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7 - Freedom?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2024

David Eltis
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
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Summary

More than 200,000 Africans were freed from slave ships after 1807 as a result of British policy. Most were processed by Mixed Commission or Vice-Admiralty Courts and assigned the status of “Liberated Africans,” but their freedom was severely restricted by “apprenticeships” of varying lengths supposedly to prepare them for entering a free labor market. However those entering Cuban or Brazilian jurisdictions had lives little different from slaves. In Sierra Leone, by contrast, apprenticeships were short-term and did not involve plantation labor. Photographic, anthropometric, and per capita income evidence indicates that most did not do as well as the poor European migrants who were emigrating in large numbers to the Americas at this period. Liberated Africans did not have the same opportunities as Whites because of racism. They did not have access to the land distributed by the Homestead Act, and could not enter labor markets on the same terms as Whites. In other words, the anti-Black attitudes that made the transatlantic slave trade possible continued after its abolition. The Liberated African records allow us to examine the African origins of enslaved people. The nineteenth-century slave trade from West Africa had a preponderance of Yoruba, Igbo, and Mende speakers.

Type
Chapter
Information
Atlantic Cataclysm
Rethinking the Atlantic Slave Trades
, pp. 292 - 354
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Freedom?
  • David Eltis, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Atlantic Cataclysm
  • Online publication: 13 December 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009518963.009
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  • Freedom?
  • David Eltis, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Atlantic Cataclysm
  • Online publication: 13 December 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009518963.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Freedom?
  • David Eltis, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Atlantic Cataclysm
  • Online publication: 13 December 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009518963.009
Available formats
×