ABSTRACT
Most slaves, maroons, and other African groups seeking parity and protection understood the Company's pro-slavery policies and resisted accordingly. Even far a philanthropic enterprise pledged to fight slavery and the slave trade, the Imperial British East Africa Company's redemption of 1,421 runaway slaves in Rabai within weeks of receiving its lease to govern the coastal strip was a dramatic opening act. The moment the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEACO) intervened in Rabai, the maroon settlement of Fuladoyo became part of the controversy between the Church Missionary Society and angry slave owners. Like other representatives of external powers on the coast--the sultan's governors, the British vice-consuls, the missionaries--IBEACO officials were, apart from paroxysmal gestures, unwilling and incapable of assisting individuals in their transition to freedom. The Company, as well as the Foreign Office and the missions, had a vested interest in stabilizing the slave population, whose labor was badly needed for porterage.
