The African Activists Who Challenged Colonial

(WIB) – When historians and the public think about the end of domestic slavery in West Africa, they often imagine colonial governors issuing decrees and missionaries working to end local traffic in enslaved people.

Two of my recent publications tell another part of the story. I am a historian of West Africa, and over the past five years, I have been researching anti-slavery ideas and networks in the region as part of a wider research project.

My research reveals that colonial administrations continued to allow domestic slavery in practice and that African activists fought this.

In one study, I focused on Francis P. Fearon, a trader based in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. He exposed pro-slavery within the colonial government through numerous letters written in the 1890s (when the colony wa