Involuntary African Indentured Labor, 1800-1914

FAIN: FEL-301846-25

Henry Barrett Lovejoy
University of Colorado, Boulder (Boulder, CO 80303-1058)

Research and writing leading to a book on the lax enforcement of anti-slavery laws and migratory patterns of African laborers, their enslavement, and subsequent use as indentured laborers around the world from 1800-1914.  

This project will provide the first book length analysis of a global survey of involuntary African indentured labor, known historically as "Liberated Africans," which I conducted and completed in June 2023. My assessment of the survey data alters the perception of the demise of slavery during the Age of Abolition because 1) there were, in fact, higher degrees of government complicity in indenturing "freed" people removed from the slave trade than previously recognized; and 2) there remain significant and unaccounted for narratives that reveal stories of enslavement under the guise of “liberation.” This proposed book challenges the existing scholarship to show that at least eighteen nations, not just Britain, benefited from slave trade blockades by exploiting over 700,000 "Liberated Africans" globally. It is a quantitative, spatial, and chronological analysis of the suppression of the slave trade, with a qualitative interpretation that pays particular attention to victim experiences.