Abolitionism in West Africa

Slavery & Abolition A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies

ISSN: 0144-039X (Print) 1743-9523 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fsla20

Minority Voices: Abolitionism in West Africa

Sandra E. Greene

To cite this article: Sandra E. Greene (2015): Minority Voices: Abolitionism in West Africa, Slavery & Abolition, DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2015.1008213

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2015.1008213

Published online: 23 Feb 2015.

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Download by: [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] Date: 14 September 2015, At: 15:24 Slavery & Abolition, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2015.1008213

Minority Voices: Abolitionism in West Africa Sandra E. Greene

The impetus for the legal abolition of the slave trade and slavery within Africa came largely from outside the continent. This article will review brieﬂy this literature, but focuses more broadly on abolitionist thought within Africa itself. What did Africans think about the slave trade and slavery? How did they respond to the human suffering they witnessed? What motivated those Africans who were prepared to take public stances against the slave trade and slavery to do so? This article argues that their own experiences and their western education explain in part their stance on slavery and the slave trade, but that local African views about these institutions were also inﬂuential in shaping their antislavery and anti-slave trade stances.

The vast majority of studies on abolition in Africa agree to the following:

(a) Abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (which involved African traders selling men, women and children to European buyers on the African coast) ended as a result of ﬁrst British then other European antislave trade efforts. (b) The abolition of the slave trade and slavery within Africa came with the imposition of colonial rule. (c) The death of both was painfully slow. (d) Emancipation of the enslaved in Africa was less the result of the colonial enact- ment and prosecution of antislavery laws and much more the result of the enslaved taking actions on their own to obtain their freedom.1 Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 This article will review brieﬂy this literature, but will focus more broadly on abolitionist thought within Africa itself. What did Africans think about the slave trade and slavery? How did they respond to the human suffering they witnessed? Given the fact that the imposition of laws outlawing the slave trade and slavery came largely

Sandra E. Greene is Professor in the Department of History, Cornell University, 303 McGraw Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4601, USA. Email: [email protected]

# 2015 Taylor & Francis 2 Sandra E. Greene from outside the continent, what motivated those Africans who were prepared to take public stances against the slave trade and slavery to do so? To answer these questions, this article examines oral texts produced during the era of the Atlantic slave trade and in the period thereafter when slavery (which continued unabated well into the twentieth century) was ubiquitous. It reviews the various views that Africans are known to have expressed about the Atlantic slave trade and then focuses on the issue of African domestic slavery. More speciﬁcally, this article explores the lives of a small group of Africans who received western education and worked mightily against the slave trade and slavery. I explain the circumstances that led them to voice opposition to the slave trade, and to take an even more unpopular and distinctly minority approach to the question of slavery. In histories of the antislave trade and antislavery activities in West Africa, the efforts of those individuals have been either largely forgotten or caricaturized as overly enthu- siastic, unrealistic, too strident or motivated by more personal, ulterior motives. They have also been portrayed as simply ciphers for European abolitionists and imperialists. In focusing on the lives of several of these individuals, it is argued here that their efforts embodied the impulses and ethical considerations that already existed within their own communities even if their actions ultimately failed to generate local movements to end either the slave trade or slavery. Incorporating the oral histories and traditions of Africa as well as the efforts of these individuals into the history of abolitionism in Africa highlights an all too often forgotten fact that some Africans did indeed question or seriously consider the ethics of both the slave trade and slavery as it affected not only their own individual family members, neighbors and citizens but also the peoples of West Africa as a whole.2

The abolition of the slave trade In 1802, Denmark was the first country to officially prohibit its citizens from partici- pating in the trade that took enslaved Africans to the Americas. More significantly, because of its then dominant role in the trade, Britain followed suit in 1807. In making these decisions, first about the activities of their own businesspeople, Africans were not consulted. Instead, all debates and legislative actions took place in western Europe and the Americas. The USA abolished the importation of slaves in 1808; France abolished the slave trade in 1817 only to reinstate it and then abolish it again in 1844.3 As indicated by these dates, abolition of the slave trade was quite a slow process. Economic and political concerns delayed the passage of legislation and limited the reach of those nations which deployed ships on the African coast to inter- Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 dict slave ships. Only in1866/67, the year when the last recorded slave ship reached Cuba, did the trans-Atlantic slave trade end, more than 60 years after the first successful abolition effort in 1802. Abolition of the slave trade within Africa took even longer. This too was the result of European colonial expansion. The efforts deployed by the various European powers varied tremendously, despite the fact that the continued existence of the slave trade in Africa was often used to justify colonial expansion. As noted by Suzanne Miers: Slavery & Abolition 3 Between 1892 and 1914 all the colonial powers took steps to end large scale slave raiding and trading, as well as the export of slaves from Africa – measures clearly in the interests of orderly government. They enforced these laws, however, in a highly variable fashion, depending on their political and economic interests. In Angola, for instance, in the first decade of the twentieth century, even Portuguese officials participated in the slave trade in order to supply workers to the cocoa pro- ducing islands of Principe and Sao Tome. The French in Dar al-Kuti did not stop slave raiding, but diverted it away from their own trading posts. The Germans allowed raiding and trading to continue in northern Cameroon throughout their rule and neither the French nor the British, who succeeded them, had ended it by 1920. Slave raiding in the Sahara continued to the end of colonial rule. Slave trading on a large scale soon disappeared everywhere, but an underground traffic continued even in areas under close control.4

The abolition of slavery The abolition of slavery in West Africa was equally fraught. In 1896, British forces occupied the independent state of Asante (located in today’s Ghana), but did not officially prohibit slavery until June 1908. France, which controlled much of West Africa, prohibited all its courts and tribunals from recognizing slavery in 1903, but concerns to limit a massive movement of former slaves that could disrupt agricultural production meant that this policy was enforced in a very erratic manner.5 In south eastern Nigeria, Don Ohadike has noted that suppression of internal slavery in that area (Igboland) began in 1900 but in 1901, fear that the freeing of the enslaved would lead to social unrest led British colonial administrators to forbid slaves from leaving their masters. The law was changed again in 1903 to redefine slaves as apprentices and to insist on contracts between former masters and former slaves. This was done with the hope that this approach would not be too disruptive and allow slavery to die a natural death. It was a slow death indeed. Colonial officials acknowledged that slavery continued to exist in the area up to at least 1924.6 Accepted by virtually all historians of slavery is the fact that the end of slavery in Africa came not as a result of official actions on the part of European colonizers or the efforts of African abolitionists, but rather through the actions of the enslaved themselves. Kristin Mann noted in her study of slavery in Lagos that ‘slaves themselves initially pushed the question of emancipation to the fore by taking advantage of the British presence to flee their owners’. Gareth Austin observed with regard to the history of slavery in Ghana that ‘emancipation owed much to the initiative of slaves Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 themselves and their kin’. Martin Klein has estimated that with the end of slavery in French West Africa, upwards of a million people took the opportunity to move from their former homes, some of whom were the enslaved. Of the enslaved in northern Nigeria, Paul Lovejoy has estimated that ‘tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands left their owners’. It was ‘slave initiative’, as noted by Andrew Clark, that ‘was the primary motivating force behind the transformations in domestic slavery in the early years of the twentieth century’.7 4 Sandra E. Greene Local African thoughts about abolition, the slave trade and slavery The fact that Britain and other Western powers introduced legislation and then took action (even if only fitfully) to end the slave trade and slavery in Africa should not obscure the fact that Africans also had quite mixed feelings about these institutions. We are perhaps most aware of the rationales given by Africans in defense of both. In a number of interviews with West African political leaders recorded by European travelers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we see these leaders offering several reasons for their resistance to abolition. In an 1820 interview with Osei Bonsu, King of Asante (Ghana), Joseph Dupuis, a representative of the British government which had just recently abolished the slave trade, observed that the king, after listening to him discuss the abolition and the need for Asante to stop selling slaves,

