Liberated Africans and the Study of Slavery: New Directions

• Shantel George, University of Glasgow
• Jake Subryan Richards, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Maeve Ryan, King’s College London
• Richard Anderson, Aberdeen University
• Chair: Christine Whyte, University of Glasgow

From 1807 until the end of the 19th century, Africans ‘liberated’ from illegal slaving vessels were re-settled in West Africa, the Cape Colony, Kenya, across the Caribbean and in South America. These tens of thousands of men, women and children endured enslavement, some survived the experience of liberation, but many did not. This roundtable brings together scholars working across Africa and the Atlantic tracing the lives and legacies of Liberated Africans. How do these new studies of abolition, liberation and survival change our understanding of slavery and its legacies? What is the role of scholars of slavery and abolition in public history? Why has ‘abolition’ be co-opted so often as a top-down ‘good’ gifted by the British Empire? How do social and political histories of Liberated Africans correct these notions?