Freetown (Sierra Leone), British Crown Colony of
Years: 1808 - 1961
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For several decades, as many as one-sixth of all British warships will be assigned to this mission, and a squadron will be maintained at Fernando Po from 1827 until 1844.
Slaves rescued at sea are usually taken to Sierra Leone, where they are released.
British naval crews are permitted to divide prize money from the sale of captured slave ships.
Apprehended slave runners are tried by naval courts and are liable to capital punishment if found guilty.
The demands of Cuba and Brazil are met by a flood of captives taken in wars among the Yoruba and shipped from Lagos, and the Aro continue to supply the delta ports with slave exports through the 1830s.
Despite the British blockade, almost one million slaves will be exported from Nigeria in the nineteenth century.
The risk involved in running the British blockade obviously makes profits all the greater on delivery.
The campaign to eradicate the slave trade and substitute for it trade in other commodities will increasingly result in British intervention in the internal affairs of the Nigerian region during the nineteenth century and ultimately lead to the decision to assume jurisdiction over the coastal area.
Suppression of the slave trade and issues related to slavery will remain at the forefront of British dealings with local states and societies for the rest of the nineteenth century and even into the twentieth century.
British legislation forbids ships under British registry to engage in the slave trade, but the restriction is applied generally to all flags and is intended to shut down all traffic in slaves coming out of West African ports.
Other countries have more or less hesitantly followed the British lead.
The United States, for example, had also prohibited the slave trade in 1807 (Denmark actually was the first country to declare the trade illegal in 1792).
Attitudes change slowly, however, and not all countries cooperate in controlling the activity of their merchant ships.
American ships, for instance, are notorious for evading the prohibition and going unpunished under United States law.
It should be noted, moreover, that the abolition movement had concentrated on the transatlantic trade for more than five decades before eventually becoming a full-fledged attack on slave trading within Africa itself.
The Royal Navy maintains a prevention squadron to blockade the coast, and in 1827 a permanent station had been established at the Spanish colony of Fernando Po, off the Nigerian coast, with responsibility for patrolling the West African coast.
Slaves rescued at sea are usually taken to Sierra Leone, where they are released.
British naval crews ware permitted to divide prize money from the sale of captured slave ships.
Apprehended slave runners are tried by naval courts and are liable to capital punishment if found guilty.
Members of the American Colonization Society, who were citizens of the United States, had in 1821 established a colony on Cape Mesurado in West Africa for formerly enslaved African-Americans, mirroring British efforts in neighboring Freetown (Sierra Leone).
From the beginning, the colonists had suffered attacks by such indigenous peoples as the Malinké tribes, and suffer also from diseases, the harsh climate, lack of food and medicine, and poor housing conditions.
Through 1835, five more colonies will be started by American Societies other than the ACS, and one by the U.S. government, all on the same West African coast.
The first colony on Cape Mesurado had been extended, along the coast as well as inland, sometimes by use of force, and in 1824 named Liberia, with Monrovia as its capital.
Jamaica-born African American abolitionist John B. Russwarm, having become a supporter of African resettlement, moves to Liberia in 1829, working as an editor, educator, and public official.
Fifty-three unwilling passengers, recently abducted from Africa and enslaved, revolt aboard the Spanish schooner Amistad, en route from Havana to her home port of Guanaja, Cuba, on July 2, 1839.
Led by Joseph Cinqué, they kill the captain and the cook as the ship nears port but spare the life of a Spanish navigator, so that he can sail them home to Sierra Leone.
The navigator will manage instead to sail the Amistad generally northward.
In time, however, they build depots onshore and eventually move up the Niger River to stations established in the interior, like that at Onitsha, where they can bargain with local suppliers and purchase products likely to turn a profit.
Some European traders switch to legitimate business only when the commerce in slaves becomes too hazardous.
Disreputable as many of the traders had been, they often suffer from the precariousness of their position and are at the mercy of what they consider to be unpredictable coastal rulers.
Accordingly, as the volume of trade increases, the British government responds to repeated re- quests of merchants to appoint a consul to cover the region.
As a consequence, John Beecroft is accredited in 1849 as consul for the bights of Benin and Biafra, a jurisdiction stretching from Dahomey to Cameroon.
Beecroft is the British representative to Fernando Po, where the British navy's prevention squadron is stationed.
Under the terms of the 1844 arrangement, the British give the impression that they will protect the coastal areas; thus, an informal protectorate comes into being.
As responsibilities for defending local allies and managing the affairs of the coastal protectorate increased, the administration of the Gold Coast is separated from that of Sierra Leone in 1850.
Earlier aspects of such constructive interest had included the founding of the colony at Sierra Leone in 1787 as a refuge for liberated slaves, the missionary movement designed to bring Christianity to the region, and programs of exploration sponsored by learned societies and scientific groups, such as the London-based African Association.
Although this trade has grown to significant proportions—palm oil exports alone are worth twenty-one million pounds a year by 1840—it is concentrated near the coast, where palm trees grow in abundance.
Gradually, however, the trade forces major economic and social changes in the interior, although it failsto undermine slavery and the slave trade.
Quite the contrary, the incidence of slavery in local societies actually increases.
Palm oil is used locally for cooking, the kernels are a source for food, trees are tapped for palm wine, and the fronds are used for building material.
It is a relatively simple adjustment for many Igbo families to transport the oil to rivers and streams that lead to the Niger Delta for sale to European merchants.
The rapid expansion in exports, especially after 1830, had occurred precisely at the time slave exports collapsed.
Instead, slaves have been redirected into the domes-tic economy, especially to grow the staple food crop, yams, in northern Igboland for marketing throughout the palm-tree belt.
As before, Aro merchants dominate trade, including the sale of slaves within Igboland as well as palm products to the coast.
They maintained their central role in the confederation that governs the region.