...maintained the utmost composure, paid respectful attention while we spoke, and then answered calmly in his own defense. He wished that he could do without slaves – it would be better for him, but, as the country stood, that was impossible ...[In a recent war that produced many prisoners of war,] I did not make war for slaves, but because Dinkera [sic] (the king) sent me an arrogant message and killed my people and refused to pay me gold as his father did ... Unless I kill or sell them, they will grow strong and kill my people. Now you must tell [your] master that these slaves can work for him, and if he wants 10,000 he can have them. And if he wants fine handsome girls and women to give his cap- tains, I can send him great numbers.8 For Osei Bonsu, the capturing, killing and selling of men, women and children were simply the time-honored way of dealing with one’s enemies. It could not be simply abandoned for high-minded, but impractical reasons. Thirty years later, in 1850, Eyo Honesty II of Old Calabar (Nigeria) spoke to another European, Hope Masteron Waddell, about the difficulty of doing without slaves. According to Waddell, the king indicated that ‘he wished he could do without slaves – it would be better for him, but as the country stood, that was impossible’. Several chiefs and headmen in the Adansi district of Asante (Ghana) also expressed similar sentiments, though in greater detail, in a letter they sent in 1906 to the British colonial officer in charge of their area:

The freedom of every slave, we beg to say is impossible for we Ashantis to do so ... what could the Kings, Chiefs and Headmen do, if these are set free, all our drums, blowing horns, swords, elephant’s tails, basket carrying and farming works are done by these, as we have no money like Europeans to do necessaries for us ...and how we King and Chiefs can attend any calling by the Government at Obuasi or Kumasi while we have no body to carry us, beat our drums, blow our horn, carry our swords, Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 and other necessary things?9 These much cited expressions about the impossibility of doing away with the slave trade and slavery should not obscure the fact that other sentiments – those that recog- nized the horrors of the slave trade and slavery – existed in Africa (as it had in Europe long before the abolitionists organized a movement to oppose the trade and slavery) even though evidence for this is extremely limited. Slavery & Abolition 5 In offering examples of such sentiments, scholars cite debates that raged among African leaders about who could legally be enslaved. Perhaps, the most well known of these discussions involved the nineteenth-century Timbuctu scholar Ahmad Baba and his Muslim colleagues in Morocco. For them, the greatest issue of concern was who to deﬁne as a Muslim. Practitioners of this faith were legally prohibited from enslaving other Muslims. But who was a Muslim? Equally important, who was not a Muslim, and who could thus be enslaved? Concern about this went beyond the Muslim world. Christians were equally interested in protecting their own from enslavement, especially before the eighteenth century, as were many African political leaders, who, in this case, were determined to shield their citizens from slavery no matter their religion.10 But traces also exist of sentiments that express a more general horror about the slave trade and slavery. Though extremely limited in number, such sentiments are evident in the oral narratives of individual communities. In a Ga (Ghana) song, recorded by Marion Kilson, the lyrics express deep empathy for the enslaved. Having been forcibly removed from their own families and communities, having lost the opportunity to experience a normal life cycle (born on Thursday but sold, to be reborn as a slave on Saturday) and having their fate made totally unpre- dictable (as symbolized by being placed at a crossroads), the words to this song emphasize the anger, anguish, fear and frustration felt by such individuals and the need for them to be soothed with water, and to be brought into the supportive company of others.

Ga Song11: You were bought as a slave, you were sold as a slave. Give the slave water to drink; You were bought as a slave, you were sold as a slave. You were born on Thursday and you were sold on Saturday. You were bought as a slave, you were sold as a slave. You were put on a crossroad. You were bought as a slave, you were sold as a slave. Koole give him water to drink; Oshwila, give him water to drink Sakumo surround him. The following Akan and Anlo-Ewe proverbs express the same understanding about the hardships experienced by the enslaved.

Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 Akan proverbs (only those using the term odonko) Slave work/hard work.12 The slave in running away holds a feast.13 The female slave (that is destined to be sacriﬁced upon the death of her master) makes the sheep meat tasteless to you; [but] someday you will beat her with clubs.14 Anlo-Ewe Proverbs15 A slave that has twins has a lot of work (for she has no one to help her). 6 Sandra E. Greene One without relatives doesn’t cook corn-broth on stones (because nobody holds the cooking pot and he therefore can’t stir the broth). Meaning: Whoever has no relatives or friends is a person deserving sympathy. All these opinions – those expressed by the West African chiefs in defense of time- honored institutions that had become woven into the economic, political and religious life of their polities; those that argued that some persons were legally enslaveable but not others and those that sympathized with the plight of the enslaved, acknowledging how slaves were managed – at times being used as human sacriﬁces – could generate feelings of revulsion and illustrate the range of perspectives that existed within individual West African communities during the era when both the slave trade and slavery were legal. Defense of these institutions was the predominant view. But the existence of dissenting voices and opinions must also be acknowledged. More visible and vocal opposition by Africans philosophically opposed to the slave trade and slavery in West Africa emerged as a result of British antislavery efforts in the region.

