ABSTRACT
Slavery in Africa attracted a great deal o f attention in the Western world on the eve of the colonial partition of the continent in the last decades of the nineteenth century. From press and pulpit came heartrending descriptions of the horrors of slave raids and the suffering of thousands of hapless victims brutally tom from their homes and marched off to a lifetime of bondage. The public was led to believe that colonial rule would end this scourge - and indeed this was one of the moral justifications for the conquest of Africa. These expectations, however, were only partially fulfilled. Certainly, as they gained control, the new rulers hastened to end warfare and slave raiding, although it often continued in the more remote areas. They also attacked the slave trade so that it eventually ceased to be a large scale operation, although clandestine petty dealing continued to the end of colonial rule . Slavery, however, was quite another matter. Not only were the colonial rulers reluctant to attack it, but in many cases, they actually supported it.
