The East African Slave Trade
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The Makololo: A Zambian Kingdom
Introduction In 1863 the demoralised remnants of the Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) withdrew from the region we now know as Malawi. Their sad story is told in Magomero and the East African Slave Trade. Behind them they left… Continue reading
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The Makololo: Origins and the Mfecane
Introduction Livingstone’s arrival in the Shire Valley in 1859 put in motion a chain of events that in 1891 led to Britain formally taking possession of a land and its people that was initially named the British Central Africa Protectorate,… Continue reading
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Colonists and Slavery in Malawi – 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
Travelogues and Other Memories 