Educated African thoughts about the slave trade In 1787, a group of philanthropists (known as the Clapham sect) established a colony in what later became known as Freetown, Sierra Leone. The goal was to establish a refuge for formerly enslaved blacks, and to use this refuge as a ‘beachhead’ to attack the slave trade by spreading Christianity and encouraging ‘legitimate’ commerce. The ﬁrst residents came from England; others subsequently arrived from Nova Scotia, Jamaica and the slave ships that the British government began to capture off the West African coast after the government abolished the slave trade in 1807. Much of this history has been documented elsewhere. Of particular interest here are the thousands of West Africans who had been liberated from the slave ships and resettled in Sierra Leone. The re-captives, as they were known, were initially settled in villages around the town of Freetown and placed under the supervision of the Church Missionary Society (CMS). In 1824, the CMS handed responsibility for super- vising the villages’ schools to the British government. Still, the basic orientation of the entire colony, Freetown and its surrounding villages, remained. The inhabitants were strongly encouraged to not only convert to Christianity, but also to be missionaries themselves: to spread their faith, to engage in ‘legitimate’ commerce and to bring ‘civi- lization’ to the continent so as to help stop the Atlantic slave trade. Their efforts brought mixed results. Many refused to abandon polygyny or the religions with which they were raised before their capture. Others who did convert insisted on com- Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 bining their Christian faith with aspects of their traditional beliefs. More successful was the production of a small literate African Christian community and clergy that embraced the notion that at least part of their mission in life was to spread their new faith. For it was this faith, brought to them by the English, which they hoped would bring change and modernity to their home countries. They strongly encouraged as well ‘legitimate’ commerce in agricultural produce and the ending of the slave trade, from which they had suffered so much. Slavery & Abolition 7 Among the most well known of these Sierra Leone clergy was Thomas Hill. In 1839, he and a group of other re-captives organized themselves to buy a ship, which they then loaded with trade goods and sailed to Nigeria. Their purpose involved much more than engaging in business, however. They also petitioned the British government to support their relocation to the port town of Badagry so as ‘to carry the antislavery drive to Nigeria’. More speciﬁcally, the petition stated that he and his people

feel ...with much thankful to Almighty God and the Queen of England, who had rescued us from being in a state of slavery, and has brought us to this colony and set us at liberty and thanks be to God of all mercy who has sent his servants to declare unto us poor creatures the way of salvation, which illuminates our understanding so we are brought to know we have a soul to save, and when your humble petitioners look back upon their country people who are living in darkness, without the light of the Gospel, so we take upon ourselves to direct this our humble petition to your Excellency. That the queen will graciously to sympathize with her humble petitioners to establish a colony to Badagry that the same may be under the Queen’s Jur- isdiction and beg of her Royal Majesty to send missionary with us and by so doing the slave trade can be abolished, because the dealers can be afeared to go to said place so that the Gospel of Christ can be preached throughout out land.16 In his petition, Hill saw in Britain a country that was willing to establish colonies like Freetown and could do the same in Nigeria. His focus on Christianity is also signiﬁ- cant. For Hill and for many other converts, the missionaries who had founded Sierra Leone not only introduced them to a new religion, but also offered a new and see- mingly powerful framework they could use to make sense of their own experiences and perhaps their preexisting ethical concerns. Yes, the slave trade and slavery were long established practices, but their inchoate objections based at least in part on their own experiences, and perhaps the concerns found in their own societies prior to their capture were given structural order by European missionary efforts to link Christianity with abolitionism. Thus, this religion, along with commerce in ‘legitimate’ goods and abolition, became central to Hill’s hopes of lifting the continent from ‘darkness’. Two years after Hill submitted his petition in 1841, the then British Colonial Sec- retary, Lord John Russell, authorized the dispatch of an expedition to the Niger River in response to the same idea that had been suggested by Hill in his petition, but more successfully championed by Thomas Fowell Buxton, one of the most well- known advocates in Britain of using the spread of legitimate trade and Christianity to end the slave trade.17 The expedition included two re-captives, Simon Jonas and Samuel Ajayi Crowther, both of whom had been rescued from a slave ship by the

Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 British Royal Navy and placed under the guardianship of the CMS in Sierra Leone, where they learned English and converted to Christianity. In 1841, both were selected to participate in the Niger Expedition because of their linguistic abilities. Jonas was to serve as the Igbo language interpreter; Crowther was expected to learn Hausa so as to help the members of the expedition communicate with other local chiefs. Both brought with them a commitment to speak out publically against the slave trade. This they did as noted in Crowther’s journal. Their motivations for taking what was 8 Sandra E. Greene a decidedly minority view in the region are evident in the conversations Crowther recorded of Jonas’s dialogue with a local political leader.

Nothing could equal the natural good sense and eloquence of Simon Jonas, our Ibo Interpreter, in speaking to King Obi on the subject of slavery. When it was first broached to Obi that the object of our visit to him was the abolition of the slave trade, he candidly confessed that he considered it a hard thing to give it up. This expression did not escape the notice of our Ibo Interpreter. He began in a respectful manner to convince the King that it was still harder to continue it: and of this he could speak not merely as an eye-witness, but like one who felt what it means to be taken away from all that endears home, to be driven from place to place, and packed up in a slave-vessel. He commenced by describing the miseries which the slave-trade produced in the Ibo Country; mentioned the con- tinual wars carried on for the purpose of capturing slaves; how many parents became bereaved of their children and children for ever separated from their parents; how the whole population was continually in a state of excitement and fear, and what an injurious effect this condition had on their own temporal concerns; how their fields were neglected, and their houses left without inhabitants; how everyone was afraid of his own neighbor, and no one could place confidence in his own brother; and then he went on to relate his own experience, from the time he was made a slave to the time he was speaking with the king. He mentioned that there were more than 200 boys who were taken in war, but many of them died of hunger and fatigue before they reached Bonny; that many had been sacrificed by the King of Bonny; and others had committed suicide, to prevent that most hor- rible death of being eaten by the White people, which all of them firmly believed would be their lot. He did not forget to mention in what condition they were on board the slave vessel; spoke of bad provisions, bad water, and of the want of room; that many soon died and others fell sick, and were often thrown overboard before they had actually expired and became food to the shark; and, when he stated all these things to which the king had listened with the greatest attention, he addressed himself to the king, and said, ‘Do you not see that it is harder to continue it, than to give it up?’18 Crowther expressed his own opinion on another occasion, this time in a market where slaves were regularly sold. He remembers:

from a sense of duty, I expressed my feelings to all who were present ...I informed them that the chief design of our Expedition was to put an end to the trade in human ﬂesh and blood; and expatiated on the sinfulness of the practice, it being against the laws of God and the laws of the most enlightened kingdoms of the world and productive of innumerable evils among themselves ...19 From these accounts, it is clear that Jonas and Crowther were motivated in their antislave trade work by both their own personal experiences as enslaved captives, and by Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 their faith, which gave them a framework broader than perhaps the songs and proverbs of their homelands with which to condemn the slave trade as a morally repugnant activity.20 The Christianity they embraced championed the notion that ‘slavery is a great abomination in the sight of God’.21 Crowther and Jonas were vocal in their opposition to the slave trade. But opposition to slavery was quite a different matter. Here Crowther and most other African Slavery & Abolition 9 Christians parted company with the few individuals who were prepared to condemn not only the slave trade, but also slavery. Who were these individuals, and why did they persist when others did not? Two such individuals were David Asante from Akuapem in what is now Ghana, and James Johnson from Sierra Leone and Nigeria.22

