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Envoys of Abolition: British Naval Officers and the Campaign Against the Slave Trade in West Africa
Contributor(s): Wills, Mary (Author)
ISBN: 1789620783     ISBN-13: 9781789620788
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
OUR PRICE:   $148.50  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: November 2019
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- History | Europe - Great Britain - Georgian Era (1714-1837)
- History | Africa - West
- History | Maritime History & Piracy
Dewey: 381.440
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6.4" W x 9.3" (1.20 lbs) 256 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - British Isles
- Cultural Region - West Africa
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
After Britain's Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, a squadron of Royal Navy vessels was sent to the West Coast of Africa tasked with suppressing the thriving transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on previously unpublished papers found in private collections and various archives in the UK
and abroad, this book examines the personal and cultural experiences of the naval officers at the frontline of Britain's anti-slavery campaign in West Africa. It explores their unique roles in this 60-year operation: at sea, boarding slave ships bound for the Americas and 'liberating' captive
Africans; on shore, as Britain resolved to 'improve' West African societies; and in the metropolitan debates around slavery and abolitionism in Britain. Their personal narratives are revealing of everyday concerns of health, rewards and strategy, to more profound questions of national honour,
cultural encounters, responsibility for the lives of others in the most distressing of circumstances, and the true meaning of 'freedom' for formerly enslaved African peoples. British anti-slavery efforts and imperial agendas were tightly bound in the nineteenth century, inseparable from ideas of
national identity. This is a book about individuals tasked with extraordinary service, military men who also worked as guardians, negotiators, and envoys of abolition.