Reactions to the problem
of the slave trade45
the entry of 'slave' captives and caravans into the Sudan, the slave-traders
promptly declared that the 'captives' were 'free, wage-earning' porters.^60
The facts were there : but how to put a stop to the slave trade and slavery
when there were 'contracts', 'salaries' and an apparent lack of constraint?
More than ever, to preserve the rights of individuals, it was the slave trade
which had to be attacked. Even if there were no coercion, deportation with
no chance of return constituted in effect a state of slavery, since the 'contrac-
tual ' labourer was at the mercy of his employers. He was alienated, hence he
was no longer 'free'; slavery had wrested him from his home, made him an
exile, a captive. In West Africa, the decree of 1905 was aimed at 'any person
who has entered into an agreement whose object is to deprive a third person
of his liberty'.^61 It is clear enough from the terms of the decree that the legis-
lator's words should, by looking beyond the actual facts of the case, be taken
to mean the intention of the guilty party to reduce a man to slavery, even if
that man's status was not that of a slave. And yet the traffic continued, espe-
cially in the more remote parts of the globe, and only changes in the economic
situation finally brought about its extinction.
There was, of course, no lack of humanitarian protests, but the colonial
system was not concerned about slavery save in the case of'household' slaves,
and so it was easy to denounce traditional practices in Africa which had been
the basis of the Atlantic slave trade. As for the export of labour for the purpose
of 'depriving a third person of his liberty', it was far too useful to be prohib-
ited, as was illustrated only too well when, in 1947, the inspector of the Angolan
Colonial Service, who was a member of the Portuguese Parliament, submitted
a report on 'forced labour' in Angola,^62 only to be given a seven-year prison
sentence for his courage.
As for the 'missions', it is extremely difficult to assess their role. Their
common ideology was to spread the Gospel, but charity often prompted them
to make 'humanitarian' gestures, and the fact that they were settled perma-
nently in the colonies facilitated their action.^63 As far as the Roman Catholic
Church was concerned, Pope Gregory XVI had condemned the slave trade as
being an 'inhuman... commercium' in 1838, and Leo XIII denounced slavery
in 1888, instructing Monseigneur Lavigerie to oppose its establishment in the
French colonies. But on the whole, churches and missions supported coloniza-
tion, preferring to focus their attacks on slave trading in the Muslim countries,
thereby killing two birds with one stone. The Protestant missionary Fowel
Buxton^64 led an expedition into the interior in an attempt to sap the very
foundations of the slave trade (around 1840) but the discovery at this time of a
route to the Sudan by a Turkish captain oponed up new trade outlets, and some
60,000 slaves fell victim to the new trade. As in the earlier period, opposition
to the slave trade and slavery came chiefly from religious sects, particularly
the Evangelicals. One of the most fervent activists was Sir Thomas Fowel