable role in the formulation of a dehumanizing racist discourse, particularly as it pertains to the American context—and globally for that matter.

blockade against the ‘Arab slave trade,’ an amorphous non-state enemy.

but they all cited the same duty to promote civilisation in Africa and end the slave trad

The blockade occurred in the interim between the two great international conferences of the Scramble for Africa, the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference and the 1889–1890 Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference.

he Brussels Conference has received attention from historians as either the culmination of the abolitionist movement or an early step in the development of modern humanitarian diplomacy

chauvinists

Suzanne Miers, for instance, argued that the Brussels Conference was driven by political interests hiding behind humanitarian goals, going to far as to describe the intersection of antislavery activism and politics as the ‘antislavery game.

antislavery for political goals

Anglo-German alliance to lead humanitarianism and the colonisation of Afric

The blockade failed to achieve both its short-term and its long-term aims. It provoked anger among pro-imperial interests in both the United Kingdom and Germany.

The blockade exacerbated international conflicts rather than relieving them.

The blockade was the most direct international action against the slave trade at the height of humanitarian activism around the issue but has largely been left out of narratives about 1880s antislavery. It demonstrates a different approach to antislavery than was pursued at either conference.

The individual national action of the 1890s overtook other methods of humanitarianism in empire.

It combined claims that Africans needed European help with attacks on Islam as antimodern

Descriptions of slavery inevitably discussed an ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’ slave trade (often conflating racial and religious labels)

Africans appear in their rhetoric only as objects for European subjects to save.

They also downplayed Europe’s slave-trading past and glossed over the inconsistent implementation of antislavery policies.

East Africa had become the most dynamic region for the slave trade in the middle of the nineteenth century with the abolition of the slave trade in the Americas and British antislavery efforts in West Africa.

an increase in the use of slavery for production.

The essay traces the German debate of slavery in East Africa with a special interest in how it was connected to perceptions of Christianity and Islam. It demonstrates that the vicissitudes of the debate about slavery were not so much governed by the issue of slavery itself as by entangled strategic interests in the colonial nexus of politics, economy, and religion.

There were different classes of slaves and slave occupations, from plantation serfdom and concubinage to house servants, tax collectors, and skilled merchants, who managed to retain part of their profits and build up some property.

this led to considerable social mobility, for example, in the case of Sheikh Ramiya of Bagamoyo. Captured as a child in the eastern Congo, he was sold to a household in Bagamoyo, the most important trading hub of the Tanganyikan coast. Over time, he was not only able to ransom himself, but rose to become the town’s wealthiest and most respected political and religious authority, building a significant clientele through his leadership of the local Qādirīya brotherhood. 4

Carl Peters,

the infamous pioneer of German acquisitions in East Africa

All of this drastically changed in 1888, when the Sultan of Zanzibar leased the coastal strip of Tanganyika to the German East Africa Company, whose assertive attempts to enforce their treaty with the Sultan led to an uprising that the Company was not able to control. Dubbed the “Arab Revolt” by the Germans, this uprising was not “Arab” at its core, but a simultaneous rejection of German and Omani authority by various elements along the coast, from Swahili patricians and merchants to porters and plebeians who were defending their respective interests in the changing caravan economy.

On the Catholic side, the Benedictines sought to form a German counter-weight to the earlier and ultimately more influential French societies (Spiritan Fathers and White Fathers), who were instrumentally engaged in anti-slavery causes. On the Protestant side, two of the Berlin societies were especially significant early on: the Evangelical Mission Society for German East Africa in Berlin (Berlin III), founded in 1886 as a nationalist missionary counterpart to Carl Peters’ colonial efforts, and the more established Berlin Missionary Society (Berlin I), which commenced its work in Tanganyika in 1891.

Hermann von Wissmann

Wissmann immediately began his mission to suppress the uprising and occupy the coast, a process which culminated in 1890 with Germany taking over the German East Africa Company’s possession, negotiating borders with Britain, and establishing the German East African colony.

In the years to come, slavery and Islam became major battlegrounds in the clash between missionaries and other colonial interest groups.