Drawing on a rare collection of court documents relating to the prosecution of three slave traders operating illegally in Liberia in 1813, Emma Christopher has woven together a fascinating account of how the transatlantic slave trade functioned following Britain's Abolition Act of 1807. Freedom in White and Black makes an important contribution to the historiography of the slave trade by providing a richly detailed study of several key individuals, including British and American slavers, enslaved Africans employed on the coast, and captive Africans who narrowly escaped the middle passage and instead became receptive settlers in Sierra Leone.
What sets this study apart from most is how Christopher is able to portray the experiences of enslaved Africans who worked for foreign slave traders on the African coast. The story begins with Tom Ball and a man named Tamba, both enslaved, whose daily work is to oversee the dozens, or hundreds, of children, women and men who suffered in coastal barracoons while the slave traders awaited a slave ship and a buyer. Tom Ball and Tamba, as well as three other African men, eventually testified against their former owners after the illegal operation was shut down by a British antislavery patrol, providing invaluable insight into an aspect of the slave trade for which sources are extremely scarce.
Another important contribution of this book is its description of the lives of the former slaves and slavers in the decades following the 1813 trial. Christopher shows how the slavers were able to quickly resume relatively prosperous lives, one continuing in the slave trade and the other two ‘banished’ to Australia, where they lived comfortably. The 233 captives, by contrast, were taken to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where they became part of the community of so-called liberated Africans and navigated a foreign world in which their rights were restricted by British ‘apprenticeships’ or forced conscription into the British army.
The book is structured more like historical non-fiction than a scholarly monograph, concentrating on the story and characters rather than a broader historical argument. While Christopher does not explicitly engage with the historiography of West Africa in the era of the slave trade or the historiography of the abolition era in West Africa, she cites relevant works in the endnotes, and the book includes an extensive bibliography. The narrative is compelling and the historical actors are described in enough detail to appeal to both general and scholarly audiences.
Freedom in White and Black will be of tremendous use to students and scholars alike who are interested in the history of Liberia and Sierra Leone, the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition, and African history in the early 19th century. It is a pleasure to read in spite of the sometimes gruelling story it tells. And it is a fitting tribute to the courage and endurance of enslaved Africans and their descendants who played crucial roles in the creation of innumerable societies in Africa and the Americas.
