“A Most Promising Field for Future Usefulness”: The Church Missionary Society and the Liberated Africans of Sierra Leone

Abstract

With the coming into force of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Sierra Leone1 assumed a substantially different role within the British Empire. No longer “simply a small struggling collection of unwanted black vagrants and intractable, independent-minded Nova Scotians and Maroons”, the settlement once known as Granville Sharp’s “Province of Freedom” became in 1808 a Crown colony, the base of operations for the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron, the seat of the Vice-Admiralty Court adjudicating captures (and, later, the Courts of Mixed Commission), and the depository for Africans liberated from the holds of slave ships.2 The change in status caught the colony, and equally the humanitarians who had championed the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, quite unprepared for the consequences. Even before the first Crown colony governor arrived to take over in July 1808, the first two slave ship prize captures had arrived in the harbour, with a combined human cargo of 167 enslaved Africans.3 These “recaptives” became the responsibility of the collector of customs pending their adjudication, liberation, and resettlement. Another 78 followed in the next seizure, followed by 230 the following year.4 In 1811 alone, arrivals numbered 1,991; by July 1814, the total number landed since 1808 was estimated at 5,925.5 All indications suggested that these numbers would continue to rise.6KeywordsMission StationBritish GovernmentSlave TradeFuture UsefulnessColonial GovernmentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.