Introduction

Europeans enslaved millions of Africans for work in the Americas, and after the abolition of this trade other Europeans took action against other slavery and slave-dealing in Africa, until colonisation had the abolition of local African slavery as one of its aims. Action against slavery was an important aspect of colonial rule in Africa, and the last war of colonial conquest, in which the Italian victory over Ethiopia helped to pave the way for the Second World War, had as one of its official pretexts the continuation of slavery in Ethiopia. In Africa, the legacy of slavery and the slave-trade is immeasurable. Abolition of the slave-trade by Great Britain and later by other European powers was only the start. Slavery is accepted all over the world as illegal and shameful, and the international obligation to end it is clearly laid down.