Educated African thoughts about slavery David Asante was born in 1834 in the polity of Akuapem in southeastern Ghana to parents of royal background. His father was a chief of the royal clan that governed Akuapem, but he was also an ardent advocate of allowing missionary activity in the area. Thus, David Asante’s father made sure his son became one of the first students at the Basel Mission School in Akuropon, the capital of Akuapem, when it opened in 1844. There, David was trained to be a teacher and missionary assistant. On seeing his talent with languages, the Basel Mission sent Asante to study in Switzerland in 1857. On his completion of the course in 1862, he was ordained and became the first African minister in the Gold Coast Basel Mission to be given the responsibilities of a fully trained missionary.23 During this same period, furious debates were occurring within the Basel Mission as to its position on slavery. Initially, in the 1840s and 1850s, when the mission was just beginning to establish its work in the region, it chose to condemn slavery as well as polygyny as simply sins, ‘a heathen problem whose solution was to be deferred to the distant future when the work of God would finally break through’. By 1860, however, the missionaries in Akuapem had begun to raise questions about the ethical standards to which they should hold their growing number of African Christians accountable.24 Given their belief that slavery and polygyny were ‘two deeply entwined ...evils, utterly incompatible with ...pietistic principles’, should they encourage their members to abandon both? Should members be given six years to divest themselves of their slaves or should they be required to do so immediately? The European missionaries in Akuapem thought the longer period was more appropriate. It would give their parishioners ample time to make the economic adjustments. But when this proposal was sent for discussion and approval to Switzerland, the Basel Mission’s General Inspector, Joseph Josenhans, and his committee insisted on a more radical stance. Under the leadership of Josenhans, the Mission issued a directive ordering the following:

members of the parish ...may [not] under any condition possess slaves. Any slaveholder who wishes to be baptized must declare his slaves free and actually set them free before the baptism. Those slave owners who have already been baptized are also 25 Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 to meet this demand. Further, Josenhans notiﬁed the missionaries in Africa that they were ‘to make public [this order] by posting it on their church doors’ and that ‘whoever stands or acts against this ban [on slave holding by parish members] either in principle or in deed is to be relieved, ipso facto, of his ofﬁce’.26 The European missionaries in Africa strongly objected and argued, in part, that such an order would lead to the ‘destabili- zation and impoverishment of the mission parish’. The order remained and came into 10 Sandra E. Greene force in 1862. David Asante was certainly privy to these debates, both as a student in Switzerland and when he returned to serve as a missionary in Akuapem.27 It was his stance and his later actions on the question of slavery that are of interest here. During his residence in Switzerland, he was questioned about the character of slavery in Africa. The image he painted of the institution was quite different from the descriptions received from the Europeans, missionaries and travelers stationed in West Africa. This latter group characterized slavery there as quite mild in compari- son with its American counterparts. Emphasized in their accounts was that rarely was the ‘heathen’ slaveholder in Africa cruel, as slaves could easily run away, and their handling of slaves was not motivated by economic gain. The typical slave master ate and worked side by side with his slaves.28 Asante, on the other hand, discussed the dis- advantageous power hierarchy under which slaves lived. He noted that they were not allowed to decide whom they would marry. A slave owner could dissolve a marriage between an enslaved man and woman as long as he reimbursed the slave for the bride price he had paid his wife’s family. Children of slaves belonged fully to the master and such children could not inherit anything from their parents since the slave parent’s property reverted to the master. Further, Asante noted

the master can beat and incarcerate his slave; he can put him in stocks, or sell him. He can take the children from their parents and sell them. Only he cannot kill his slave. If a slave has done something that is punishable by death, for example [if] he has raped his mistress or committed a theft of more that $100, he will be exe- cuted ...If there is a death in the master’s family the family is permitted to slaughter one or two slaves.29 Emphasizing this aspect of the character of slavery in West Africa would provide a foundation for Asante, a free member of the Akuapem royal family, to take a particularly strident approach to slavery on his return to West Africa. That return occurred in 1862. Upon arriving home, Asante found that a year earlier, in 1861, the Basel Mission had successfully expanded its reach from Akuapem to the northwest, to include the state of Akyem Abuakwa. There the Mission established a station and school in Kyebi, the Akyem Abuakwa capital, with the support of the Akyem Abuakwa paramount ruler, the Okyenhene.30 In 1872, Asante was assigned to work in Kyebi. As elsewhere, he saw his duty as establishing a Christian congregation that stood in stark contrast and separate from the local culture and authority structures. He, like his fellow Euro- pean missionaries, supported the development of separate Christian residential communities, known as salems, and they often refused to recognize the judicial authority of

Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 ‘heathen’ political leaders when Christians were thought to be subject to unjust or unchristian practices. The political authorities in Akyem Abuakwa were not pleased. They supported the presence of the European missionaries because of their understanding of the economic beneﬁts that missionary education could bring to the state. But they had serious reservations about the missionaries’ efforts ‘to live in physical isolation from the rest, [since] the Abuakwa were a people who found security in greater numbers’.31 Of even greater concern was the fact that a number of the Slavery & Abolition 11 paramount ruler’s enslaved household members began to express interest in the new religion. As noted by Addo-Fening:

The chiefs were particularly determined not to permit the baptism of state functionaries because of the possibility of their being enticed to reside at the salems and per- suaded to give up their normal duties at court in connection with ancestor worship and propitiation of the gods. Stool carriers, drummers, horn-blowers, etc. were the mainstay of the politico-religious festivals and ceremonies considered essential for the stability and well-being of the state ...[Thus] when the okyenhene and his elders met with the missionaries in council [on this matter in November of 1869] the king ...publicly rebuked them and declared his irrevocable opposition to the proselytization of his slaves and servants because of its veiled threat to his authority, his personal prestige and the politico-religious ceremonies of his state.32 The Basel missionaries found this difficult to accept, but they were forced to comply. This situation changed, however, in 1874. In that year, the British government – which had extended its authority to Akuapem in 1850 – prohibited the buying and selling of slaves. It banned their importation or export from their colony, declared all slave children born after 1874 free and allowed slaves to leave their masters. Asante, who had been posted to work in Akyem Abuakwa’s capital of Kyebi in 1874, saw the new law as an opportunity for him to strike a blow at an institution that he had long characterized as repugnant. At the same time, the ordinance provided him with an opportunity to add members to the Kyebi Chris- tian community, whose growth had been stunted because so many of the residents of Kyebi were attached to the Okyenhene and ‘had some small office at [one ceremony or another] to perform’. Asante went on the offensive. He publicized widely the existence of the slave emancipation ordinance passed by the British colonial government. When slaves who wanted to know more about the ordinance visited the mission station, Asante met them and offered to shelter them if they sought to leave their masters. He gave them employment opportunities at the mission, encouraged them to convert to Christianity and reassured them that they need not fear either physical or spiritual retribution from their masters. In 1875, when Special Commissioner Dr V. Skipton Gouldsbury was in Kyebi as part of his duties as a traveling ambassador on behalf of the British government,33 Asante obtained from him ‘definite powers’, that is, acknowledgement, that he had the right to report any person who obstructed the enforcement of the emancipation ordinance. In seeking and obtaining this permission, Asante buttressed his position to challenge and thereby undermine the political authorities in Kyebi. He encouraged many of the enslaved members of the Okyenhene’s slaves to leave their master and to embrace Christianity despite a royal

Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 ban imposed in 1870 by the Okyenhene on the conversion of royal slaves and those indebted to the royal family. While some of the Okyenhene’s slaves refused to leave him, others took advantage of the opportunity to sever ties with their slave owner, to convert to Christianity and to move to the Kyebi salem. The result of both the ordinance and David Asante’s efforts was a massive emigration from Kyebi of former slaves, those attached to the royal family as well as many others enslaved by Akyem chiefs and traders. ‘Food became scarce as labor supplies dwindled. Traders began 12 Sandra E. Greene to avoid the areas ...rich Abuakwans were ruined’.34 This, in turn, brought Asante into more direct conflict with the Okyenhene, who believed that his earlier fears about missionary intentions – that they sought to establish a state within a state – were coming true. As Asante’s status rose – in part from the support he received when the British Special Commissioner Goldsbury visited Kyebi in 1875 – so too did the activities of the Christians in the town become more aggressive. They ‘staged dramatic public con- frontations with [traditional] priests, collectively accusing them of fraud, extortion, and worshipping the devil and [then] challenging them to prove their powers’. And when disputes involving Christians were brought before the Okyenhene, Asante asserted his authority as the leader of the Kyebi Christian community to intervene on their behalf. In one instance, some of his schoolboys were charged in the Okyen- hene’s court with physically assaulting a traditional priest. Asante interrupted the court proceedings and threatened to report the situation to the colonial government if the boys were punished in any way. He also began to settle on his own disputes that arose within his congregation without first getting permission from the Okyen- hene to adjudicate cases that involved these particular Akyem Abuakwa citizens.35 He wrote letters to the colonial government on behalf of Christians convicted of viola- tions in the Okyenhene’s court when those Christians sought to appeal the judgments to Gold Coast Supreme Court. This in turn raised additional fears on the part of the Okyenhene that David Asante was encouraging the British colonial government to remove his ability to exercise judicial authority over Akyem Abuakwa.36 In 1877, the Okyenhene responded. He issued an order banishing David Asante from Akyem Abuakwa. Asante refused to leave. Some palace servants then sought to physically seize Asante and expel him from the state. In the ensuing confrontation, a woman was attacked and beaten. Asante then took the entire matter to the British colonial courts. He sued the palace servants for assault and, in a separate case, charged the Okyenhene with illegal banishment and insult. In response to the charges leveled by Asante, the Okyenhene accused Asante of ‘enticing away his slaves, urging palace functionaries who had converted to abandon their duties at court, causing his Christian friends to desert him, interfering with legal matters, [and] refusing to let Christian teachers write letters on his behalf. [He also accused Asante] of theft, and generally behaving in a provocative manner’.37 In many ways, his complaints echoed the same concerns voiced by Chief Eyo Honesty II of Old Calabar (Nigeria) in 1850 and by the chiefs and headmen of Adansi in 1906. Slaves were too essential for providing important political and economic services to be freed. Asante’s confrontation with local political authorities was by no means unique. Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 Other African missionaries embraced just as fervently the need to bring modernity to Africa via the only vehicle they knew, Christianity. Others were also equally committed to using their faith to end slavery in West Africa. All, however, encountered similar stiff resistance on the part of the political leaders of the communities in which they worked. One such individual was James ‘Holy’ Johnson of Sierra Leone and Nigeria. As the son of Yoruba-speaking parents who had been sold into the Atlan- tic slave trade, rescued by the British Anti-Slavery Squadron and resettled in Sierra Slavery & Abolition 13 Leone, Johnson was born, raised and educated in Sierra Leone by the Anglican CMS between the early 1800s and 1858. In 1866, after having served first as a tutor at a grammar school and then as a catechist, he was ordained as a minister. His approach to his faith was quite similar to that of David Asante’s. As noted in a biography of Johnson, he exhibited ‘fanatical piety’ through much of his adult life. Others remem- ber that ‘his mind ...was always occupied by theology’. His ‘method of evangelization was to meet individuals at home or accost them on the street, and to remind them of their sinful ways and to warn them of God’s impending wrath’.After receiving his ordi- nation and taking full control of his own church, ‘he established an elaborate system of sin-detection ...[in which church elders were expected] to watch the actions, the movement, the thoughts and the statements of members both at home and at work ...for misbehavior’.38 In doing so, he followed the lead of the European missionaries who at the time also employed such tactics in their own congregations in Europe. Johnson, as an African Christian, was not unique in embracing this style of leadership. Asante did the same. In the early 1850s when he was still a student in the local seminary in Akuapem, Asante embraced the strict regime established by the European missionaries and frequently reported on his fellow students if they misbehaved. Sexual misconduct – masturbation and sexual intercourse with the local girls – was of particular concern. All of the students confessed to these acts, except Asante, who was deemed ‘free of sin’. In fact, it was Asante who took it upon himself to confront his fellow students and to report their behavior to the European missionaries.39 When he took charge as an ordained minister of his own congregation, his style, like that of Johnson’s, was to confront others about their ‘misconduct’ not by ‘gossiping behind their backs’, but by ‘openly calling them out about their errors and sins’.40 The fact that his followers, and eventually he himself, were prepared to physically confront the traditional priests in Akyem Abuakwa and to demand from the Christian community strict conformity to the mission’s rules and regulations also suggests that, like Johnson, Asante embraced totally the ethical and regulatory regimes of his European Christian brothers. Johnson, too, preached vociferously against slavery. In 1874, he left Sierra Leone to participate in the effort to minister to the small Christian community in the Nigerian port of Lagos, a major site from which enslaved Africans were being exported to the Americas. A little over two and a half years later, in 1877, he was reassigned to the interior Egba town of Abeokuta. There, he, like Asante, took the CMS society at its word and insisted that ‘slave holders [in the church] should either dismiss their slaves ...or relinquish their posts’. To emphasize his belief that this was a directive that could not be ignored, he discussed what he saw of the situation of slaves in the Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 region:

