On the basis of identifying the likely geographic origins of African names extracted from the Sierra Leone Liberated African registers, this essay estimates the provenance of the transatlantic slave trade that drew on the Cameroons estuary between 1822 and 1837. The sample, drawn from six separate vessels, is broken down by age and sex category and constitutes about 7 per cent of all Africans who left from the region in these years. It makes possible analysis of changes over time, comparisons of age and sex with distance between embarkation point and likely provenance zone, as well as interaction between Old Calabar and the Cameroons regions in the supply of slaves. The great majority of the captives originated within 200 miles of the coast and within 120 miles of the modern border with Nigeria.
non-abolitionist, non-colonial situations will serve to shed light on manumission processes in pre-colonial Igboland. Understanding the pre-colonial processes makes for a greater appreciation of the colonial situation. A comparison of the settler colonies of the British West Indies and the non-settler cases, mainly in East and West Africa, illuminates the problem of emancipation in colonial contexts. State measures, slave/slave-owner responses, the land tenure question, and the changing character of slave dealing are the basic areas of concern. The African slave emancipation literature is meagre and has only just begun to show signs of growth (Moitt 1993). 2 Slave studies in Africa generally lag behind those of the Americas, despite slavery's long-standing significance in African society (Lovejoy 1983, 1986). 3 Consequently, some thorny issues relating to slavery in Africa have not yet been debated. Of continuing interest is the persistence of forms of servitude after abolition in different periods and widely distributed areas of the world (
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