Where do South America's Africans come from? According to this chart (photographed in Suriname) all over the African west coast. Some may even have come from much further inland, perhaps as far as East Africa. Here are a few things you may not have known about 18th century slavery:
Where do South America's Africans come from? According to this chart (photographed in Suriname) all over the African west coast. Some may even have come from much further inland, perhaps as far as East Africa. Here are a few things you may not have known about 18th century slavery:
- Only 25% of slaves worked in the fields. Most of the others were used as clerks, domestic servants etc.
- The best slaves had slaves of their own (e.g John Steadman's wife, Joanna, had her own maids in the 1770s, even though a slave herself).
- Not all Africans in Guyana arrived as slaves. After the abolition of slavery in 1834, the British sent out naval patrols into the Atlantic, stopping slave ships. Liberated slaves were taken to St Helena. However, they couldn't be sent back to Africa (no-one knew where they'd come from, and they were at risk of simply being re-captured), and so they were offered new lives in other British colonies. Many chose to go, as 'freemen', to British Guiana.
