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Emigration from Western Africa, 1807–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

W.C. Clarence-Smith
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Extract

When the abolitionists achieved the suppression of the British slave-trade in 1807, they believed that a brave new world of free labour was opening up for Africa. Although they thought mainly in terms of ex-slaves providing the labour for plantation areas, they hoped that any shortfall could in part be met by free emigration from Africa. The reality was to be cruelly different from these dreams. Emigration continued, but overwhelmingly in the form of coerced labour, and most attempts at stimulating free emigration failed. Labour exports across the Atlantic remained close to the late eighteenth-century high point for about four decades, and then fell away steeply to almost nothing by the First World War, as the long, halting and often contradictory European campaign to abolish coerced labour slowly bore its fruits. In the interests of comparison with other areas of emigration, this report will devote a little space at the end to analysing why a small current of free emigration developed, and why it remained so limited. But the bulk of the report will focus on large exports of coerced labour.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 45 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1990

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References

Notes

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