Africa and the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Author(s): Adiele E. Afigbo

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 66, No. 4, Abolishing the Slave
Trades: Ironies and Reverberations (Oct., 2009), pp. 705-714
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40467537
Accessed: 26-04-2017 17:35 UTC

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40467537?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to The William and Mary Quarterly

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Africa and the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Adiele E. Afigbo

joined the academic profession in 1964 when I got my Ph.D. from

the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, which means I have been in aca-
deme now for forty-five years. The Igbo say that after a certain point
in life, strength of body and alertness of mind begin to decline. This is
more likely to happen in the kind of environment in which the African
academic in Africa works - an environment of severe deprivation, of
strains and stresses, of disappointed hopes, and of uncertain future. The
unsympathetic listener may have asked why I accepted the invitation to
deliver the keynote address at the Omohundro Institute conference, and
then readers may wonder why I allowed that address to become the open-
ing essay for a Special Issue of the William and Mary Quarterly. Again,
the Igbo people say no one spits out salt put into his mouth, even if it is
the salt of the dead; in the case of the salt of the dead, he would have
tasted it even a little before spitting it out! So here I am, tasting salt.
A keynote address or an overview essay on this topic should be a grand
and powerful statement on Africa and the slave trade or at least on West
Africa and the so-called Atlantic slave trade and its abolition. Such a state-
ment should be either a study of the state of research in the field that points
out directions for the future or the agenda for action in practical political,
economic, and social life that current research suggests. Unfortunately, my
experience is that African scholars very much neglect this otherwise impor-
tant subject, the African slave trade and its abolition, to which African radi-
cals and nationalists usually trace the woes of Africa. Several issues of
perception and perspective, of approach and procedure, will benefit from
being looked at again. Though the effect of the slave trade was transcontinen-
tal, touching not only Africa but also the Americas and Europe, it should be
beyond dispute that Africa occupies the central place in the doleful drama.

Contrary to what may be called entrenched popular perception and

belief, the slave trade and its abolition are neglected subjects in the writing

Adiele E. Afìgbo (1937-2009) was a professor in the Department of History and

International Relations, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Nigeria. This
article is adapted from the author's keynote address delivered at the Omohundro
Institute of Early American History and Culture's conference "'The bloody Writing is
for ever torn': Domestic and International Consequences of the First Governmental
Efforts to Abolish the Atlantic Slave Trade," Aug. 8-12, 2007, Accra and Elmina, Ghana.

William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Volume LXVI, Number 4, October 2009

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
7O6 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

of West African history and indeed of the history of Africa as a who

In fact the slave trade from West Africa to the New World, which is cur-
rently wrongly called the Atlantic slave trade, and which is general
described as the worst slave trade in human history, hardly occupies
prominent enough place in the consciousness of contemporary West
Africans or of Africans anywhere. It is striking that the second centenar
of the beginning of abolition would have passed without any major
commemorative event in the region or the continent but for initiativ
such as the Omohundro Institute conference, coming from the Firs
World. Even the Association of African Historians had its annual confer-
ence in May 2007 not on anv aspect of the centenary but on "Society,
State, and Identity in African History." More importantly, the topic does
not occupy a prominent enough place in the teaching programs of many
of our colleges and universities. I have come across many history and
social science graduates who know next to nothing about the slave trade
in Africa and its abolition. Not one standard history text on West Africa
or Africa written and published on the continent attempts, no matter
how perfunctorily, to aggregate the available information on these two
subjects with a view to producing a coherent perspective. Two such stan-
dard texts - produced by the Ibadan School, which for about three
decades was the leading school of history in Africa - easily come to
mind. One is A Thousand Years of West African History, which launched
the teaching of the new African History in the subregion. The other,
History of West Africa, made the achievements of the new West African
historiography available beyond West Africa to the wider world. For this
more mature volume, instead of chapters on the slave trade and its aboli-
tion in West Africa, Philip Curtin was invited to write a chapter on the
Atlantic slave trade, a chapter that belongs more appropriately, in my
view, to Atlantic history than to West African history. If we look at the
record in East African historiography, especially History of East Africa, it
is the same dismal story. The continental record in this matter is little
different. Neither the Cambridge History of Africa nor the UNESCO
General History of Africa, executed largely under African direction,
includes specific chapters on the slave trade on the continent and its
abolition. It is the same disappointing tale with A History of Africa and
African History.1 No theme, not even the evolution of states big and