All able-bodied slaves have some care, but the sickly and inﬁrm have little or none, and may sometimes be found dying, neglected in the streets, from starvation and disease – passersby, or those about whose doors they lie dying, and women amongst them, manifesting stolid indifference and unconcern. The number of such unfortunates is often large when expeditions are very successful and have just returned home. Instances of individual cruelty and barbarity to slaves are not 14 Sandra E. Greene wanting. Slave holding mistresses have been known to be guilty of them. Slave-wives have been sometimes sold off with their babies born to their masters to pay debts. Slave-babies may sometimes be found by the side of their dead mothers, thrown out on the muddy bank of some river ...Their carcases [sic] are often thrown into some rivers, in groves, and other ﬁelds to be food for wolves and vultures, which sometimes surfeit on them.41 Although Johnson’s efforts were directed only at church members, the local political authorities in Abeokuta and in the other Egba towns region were alarmed. As noted by Johnson’s biographer, E.Y. Ayandele,

the Egba Authorities ...never lived down the suspicion that the British authorities in Lagos harboured annexationist intentions against their territory. [Thus] they looked upon the CMS circular – even though the order for slave holders to free their slaves was directed at their own members – as the thin edge of the wedge which the white man was driving in, to demand a general manumission of all their slaves and to take away their country from them. The response to Johnson’s attack on slavery was swift. The Abeokuta leadership considered waylaying and beheading him. Eventually, however, they decided to expel him from the area. Like Asante, Johnson refused to leave. He remained absolutely defiant, convinced of the righteousness of his actions. Despite their refusal to be intimidated, and despite the antislavery stances of both the British government and the missionary societies with which they were affiliated, neither Asante nor Johnson was able to rally sufficient support to generate an antislavery movement. Their efforts failed and both were eventually expelled from the areas in which they were working. Several reasons explain this turn of events. Both the CMS and the Basel Missionary society, as noted, had taken strong stances against slavery and passed resolutions to insist that members of their missionary communities were not to include slaveholders. Realities on the ground, however, deterred most missionaries from implementing these restrictions. Many of the Africans affiliated with the mission, whether as ordained ministers, catechists or simply congregation members, were slaveholders themselves. To insist that these individuals give up their human property threatened the very viability of their missionary work. Ordained African ministers were seen as critical to the future of the church. They were the ones who were expected to eventually take the lead in organizing new congregations as the church expanded. To insist that they give up their slaves might jeopardize the mission’s future. Catechists were central to the current work of the Mission. It was they who taught, preached and helped the European missionaries produce local language religious texts. If they were forced to divest themselves of their slaves, they Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 might also leave the mission work all together. Rarely were they or the African ordained ministers paid sufficient sums to allow them to abandon totally other forms of income generation. They needed assistance to farm and trade, yet they operated in areas in which free labor hardly existed. To expect ordinary members of the mission who were slaveholders to free their slaves was threatening to the economic and social standing of these individuals, and would undermine the efforts of the mission to expand its membership beyond the few slaves and socially marginalized Slavery & Abolition 15 individuals who made up much of the early congregations. And, as evident in the hos- tility that James Johnson felt in Abeokuta, many leaders of the areas in which the missionaries operated were also not prepared to tolerate an attack on slavery, since they depended on them to manage their households, religious rituals and affairs of state. As a result, most missionaries stationed in West Africa, African and European alike were not prepared to enforce with any degree of rigor the antislavery resolutions passed by the Missions’ governing councils in Europe. They argued that African slavery was not like that found in the Americas, but instead was a more mild form. They marshaled biblical texts to buttress their claims and chose to ignore the kinds of abuses that Asante and Johnson documented that were becoming more common as African slaveholders shifted their use of slaves to meet the demand for agricultural commodities in Europe as the trade in African slaves to the Americas came to an end.42 Colonial governments were not any more anxious to take aggressive actions against slavery in West Africa than the missionaries. As many different historians have noted, ‘none of the colonial powers was in a hurry to tackle slavery itself’.43 They feared ‘the possibility of resistance led by chiefs’ and were ‘anxious to do nothing that would unnecessarily weaken the capacity of the chiefs to control and administer their subjects on behalf of the colonial state’.44 ‘Colonial officials [also] repeatedly insisted that domestic slavery could not be abolished without causing massive uphea- val and completely destroying agricultural, craft and commercial production ...’45 ‘[As a result], in many areas, they discouraged slaves from asserting their freedom and used various methods to uphold the institution. They returned fugitive slaves to their owners, denied them access to land or wage labour, forced them to ransom themselves, arrested them as vagrants, or put them to work for the administration. They often referred slave cases, which could not be heard in colonial courts, to Native or Muslim courts, usually to the detriment of the slave ...[and] they failed to inform slaves of their rights, while often assuring owners that they would be allowed to keep their slaves’.46 David Asante and James Johnson certainly failed in their efforts to change minds about slavery. They were unable to generate support for its abolition in the areas where they worked despite the existence of popular understanding, expressed in song and proverb, that slavery brought deep anguish to those who were enslaved. And they also found themselves isolated and marginalized. When Asante appeared in the British colonial court to bring charges against the traditional authorities in Akyem Abuakwa after he was banned and then attacked, it was Asante who was strongly reprimanded for his behavior. The judge who heard the case admonished Asante saying he had ‘shown great want of that consideration and courtesy by which his relations with the King, whether Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 as a Missionary or as a subject, ought to have been characterized’.47 He did not uphold the Okyenhene’s expulsion order, but he reemphasized his opinion that Asante had ‘acted injudiciously and provocatively towards the king, ...[in displaying] a swaggering and unconciliatory demeanour’.48 The governor of the colony, Sanford Freeling, then weighed in as well. He stated the Asante’s behavior was a threat to the stability of Akyem Abuakwa.49 He then strongly recommended that the Basel Mission remove Asante from Kyebi and Akyem Abuakwa all together, and that he be reassigned elsewhere. 16 Sandra E. Greene The Basel Mission complied. James Johnson faced a similar rebuke from his own missionary society as well. The CMS removed him from Abeokuta.50

