Travelogues and Other Memories

The East African Slave Trade

  • Colonists and Slavery in Malawi Part 1 – Pre-Colonial Africa, The Empty Land

    Introduction Malawi, or the British Central Africa Protectorate as it then was, did not become a British colony until 1891 but the first British people to travel there with an intent to settle were missionaries and they arrived in the… Continue reading

    Colonists and Slavery in Malawi Part 1 – Pre-Colonial Africa, The Empty Land

  • Burton, Speke and Farhan

    In May 1854 Lieutenant Richard Francis Burton arrived in Aden having convinced the Royal Geographical Society to fund an expedition to explore Somaliland with the objective of discovering the upper reaches of the Nile. Burton was an officer in the… Continue reading

    Burton, Speke and Farhan

  • The Bombay Africans

    The Bombay Africans The Royal Geographical Society (RGS) tells us: “Originally forced into slavery in Africa, the group who came to be known as the ‘Bombay Africans’ were liberated by the British Royal Navy from Arab slaving boats and taken… Continue reading

    The Bombay Africans

  • James Chuma after 1874

    The Return of the Black Explorer James Chuma was the most famous of the liberated slaves whose early life at the Magomero mission and contribution to Livingstone’s last expedition 1865-74, is described in a previous article (here). After returning to… Continue reading

    James Chuma after 1874

  • Magomero and The Nasik Boys

    The Black Explorers This is not the story of famous white explorers, it is the story of some of the black African men, boys and women, many of whom were freed slaves, who walked with them. It is often suggested… Continue reading

    Magomero and The Nasik Boys

  • Rigby, Livingstone & The UMCA

    Introduction Between 1808 and 1900 tens of thousands of liberated slaves, African men, women and children, predominantly from central and eastern Africa, were disembarked by the Royal Navy at Aden, Bombay, Cape Town, the Seychelles, Mauritius and Freretown in Kenya.… Continue reading

    Rigby, Livingstone & The UMCA

  • The Royal Navy & The East African Slave Trade – 1808 to 1853

    Introduction Between 1640 and 1807 approximately 12 million Africans were transported from the west coast of Africa to the Americas; around 3.4 million of those were transported on British Ships. In May 1787 the first meeting of the Society for… Continue reading

    The Royal Navy & The East African Slave Trade – 1808 to 1853

  • The East African Maritime Slave Trade

    Sometime between 30 and 40 AD, when Tiberius or his nephew Caligula was the emperor of Rome, an unknown Greek or Roman merchant wrote a trader’s guide, a “periplus”, to the Indian Ocean. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea covers… Continue reading

    The East African Maritime Slave Trade

  • Magomero and The East African Slave Trade

    The slave trade in Africa was buyer driven. It was complex and fragmented trade but generally the Europeans took enslaved people from the west coast and from south of the Zambezi River in the east while the trade on the… Continue reading

    Magomero and The East African Slave Trade

  • An Image of Slavery

    This photograph was taken in Stone Town, Zanzibar by an unknown missionary around 1890. The original is a lantern slide measuring just 83 x 83 mm, the width of a credit card, yet in that tiny space, it exemplifies the… Continue reading

    An Image of Slavery