1 Roland Oliver et al., eds., History of East Africa, 2 vols. (London, 1963-65); J. F.
Ade. Ajayi and Ian Espie, eds., A Thousand Years of West African History: A Handbook
for Teachers and Students (New York, 1972); Ajayi and Michael Crowder, eds.,
History of West Africa, 2 vols. (New York, 1972-73); J. D. Fage et al., eds., The
Cambridge History of Africa, 8 vols. (1975-86); United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), General History of Africa, 8 vols.
(1981-93); Philip Curtin et al., African History (New York, 1991); Fage and William

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 AFRICA AND THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE JOJ

small in early African history, can rival the significance of the slave trade
and its abolition in the history of any region of Africa or of the conti-
nent as a whole. Yet the history of the slave trade continues to be rele-
gated to the background, whereas the histories of these states and of the
colonial century are given much prominence.
The popular use of the phrase "Atlantic slave trade" to cover every-
thing that happened as a result of the slave trade business from West
Africa calls for reexamination for a number of reasons. Among other
things it denies West Africa the honor of (or what is perhaps its dubious
place in) or at least beclouds its prominence in supplying the popula-
tions that played an indispensable part in the economic development of
the New World and of Europe.2 The Atlantic never had any human popu-
lations of its own, except in the Atlantis of romantic myth and mytholo-
gy. The Atlantic never recruited or sold any slaves, never used the
products of slave labor and so never ran any risks of such products dam-
aging its economy in the long run. It never used slaves for production or
for anything else, unless we consider the dead bodies of slaves, thrown
into it during the passage from West Africa to the New World, which
fed some of the billions of its aquatic inhabitants. The Atlantic was only
a passive, inanimate channel in the whole business.
The prominence that Atlantic world studies has gained may be
partly responsible for the neglect of the study of the slave trade in West
Africa and its abolition. Many people, especially West African scholars
who may have fallen for the glamour of Atlanticity, may have the erro-
neous feeling that the study of what is called the Atlantic slave trade and
its abolition is in every respect a study of the West African slave trade
and its abolition. Atlantic world studies - that is, the use of the Atlantic
as an organizing concept to pull together certain common trends in the
historical experiences of the coastal communities fringing it - is a valid
intellectual exercise. But it must not be seen as a substitute for the study
of the history and affairs of West Africa, at least in the business of the
slave trade.
It is similarly problematic to use "slave trade" and "slavery" as if the
two meant and still mean the same thing precisely. In some cases materi-
als that deal with the slave trade are used to argue cases about slavery
and vice versa. For example Curtin's chapter in History of West Africa is

Tordoff, A History of Africa (London, 2002); "Society, State, and Identity in African
History, " Fourth Congress of the Association of African Historians, held at the
African Union Conference Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, May 22-24, 2.007.
2 A heavily documented and closely argued study of this theme is Joseph E.
Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International
Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, 2002).

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
7O8 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

titled "The Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600-1800," but its author moves fro
the slave trade to slavery and back and even creates a subheading on
slavery in the Atlantic. In The End of Slavery in Africa, the same te
dency can be seen in the editors' magisterial introduction and in man
of the individual contributions. In a recent example, an advertisemen
calling for papers on "the implications of the bicentennial of the Briti
and American closing of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1807 and 180
immediately turns around to say that the theme of the conference
"Abolishing Slavery: Then and Now."3 I am not suggesting that the tw
topics must always be kept apart, nor am I saying they are not relate
One can write an article or a book on the slave trade and slavery. But
must clearly recognize and maintain the distinct identity of each to track
the development and movement of scholarship in each of the two are
and not confuse general readers and budding academics. Slave trade an
slavery are the two heads of the monster that British colonial ruler
called slave dealing in their proclamations and ordinances aimed at abo
ishing the slave trade and bringing about the emancipation of those
already entrapped in slavery.