Conclusion This article began by posing several questions: What did Africans think about the slave trade and slavery? How did they respond to the human suffering they witnessed? Given the fact that the imposition of laws outlawing the slave trade and slavery came largely from outside the continent, what motivated those Africans who were prepared to take public stances against the slave trade and slavery to do so? Based on the evidence cited here, it is clear that West Africans had very mixed thoughts about both the slave trade and slavery. Some, especially local African political and religious leaders, took the institutions for granted, as essential to the running of their communities; others debated who was legally enslaveable, but they too rarely questioned whether enslaving others was ethically acceptable or not. Expressions of sympathy and revulsion about the harm done to peoples and communities existed, although much work remains to uncover these minority voices. It was this latter set of voices – evident in proverbs and songs discussed here – and their own experiences of either being enslaved, being the descendants of the enslaved, or seeing others enslaved that encouraged a few western educated Africans, Hill, Asante and Johnson, to accept the antislavery and antislave trade frameworks offered by the missionaries who educated them. Accepting this European view as expressed in the Christian faith they adopted allowed them to make sense of what they themselves found morally repugnant. None of these individuals, however, were able to counter the social, political and economic forces operating in the region that were far more concerned about other matters. For slaveholders, how could they continue to operate their households, their farms, their trading ventures and their ritual activities without the labor of the enslaved? For the majority of African and European missionaries, how could they retain and expand their congregations if members were expected to divest themselves of their slaves? For colonial governments, how could they expect to manage vast territories under their authority without the assistance of the slaveholding local political elite; how could they avoid these colonies being an economic drain on their home countries when the local economies relied on exports produced by slave labor? The answers offered to these questions meant that the slave trade and slavery in Africa died a very slow death, and the minority voices that denounced slavery remained just that.

Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 Notes [1] The widely accepted notion that it was the enslaved in West Africa who were largely responsible for their own liberation stands in contrast to the situation in the Americas, where historians attribute abolition to efforts by Europeans. See Seymour Drescher and Pieter C. Emmer, Who Abolished Slavery: Slave Revolts and Abolitionism: A Debate with Joa˜o Pedro Marques (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010). [2] The inability of these abolitionists to spur a signiﬁcant antislavery movement within their own communities has led to both their marginalization in the study of the history of Slavery & Abolition 17 abolition in Africa and a deep reluctance on the part of many Africans to address both the history and the ongoing legacy of slavery in their own countries. This is a point that requires extensive discussion but cannot be included here. Studies that address the legacy of slavery in contemporary Africa include Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene, and Martin A. Klein, The Bitter Legacy: African Slavery Past and Present (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2013); Lotte Pelck- mans, ‘Having a Road: Social and Spatial Mobility of Persons of Slave and Mixed Descent in Post-Independence Central Mali’, Journal of African History 53 (2012): 235–55; Mirjam de Bruijn and Lotte Pelckmans, ‘Facing Dilemmas: Former Fulbe Slaves in Modern Mali’, Cana- dian Journal of African Studies 39, no. 1 (2005): 69–95; Benedetta Rossi, ‘Migration and Emancipation in West Africa’s Labour History: The Missing Links’, Slavery and Abolition A Journal of Slave and Post Slave Studies 31, no. 1 (2014): 24–36. [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline; http://abolition.nypl.org/timline (Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture). Maeve Ryan, ‘The Price of Legitimacy in Humanitarian Intervention: Britain, the Right of Search, and the Abolition of the West African Slave Trade, 1807–1867’, in Humanitarian Intervention: A History, ed. Brendan Simms and D.J.B. Trim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 231–80. [4] Suzanne Miers, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade as International Issues, 1890–1939’, in Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Martin Klein (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 21. [5] See, for example, Gareth Austin, Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807–1956 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2005), 205; Andrew F. Clark, ‘The Ties That Bind’: Servility and Dependence among the Fulbe of Bundu (Senegam- bia), c.1930s to 1980s’, in Slavery and Colonial Rule, ed. Suzanne Miers and Martin A. Klein (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 91–108. [6] Don Ohadike, ‘The Decline of Slavery among the Igbo People’,in The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 437–61. [7] Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760–1900 (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 2007), 160; Austin, Labour, Land and Capital 215; Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, ‘Introduction’, in The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 30; Richard Roberts, Liti- gants and Household: African Disputes and Colonial Courts in the French Soudan, 1895– 1912 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2005), 121–2; Martin A. Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 173; Clark, ‘The Ties That Bind’, 94. [8] Cited in David Northrup, The Atlantic Slave Trade. 1st ed. (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1994), 93–4. [9] Akosua Perbi, Domestic Slavery in Asante, 1800–1920. MA Thesis. Department of History, University of Ghana, Legon (1978), 163–4. [10] John Thornton, ‘African Political Ethics and the Slave Trade’,in Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa and the Atlantic, ed. Derek R. Peterson (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 46, 50; John Ralph Willis, ‘Jihad and the Ideology of Enslavement’, in Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, ed. John Ralph Willis (London: Frank Cass, 1985), 16–26; Robin Law, ‘Legal and Illegal Enslavement in West Africa, in the Context of the Tran-Atlantic Slave Trade’,in Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen, ed. Toyin Falola (Trenton, NJ: Africa World

Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 Press, 2003), 513–31. For the most extensive discussion of these debates by Muslims, see Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 166–74. Historians have identified to date at least one Muslim leader who emancipated those among his followers who had been enslaved. This was Alfa Mamadu Dyuhe (or Juhe), who led the Hubbu rebellion in Futa Jallon in the second half of the nineteenth century. That Dyuhe’s emancipation acts did not last throughout the 40 years of the polity’s existence is also significant. See Roger Botte, ‘Re´volte, Pouvoir, Religion: Les Hubbu du Futa-Jalon (Guineé)’, Journal of African History 29, no. 3 (1988): 391–413; and Boubacar 18 Sandra E. Greene Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), passim. [11] Marion Kilson, Kpele Lala (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 158–9, 244. [12] Cited in Akosua Perbi, Oral Tradition and the Study of Slavery in Ghana. Paper presented by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences Symposium on Oral Tradition, Accra, 30 January 2002, 11. [13] J.G. Christaller, Three Thousand six hundred Ghanaian Proverbs (from the Asante and Fante language (Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1990), 82. [14] Christaller, Three Thousand, 149. [15] All these proverbs were collected by German missionary Bernhard Schlegel and Anlo seminary students and teachers (including J. Quist and R. Kwami) between 1857 and 1915. See E. Bu¨rgi, ‘Sammlung von Ewe-Sprichwo¨tern’, Archiv fu¨r Anthropologie Braunschweig 13 (1915): 417, 425, 427, 432, 433, 435. [16] Lamin Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 139, 142–3. [17] For a discussion of the debates that surrounded the Niger Expedition, see Seymour Drescher, ‘Emperors of the World: British Abolitionism and Imperialism’, in Abolitionism and Imperial- ism in Britain, Africa and the Atlantic, ed. Derek Peterson (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 139–42. [18] Rev. James Frederick Shoen and Mr. Samuel Crowther, Journals of the Rev. James Frederick Shoen and Mr. Samuel Crowther (London: Frank Cass, 1970; 1841), 67–9. [19] Shoen and Crowther, Journals, 177. [20] The kinds of responses recorded by Crowther were heard by others. In 1850, nine years after Crowther’s conversation with the slave trader on the Niger River, a Scottish missionary, Hope Masterson Waddell, wrote of his conversation with Eyo Honesty II of Old Calabar. He, too, expressed understanding of the suffering imposed on the enslaved by their very condition, but responded to the missionary’s entreaties to end involvement in the slave trade by declaring that he could not do without slaves .... In his own defense ...he [could only] state that he did no employ men to steal slaves for him, nor would he knowingly buy those who which were stolen ...although he admitted that they were [still] obtained in various objectionable ways. [21] Sanneh, Abolitionists, 156. [22] For other expressions of opposition, see Kwabena Akurang-Parry, ‘‘We shall Rejoice to See the Day when Slavery Shall Cease to Exist’: The Gold Coast Times, the African Intelligentsia and Abolition in the Gold Coast’, History in Africa 31 (2004): 19–41; and Mann, Slavery and the Birth, 179. [23] For a brief review of David Asante’s life, see Sonia Abun-Nasr, David Asante’, in Dictionary of African Biography: The online authority on the African American Experience, ed. Louis Gates Jr. and Emmanuel K. Akyeampong. Accessed 16 January 2014. For a longer study of David Asante, see Sonia Abun-Nasr, Afrikaner und Missionar: Die Legensgeschichte von David Asante (Basel: Schlettwein Pub., 2003). [24] Peter Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders on the Gold Coast: Towards an Understanding of Social

Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 Bondage in West Africa (Basel: Schlettwein Publ, 2000), 18. [25] Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders, 20. [26] Ibid. [27] See Abun-Nasr, Afrikaner, Chapter Four, and Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders,20–2. [28] Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders,20–1. [29] Abun Nasr, Afrikaner, 125f., 301. [30] For a more complete discussion of the early history of the Basel Mission in Akyem Abuakwa, see Robert Addo-Fening, Akyem Abuakwa, 1700–1943: From Ofori Panin to Sir Ofori Atta (Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Arts, 2000), 56–7. Slavery & Abolition 19 [31] Addo-Fening, Akyem Abuakwa, 59. [32] Ibid., 60. [33] Gouldsbury traveled to a number of different places to secure British political and economic interests on the Volta River, in the northern trade town of Salaga and in Appolonia. [34] Natasha Adriene Gray, ‘The Legal History of Witchcraft in Colonial Ghana: Akyem Abuakwa, 1913–1943’ (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2000), 97. According to Raymond Dumett and Marion Johnson, some 200-300 royal slaves left the Okyenhene upon hearing of the ordinance. See their article, ‘Britain and the Suppression of Slavery in the Gold Coast Colony, Ashanti and the Northern Territories’, in The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 87. [35] Gray, ‘The Legal History’, 97–8. [36] Scholars who have studied Asante’s work in Akyem Abuakwa have also speculated that Asante was motivated to take such a strong stance against slavery, in part, because of his desire to establish his leadership over a community in ways that were thwarted within the traditional political structures of his home community in Akuapem, where as a patrilineal descendant of the matri- lineal ruling elite he had few opportunities to gain political inﬂuence. See Gray, ‘The Legal History’; Addo-Fening, Akyem-Abuakwa, and Abun-Nasr, Afrikaner. [37] For additional details on this confrontation, see Gray, ‘The Legal History’, 97–103; and Addo- Fening, Akyem Abuakwa,63–8. [38] Ayandele, Holy Johnson, 23–30. [39] Abun-Nasr, Afrikaner, Chapter 4. [40] Ibid., 105–6. [41] Cited in Toyin Falola, ‘Missionaries and Domestic Slavery in Yorubaland in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Religious History 14, no. 2 (1986): 185. [42] For examples of these kinds of arguments, see Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders 78, 100–3; Trevor R Getz, Slavery and Reform in West Africa: Toward Emancipation in Nineteenth Century Senegal and the Gold Coast (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004), 61–2. On the chan- ging character of slavery in Africa with the emergence of demand for agricultural commodities, see Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. 2nd ed. (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 166. [43] Suzanne Miers, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade’, 21. [44] Austin, Labour, Land and Capital, 210. [45] Clark, ‘The Ties That Bind’, 93. [46] Miers, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade’, 21. See also Mann, Slavery and the Birth, 13, 181, 194; Martin Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 126–58; Alice Bellegamba, ‘Slavery and Emancipation in the Colonial Archives: British Ofﬁcials, Slave-Owners and Slaves in the Protectorate of the Gambia (1890–1936)’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 39, no. 1 (2005): 5–41; Martin A. Klein, ‘Slavery and French Rule in the Sahara’, in Slavery and Colonial in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Martin Klein (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 199), 73–90; and Roberts and Miers, ‘Introduction’, 3–68. [47] Gray, ‘The Legal History’, 102. Note Gray and Addo-Fening offer different names for the judge in the case and different dates for the beginning of the trial. [48] Addo-Fening, Akyem Abuakwa, 67.

Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015 [49] Gray, ‘The Legal History’, 102. [50] Descriptions of these two in recent biographies have reinforced the notion that their failures were their own. They are said to have ‘show[n] too much zeal’; they acted ‘without any reflec- tion’, and were ‘daring if not fool-hard[y] by giving priority to dogma over pragmatism’. They were ‘incapable of wit or humour, hardly ever to laugh’; they exhibited ‘fanatical piety and narrow-mindedness’ and acted in a ‘high handed’ manner out of a ‘hunger for political power’. Some of these characterizations are certainly apt, but they seem to dominate the narratives about these two men, because they did indeed fail to generate support for their efforts 20 Sandra E. Greene among the local political elites, both African and British. Others – operating in Europe at an earlier time, under very different political, religious and technological circumstances, people such as Thomas Clarkson, who was so important in the antislave trade and antislavery movement in Britain, are remembered quite differently. In her biography of Clarkson, for example, Ellen Gibson Wilson characterizes him as ‘courageous, visionary, disciplined, and self-sacrifi- cing’. The fact that he, like Asante and Johnson, was also ‘guileless, tactless, obsessive, impetu- ous, and humourless’ is subsumed under the concluding description of him as a ‘genius’. Ellen Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), x. In a more recent book on the history of abolition in Britain, Adam Hochschild describes Clarkson as ‘one of the tow- ering figures in the history of human rights’. Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 4. See also Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 433–45. No such praise, or even interest, exists about the antislavery activities of David Asante or James Johnson. Downloaded by [Al Akhawayn University - Mohammed VI Library] at 15:24 14 September 2015