The Enslavement of Koelle's Informants

Accounts by 179 Africans of how they came to be enslaved are analysed. The Africans were drawn from a wide range of tribes in Western tropical Africa: their accounts were recorded in Freetown around 1850, and appear in S. W. Koelle's Polyglotta Africana of 1854. The majority of the informants were men enslaved before they were aged thirty; who shortly after enslavement were taken to the coast and shipped, then recaptured, liberated, and brought to Freetown; and who had lived in Freetown for a decade before they were interviewed. One third of the informants had been enslaved after capture in war, another third had been kidnapped by other tribes or by fellow-tribesmen. The remainder had not been enslaved by direct violence, but had been sold by relatives or superiors, Sometimes to meet a debt, sometimes, after a judicial process, as criminals.