In 1807 the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act. After it th
campaign aimed at abolishing slavery started. This campaign falls int
two periods: 1807 to about i860 and 1885 to about the end of colonia
rule. The period between witnessed no abolitionist action or activity
West Africa. It was used by the African and European businessmen
there, who were hard-hit by the Atlantic abolition, to adjust their bu
ness and reorient themselves in accordance with the demands of the new
era. In the end they pioneered the so-called legitimate trade in African
commodities and may be described as the pathfinders of the terrible fate
that soon overtook West Africa and indeed all Africa largely as a result
of ending the slave trade.
In the first period, 1807-60, the campaign touched West Africa and
its slave trade by cutting off what until then had been its main market
for its human merchandise. The abolitionists' concern was to end fur-
ther transportation of captives from Africa; that is, to close the Atlantic
to European and New World slave merchants, sanitizing what is better

3 "Abolishing Slavery: Then and Now; A Common Ground against Slavery for
Scholars, Activists, and Public Policy Advocates," conference cosponsored by the
Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, the Harriet
Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples, and the
Free the Slaves Foundation, May 29-June 1, 2008, Storrs, Conn, (quotation); Philip
D. Curtin, "The Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600-1800," in Ajayi and Crowder, History of
West Africa, 1: 240-68; Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, eds., The End of Slavery
in Africa (Madison, Wis., 1988).

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 AFRICA AND THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE 709

called the Middle Passage. They aimed not to stop the recruitment of
slaves and the marketing of them within Africa but rather to ensure that
West Africa was left with its slave merchandise and did not bother the
New World or Europe with it. Action was for the most part limited to
the Atlantic and only on occasion taken to some enclaves and ports in
West Africa accused of giving shelter and succor to the hated slave mer-
chants of the new era. Those who suggested going into the West African
interior to tear up the evil from the roots were ignored; in this period
nothing was done against the trans-Saharan and East African trades in
slaves. Here the term "Atlantic abolition" is quite in order, though we
must bear constantly in mind that it was not Atlantic slaves who were
being abolished, since there were no such slaves, but the use of the
Atlantic to move West African slaves to the New World. Atlantic aboli-
tion was designed to protect Europe from a trade that no longer served
its interests, not to advance anybody else's.
This phase of the campaign had four major effects on West Africa.
First, it cut off from West Africa the main market for its slaves. Second,
it compelled West Africa to limit the recruitment and sale of slaves
largely to the absorptive capacity of its own economy. Third, it forced
West Africans to turn their attention increasingly to the production and
marketing of the "legitimate" items for the new trade demanded by
Europe, with all the socioeconomic consequences that this reorientation
implied. Fourth, two coastal settlements came into existence: Freetown,
Sierra Leone, a settlement for slaves freed in the course of the campaign,
and Monrovia, Liberia, a settlement founded by freed American blacks
who wanted to find a new home and a new life in what had originally
been the land of their fathers or mothers or both.
In the intervening period (ca. 1860-85), no overt action toward abo-
lition took place in West Africa or even in the Atlantic, though in the
Indian Ocean the story was slightly different, thanks to David
Livingstone and Catholic missionaries. But what happened in West
Africa in these years would help determine the nature of abolition that
subsequently occurred there. Between roughly 1800 and 1885, the coastal
middlemen and their partners in the hinterland, who were still fully
engaged in the internal slave trade, pioneered the "legitimate trade." As
a result the legitimate trade emerged in the interior as a twin brother of
the "illegitimate trade" in slaves; indeed, the two developed sort of as
Siamese twins. They were carried on along the same routes, and their
wares were displayed and sold in the same markets. As the slaves for sale
were marched up and down the region, they also carried items of legiti-
mate trade. They helped to collect export goods in the interior and to
move them down to the coast where the European traders picked them

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
7IO WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

