ABSTRACT
Understanding the relationship that developed between West Africa, Great Britain, and the United States through the Atlantic slave trade is crucial to understanding the origins of the Freetown colony and the introduction of Western education to West Africa. According to W.E.B.Du Bois, “that sinister traffic, on which the British Empire and the American Republic were largely built, cost black Africa no less than 100,000,000 souls, the wreckage of its political and social life, and left the continent in precisely that state of helplessness which invites aggression and exploitation.”1 Africans were seized from their homes and exchanged for European manufactured goods and then transported to the Americas where they worked to produce sugar, cotton, rice, and other raw materials to supply the industries of Europe. After the British declared an abolition of the slave trade in 1807, this last process continued as cheap African labor was used to extract precious minerals and other natural and agricultural resources that were then shipped to Europe for processing. The finished products were then sold back to Africa and the world.2 While primary responsibility for these developments may lie with the dominant forces of Western industry and military technology, a level of cooperation and complicity among African actors contributed to the process. The historical question arises: what was the role of teachers and scholars in this process?
