The slave trade in Africa in 1872

An English abridgement of Etienne Felix Berlioux's (1828-1920) La traite orientale on the slave trade from the Sudan, the Nile basin and East Africa and the markets in Egypt, Zanzibar and Arabia, first published in Paris, 1870.

'It is scarcely necessary to say, that M. Berlioux's great object in devoting his time and talents to the work, is the abolition of the Slave-trade. He remarks with much truth, that the first step towards the abolition of an evil, is its exposure to the public eye' (Preface).

Following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire (1833) and France (1848), the European powers directed their efforts to preventing the continuing trade of enslaved peoples from Africa. However, abolitionism also became something of a casus belli for the colonisation of the continent, and was used to justify the 'Scramble for Africa' at the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference in 1889-1890.

First English Edition, 8vo, viii, 77 pp., original green cloth gilt, double gilt fillet borders to upper cover, extremities lightly worn, a very good example.

Hogg 403b; Hilmy, p.65.