up. From there too the slaves helped to pick up imported items o
mate trade and moved them to interior markets.
This intertwining of the legitimate trade and the slave trade fur-
nishes the key to understanding the method of abolition later in the hin-
terland. When Europe swept into the interior and took responsibility for
the whole sub-Saharan subcontinent in the last decade of the nineteenth
century, the question became what to do about these Siamese twins,
since the main interest of the European powers was trade. Should the
powers pursue the elimination of the slave trade head-on and destroy it
before pursuing the promotion and expansion of legitimate trade? That
would have been a costly strategy because it would have meant destroy-
ing what legitimate trade already existed as well as those (mainly the
hated slave traders) who had already gained some experience in its pur-
suit and developed a serious stake in it. Adopting the opposite strategy,
the powers decided to tacitly accept the slave trade, except where it
stood out as too prominent, such as in areas where warfare and raiding
played a part in the recruitment of slaves. At the same time, they avidly
pursued the promotion and expansion of legitimate trade, which they
believed would squeeze out the illegitimate trade. Supported as it was by
the whole apparatus of European political and military might, including
modern bureaucratic administration, the legitimate trade would prevail.
For West Africa the dawn of the new era was signaled by the 1884-85
Berlin West Africa Conference, where the ground rules were worked out
to ensure that the European powers did not clash among themselves in
carving up the continent. At that fateful congress, no mention was made
of the slave trade in West Africa or its abolition. But this silence must
not be taken as clear proof that what overtook West Africa, and indeed
all Africa, after 1885 had little to do with a concern for eliminating the
evil trade. It may seem to have been all about European power politics.
But at this time in Africa, European power was relevant only because it
was needed to promote European business and to create for that busi-
ness a protective umbrella manned by European administrators and their
military. So the European deluge in Africa was also, if not mainly, about
the slave trade and its abolition because that trade could not coexist with
the new regime. Not long after, at the 1889-90 Brussels Conference, war
on the slave trade and slave traders was explicitly introduced into the pro-
gram of the powers for Africa.
From 1885 on we may not see any clear program of abolition pur-
sued by itself by the European powers or followed alongside their other
programs for military conquest and political consolidation as well as
commercial growth and expansion. Nor may we see any independent

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 AFRICA AND THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE 71I

group of abolitionists (missionaries or philanthropists) moving alongsi

the powers as they crisscrossed the continent in jackboots, crushing a
resisters and uprooting as many ancient African landmarks as possible in
politics, economics, science, religion, cosmology, art, education, and
on. But the key issue was freeing the entire commercial space in Afri
for the new trade and by implication closing it to the slave trade an
slave traders. There was no room for a middle-of-the-road policy of pur-
suing both abolition and the new trade full speed.
The European powers' situation in Africa proved more difficult than
they had imagined. In gobbling up the continent in the manner the
did, which suggests greed and panic, the powers had bitten off mo
than they could chew. Because they did not have enough men and mat
rial resources for the work, they entered into a sociopolitical accomm
dation, known as indirect rule or association, with the same Africa
aristocracy they had beaten and humiliated militarily in the field. Fo
two or three decades, they found themselves hamstrung by the philos
phy of laissez-faire, which opposed the investment of European mon
in the colonies. In addition some of the problems that the powers ha
swept under the carpet in coming to Africa and other similarly we
lands resurfaced, leading to two world wars. Between the two wars
severe economic depression occurred.
These and other related developments help to explain but not to
excuse the fact that the European powers had no clear abolition progr
distinct from the omnibus plan of using military and political power
gain all the available space for the new legitimate trade and commerc
Military operations broke up many arrangements for recruiting and sell-
ing slaves, though some of the organizations, very small and qui
resourceful, escaped the troops and their guns and kept operating fo
decades. In any case troops were not a regular instrument of everyda
administration. By 1914 the role of the army in this field had waned not
only because most of the fighting had been done but also because the
was enough fighting to be done elsewhere as the First World War bro
out. Laws were passed against slave dealing, but no specific structur
appear to have been set up to enforce their provisions and to docume
any progress, unless we should regard the colonial courts and constab
as such structures. But other duties constituted these courts' and consta-
bles' raison d'être and throughout the colonial period turned out to b
more than they could handle.
Not surprisingly, the European powers fell back on the belief and
hope that what they called the corrosive effects of Pax Europaea, esp
cially when introduced among so-called primitive peoples, would do th
work of eroding the bases of slave traders and the slave trade as well

