The Liberated African Department of Sierra Leone: Administering a British Interventionist Policy and Its Human Consequences, 1808-1863

Abstract

In the decades following the British legislative abolition of the slave trade in 1807, approximately 100,000 Africans were liberated at Sierra Leone, and “disposed of” by the Liberated African Department. For over half a century, this department was integrated deeply into the fabric of colonial life. In its local interpretations of official policy, it demonstrated many of the tensions and contradictions inherent in abolition policy. Its growth and demise over the course of these decades echoes in some important ways the evolution of humanitarian, anti-slavery and labour ideologies in the British Empire.

In 1848, a “most extensive and searching investigation” was launched into allegations of corruption – a conspiracy to defraud the government and to deprive the recently liberated Africans of foodstuffs. This paper uses the evidence compiled in that inquiry as a lens through which to examine the department’s routine practices, the imperialist discourses that underlay them, and the deep-seated anxieties it translated into interventionist practice.