Queens' College and the 'Province of Freedom'
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The Fort Winneba in modern-day Ghana, built by the Royal African Company in 1694.
From the 1500s, European traders established forts along the West African coast. These ‘slave castles’ facilitated the trade in slaves and asserted the power of Europeans that controlled them.
With the Slave Trade Felony Act of 1811, the trade in slaves by British subjects became a criminal offence. Charles Maxwell, Governor of Sierra Leone (1811-15), saw in this act a pretext to track down slave traders. Using militias made up of former slaves, he launched raids on slave forts along the Freetown Peninsula of Sierra Leone, claiming them as British territory. There was additional financial incentive to this pursuit. After 1807, the British Treasury agreed to pay prize money for slaves freed by British naval squadrons. The enterprise of Maxwell and other British military commanders introduced a new dimension to the campaign against enslavers after British abolition: ostensibly a form of national catharsis that assuaged guilt for Britain’s earlier role in the slave trade, it also offered opportunities for further imperialist expansion and financial gain.
Author: Willem Bosman
Title: Voyage de Guinée (Utrecht, 1705)
Shelfmark: P.7.36
Provenance: Donated by Henry Morris (Queens’ m. 1727).
![Led by well-to-do abolitionists such as William Wilberforce and his brother-in-law, James Stephen, the African Institution was supported by many evangelically minded Queens’ members, either as subscribers or in leading roles. Founded in 1807 immediately following Britain’s abolition of slavery, the African Institution was eager to promote ‘civilisation and happiness’ as a means to ‘repair’ ‘those enormous wrongs which the natives of Africa’ had suffered. Their belief that the spread of Anglican Christianity to all Africans would improve their morals was accompanied by a similarly paternalistic worldview that invoked the ‘business of civilization’ as the means to ‘cure’ the disease of ‘indolence’ which, they argued, afflicted ‘all uncivilized people’. They proposed that the diffusion of ‘useful knowledge’ in Africa would enable ‘natives’ to become ‘industrious’ and hardworking. Greater awareness in Britain, they believed, of Africa’s ‘agricultural and commercial faculties’ would awaken for that continent the prospect of ‘legitimate’ commerce that would bring to an end the international trade in enslaved people.
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<b>Title:</b><i> Fifth[-Sixth] report of the directors of the African Institution</i> (London, 1811-12)<br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> C.27.31<br>
<b>Provenance:</b> Donated by Thomas Harrison (Queens’ m. 1797).](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/Enslavement-Salvation/Queens-College-Province-of-Freedom/i-HTdMbGn/0/2af42537/Ti/C-027-031-001-2-Ti.jpg)
![List of subscribers to the African Institution in the year 1811. Many Queens' members subscribed to the African Institution, including <a href="https://www.queensoldlibrary.org/Exhibitions/Enslavement-Salvation/Thomas-Perronet-Thompson"><u>Thomas Perronet Thompson</u></a>
as shown here.
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<b>Title:</b><i> Fifth[-Sixth] report of the directors of the African Institution</i> (London, 1811-12)<br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> C.27.31<br>
<b>Provenance:</b> Donated by Thomas Harrison (Queens’ m. 1797).](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/Enslavement-Salvation/Queens-College-Province-of-Freedom/i-sPJmZS5/0/1dc3d69b/Ti/C-027-031-002-2-Ti.jpg)
![Read the full letter <a href="https://repository.duke.edu/dc/wilberf/wwpst020015"><u>here</u></a>.<br><br>
A free Black American sea captain from Massachusetts named Paul Cuffe seemed to be the ideal enabler for the African Institution’s project to resettle former slaves in Sierra Leone. Cuffe had petitioned the British governor of Sierra Leone to provide opportunities for farming and fishing that would ‘encourage’ Black Americans to relocate to the colony. Cuffe was invited to London to meet with William Wilberforce and the African Institution who felt strongly that the ‘opportunity for promoting the civilization of Africa, through the means of Paul Cuffe should not be lost’. Written by Wilberforce against the backdrop of hostilities with America in 1813, this letter to Thomas Harrison (Queens’ m. 1797) emphasises Wilberforce’s wish to acquire for Cuffe a government license to ‘secure [his cargo] against Capture, so that we may obtain P. Cuffe for Sierra Leone if Ministers will permit.’ In the years prior to his death in 1817, Cuffe transported just ten black families from America to Sierra Leone, before becoming concerned that many in America saw the scheme merely as a means to remove free Black people from American society.
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<b>Title:</b> Letter from William Wilberforce to Thomas Harrison, 5 August 1813<br>
<b>Source:</b> Wilberforce Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University<br><br>](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/Enslavement-Salvation/Queens-College-Province-of-Freedom/i-hCbmBF7/0/5385be83/Ti/Correspondence%201813%20-%2015%20p.4-Ti.jpg)