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
712 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

of slavery. Indeed the powers' basic position in this whole mat

tured by two phrases: festina lente (make haste slowly) and q
movere (don't move settled things).4 They proceeded without
many twinges of conscience and did not intervene or ask qu
where no party to the existing relationships complained; that
no slave or slave keeper complained or where no slave trader w
a legal trap. The powers found their hands tied behind th
because of the close relationship between the now-illegal slavin
legitimate trade. They could not raid or close down so-called
kets without also harming the new trade they were anxious t
because there were no separate markets for the new trade.
they heavily punish communities known to have continued
slaves because, it was conceded, some of those communities n
augment their trading manpower through the recruitment of fr
if they were to play the role expected of them in promoting
sion of legitimate trade. The more the powers looked at the f
the export and import trade, the more they could take quiet satis
that the plan of expanding legitimate trade to squeeze out the sla
was making steady progress. But it was also slow progress. Th
of the slave trade continued in different places and in differ
and guises until almost the close of the colonial era.
Was there abolition in the Atlantic? Certainly there was.
Atlantic there was a head-on collision between the forces of abolition
and the slave runners of Europe and the New World. No method was
available other than suppression. But was there abolition on the West
African mainland and in other parts of Africa? Here we cannot answer
directly and emphatically. The slow success was not a consequence of a
direct collision between slave traders and abolitionist forces because,
strictly speaking, there were no such forces mobilized and operating as
such in the interior for the period. Abolition was eventually achieved as
a by-product of the imposition of European political power leading to
the triumph of European economic power and interest over African eco-
nomic institutions, systems, and interests. Abolition was indirect: it
depended on the superior strength of new economic forces, which kept
growing from year to year.

The three centuries of the slave trade from West Africa to the New
World had brought into being an economic umbilical cord that linked
Africa to Europe or to what today is known as the West. In the cosmos

4 On festina lente and quieta non movere as principles of British colonial policy,
see Taj Hargey, "Festina Lente: Slavery Policy and Practice in the Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan," Slavery and Abolition 19, no. 2 (August 1998): 250-72.

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 AFRICA AND THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE 713

of natural existence, an umbilical cord is a device through which an

undeveloped or developing entity is fed by a more fully developed par-
ent. But in the man-made cosmos of sociocultural relationships, an
umbilical cord is a device through which the undeveloped feeds the
more fully developed - here, through which the fully developed West
drew nourishment from the underdeveloped or developing Africa.
Abolition did nothing to redress this situation in favor of Africa. On the
contrary it made the situation worse.
The assault, which began around 1885, hitched the African conti-
nent and its resources more securely to the West. Now not just eco-
nomic nourishment was drawn: the West looted cultural resources,
especially artistic pieces, at the same time it entirely degraded African
culture. The overall result was the enslavement of the continent and its
peoples, whereas under the old system only 6 to 8 million enslaved West
Africans were sold into the Atlantic. In the final analysis, the slave trade
and its abolition gave the European powers the opportunity to create a
refurbished and more stifling economic nexus between them and Africa
than perhaps would have been otherwise possible. Indeed the miserable
position that Africa occupies today in the world economic order fol-
lowed the slave trade, its abolition, and related developments. In this
position Africa is relegated to being a supplier of industrial raw materials
whereas the West occupies the commanding heights of manufacturing
and technology, world finance, world markets, and information and
informatics.
We must not forget that one of the disastrous consequences of the
division of Africa was the hijacking of the African mind, and maybe also
its spirit, by the West. As Bill Freund put it, "With the conquest and
partition of Africa by the European powers and its forcible incorpora-
tion into a world system of exchange based on capitalist production,
the possibility of an autonomous development of intellectual activity in
Africa was cut off as surely as the guillotine severs a head from a body."
Not for nothing did African intellectual Thomas R. Kanza insist that
the longed-for African revolution must, when and if it comes, be the
"reconquest of the right to think!" Nor is it surprising that a thoughtful
friend of Africa, Ronald Hoffman, wrote in a communication on the
2007 conference, "The Omohundro Institute of Early American
History and Culture decided to convene this conference in Ghana
because of the profound impact the early nineteenth-century decisions
concerning the slave trade had on Africa."5 The present position and

5 Bill Freund, The Making of Contemporary Africa: The Development of African

Society since 1800 (Bloomington, Ind., 1984), 1-2 ("conquest and partition"); Thomas

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
714 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

posture - do I need to add "prostrate" to the phrase? - of su

Africa in its internal and external affairs speak eloquently to tha
ence.

R. Kanza, Evolution and Revolution in Africa (London, 1971), 8

Ronald Hoffman to the author, Sept. 18, 2006 (personal commu

This content downloaded from 207.249.33.125 on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:35:09 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms