Tag Archives: Bicentenary of the Anti-Slavery Society

Rethinking the Aborigines Protection Society through its Informants

By Darren Reid, University College London

This is the first in a series of posts by researchers drawing on the archive of the Anti-Slavery Society, part of the Bodleian’s We Are Our History project.

 

Within the archives of the Anti-Slavery Society are the correspondence records of its cousin, the Aborigines’ Protection Society (1837-1909), which merged with the Anti-Slavery Society in 1909. The Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS) was administered from its headquarters in London by a range of middle-class White philanthropists who felt dissatisfied with the state of relations between Britain and the range of Indigenous peoples who found themselves within the professed territories of the British Empire.

Image from the cover of the publication 'The Aborigines Friend' in January 1850 depicting the meeting of five individuals from differnt parts of the world in their traditional clothing.

Figure 1: Cover of The Aborigines’ Friend, 2 no. 21 (January 1850).

Problematically, the APS was not opposed to colonization, but only believed that colonization could be done in a nicer and more “humane” fashion by ensuring that Indigenous land was taken in a consensual and equitable manner, and that Indigenous peoples were educated to enjoy the best that European superiority could offer. At first glance, such a blatantly imperialist raison d’être may seem to limit the value of the APS as a subject of historical inquiry. For, in an academic and social environment which values diversity and seeks to shatter ethnocentric and racist discourses, do we really want to hear from a group of nineteenth-century do-gooders trumpeting the “White Man’s Burden” to assuage their imperial guilt?

However, while the APS was run by a small group of middle-class telescopic philanthropists in Britain, it was dependent upon a network of informants who wrote letters about colonial events from across the British Empire, and these letters are extremely valuable for assessing diverse lived experiences of empire. The APS correspondent archive contains over 9,000 letters from men and women, settlers and Indigenous peoples, convicts and lawyers, missionaries and soldiers, and everything in-between. Each of these informants interpreted the purpose of the APS in ways reflecting the diversity of their interests and attitudes towards empire.

Here, I examine one particularly complex case study to demonstrate the diverse perspectives on empire that can be found in the APS collections: the Thaba Nchu succession dispute of the 1880s. Thaba Nchu was a small kingdom in southern Africa which, in the mid nineteenth century, found itself within the borders of the newly established Orange Free State. The Orange Free State technically fell under the suzerainty of the British Empire, but due to a complicated series of rebellions and treaties, it was effectively an independent Afrikaner state. The sovereignty of Thaba Nchu was therefore a hot-button issue: as an independent kingdom within an independent state within a suzerain empire, there was no clear consensus on who was actually in control.

Map of southern Africa showing Thaba Nchu in relation to Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

Figure 2: Map showing Thaba Nchu in relation to Cape Town, Bloemfontein, and Johannesburg. © Darren Reid

The indeterminacy of Thaba Nchu’s status led to crisis in 1880, when the death of the paramount chief led to a succession dispute between two contenders: Samuel Moroka and Tshipinare. Moroka favored strengthening ties with Britain, whereas Tshipinare wanted to strengthen ties with the Orange Free State. Tshipinare made an under-the-table deal with the president of the Orange Free State, Johannes Brand, who arrested Moroka and banished him in return for a generous cession of land. In response, Moroka travelled to London to petition the British government to intervene and back him as the true chief of Thaba Nchu.

Throughout Thaba Nchu’s succession dispute, the APS received letters from at least ten different informants hoping to establish their own narrative of events, five of whom I will discuss in this blog post. There was Samuel Moroka himself, who tried to convince Britain of its obligation to intervene. There were also two settlers, David Smith of the Cape Colony and Edmund Bourdillon of the Orange Free State, who capitalized on Samuel Moroka’s petition to bring their own Anglo-Dutch rivalry before the British public. Finally, there were Richard and Elizabeth Whitfield, a brother and sister living in London who used the succession dispute to argue for the illegitimacy of British intervention within independent states. Attending to the differences in how these informants wrote about Thaba Nchu is suggestive of the multiplicity of perspectives on empire that can be found within the APS correspondent records.

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Bicentenary of the Anti-Slavery Society: first minute book digitised

On 31st January 1823 a group calling itself the Committee on Slavery assembled at the Kings Head Tavern, Poultry, in the City of London. William Smith M.P. was in the Chair and those present included Zachary Macaulay, Samuel Hoare, Thomas Clarkson, Samuel Gurney, Thomas Babington, Thomas Hodgkin and William Wilberforce junior. The committee agreed that it was ‘deeply impressed with the magnitude and number of the evils attached to the system of slavery which prevails in many of the colonies of Great Britain, a system which appears … to be opposed to the spirit and precepts of Christianity as well as repugnant to every dictate of natural humanity and justice’ and resolved to found an association ‘for mitigating and gradually abolishing the state of slavery throughout the British dominions’ (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 20, E2/1, pages 1-2).

Opening page of the minute book of the Anti-Slavery Society recording, in manuscript, its first meeting.

Opening page of the first minute book of the Anti-Slavery Society, MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 20, E2/1, page 1 [click to enlarge]. © Anti-Slavery International      To mark the organisation’s bicentenary the minute book has been digitised and is now available from Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts and Digital Bodleian.

This was the beginning of a campaigning organisation, the successor of which is still in existence today, two hundred years later. The Committee on Slavery changed its name a number of times during the 19th century but came to be known as the Anti-Slavery Society and extended its focus from British territories to a commitment to end slavery worldwide. It merged in 1909 with the Aborigines Protection Society (founded in 1837) which campaigned against the ill-treatment of indigenous peoples. In 1990 the Society changed its name to Anti-Slavery International and continues to campaign against modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking.

 

The Society’s archive was purchased for the Bodleian Library in 1951, with further tranches of papers added in later decades, and is available for consultation in the Weston Library. The archive includes:

  • minute books from 1823 to 1935
  • long runs of correspondence from many parts of the world, bringing examples of slavery to the Society’s attention
  • correspondence with government departments
  • territorial files
  • lantern slides and photographs
  • financial papers
  • newspaper cuttings and printed ephemera
  • the records of associated groups such as the Mico Charity, the Committee for the Welfare of Africans in Europe and the British Armenia Committee

The Bodleian also holds The Anti-Slavery Reporter, published by the Society since 1825 with various changes of title.

The archive records key events during the Society’s history including the organisation of the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, the campaign against the atrocities perpetrated against enslaved labourers in the Congo and in Peru, the lobbying of the League of Nations and later the United Nations leading to international agreements to end slavery and the promotion of human rights for indigenous peoples. The Society’s work had a global reach from the apprenticeship system in the Caribbean, forced labour in Russian timber camps and pass laws in Africa to lynching in America and Mui Tsai in China and southeast Asia.

Oil painting of the Anti-Slavery Society Convention in 1841 showing packed room of delegates listening to a speaker.

The Anti-Slavery Society Convention in 1840 by Benjamin Robert Haydon. Oil on canvas, 1841. NPG 599. © National Portrait Gallery, London. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

To mark the organisation’s bicentenary the minute book recording the first meeting has been digitised and is now available from Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts and Digital Bodleian.