Freedom’s Debtors is a history of the British movement to abolish the slave trade, told through the lens of the history of early colonial Sierra Leone. After the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, Sierra Leone became the judicial, military, and economic capital of British efforts to interdict slave ships. British antislavery, widely seen as a great sacrifice of economic and political capital on the altar of humanitarianism, was in fact profitable, militarily useful, and crucial to the expansion of British power in West Africa. The colony was closely connected to the elite leaders of ... More

Freedom’s Debtors is a history of the British movement to abolish the slave trade, told through the lens of the history of early colonial Sierra Leone. After the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, Sierra Leone became the judicial, military, and economic capital of British efforts to interdict slave ships. British antislavery, widely seen as a great sacrifice of economic and political capital on the altar of humanitarianism, was in fact profitable, militarily useful, and crucial to the expansion of British power in West Africa. The colony was closely connected to the elite leaders of the abolitionist movement in Britain, and became closely identified with their business interests. This history of the abolition of the British slave trade in Sierra Leone offers insight into how antislavery policies were used to justify colonialism and reframes a moment considered a watershed in British public morality as the beginning of morally ambiguous and exploitative colonial history. From Sierra Leone, it is easier to see British antislavery as it really was: acquisitive, devoted to coercive and gradual schemes for emancipation, militarised, and shot through with imperial ambitions.