Nineteenth-Century Coastal Slave Trading and the British Abolition Campaign in Sierra Leone

Abstract

The Sierra Leone Colony was Britain's main base in its campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. Yet, throughout the nineteenth century, slavers supplied external and internal demand by trafficking people along the coast near to and even within the Colony. Although some officials strove to eradicate slaving, others feared that aggressive actions could threaten the Colony's economic and political interests. Administrators debated what constituted trafficking and applied different policies in different treaty zones. Moreover, the expanding commercial system encouraged slave trading, and slavers had the means to evade patrols. Ultimately, officials ended slaving by stopping war and raiding, interdicting traffic and punishing slavers, but enslaved people also contributed by escaping from bondage.

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