Worlds of Unfreedom: West Central Africa in the Era of Global Abolition

by Roquinaldo Ferreira

An African-centered account of the protracted battle to end the slave trade, connecting local and global histories

In Worlds of Unfreedom, Roquinaldo Ferreira recasts West Central Africa as a key battleground in the struggle to abolish the transatlantic slave trade between the 1830s and the 1860s. Ferreira foregrounds the experiences and agency of enslaved Africans, challenging Eurocentric narratives that marginalize African participation in abolition efforts. Drawing on extensive archival research across multiple continents, he shows how enslaved people actively resisted the oppressive systems that sought to commodify their lives. Doing so, he integrates microhistorical analysis with broader world history, exploring individual trajectories to unravel complex global phenomena. Worlds of Unfreedom bridges a crucial gap by connecting Atlantic and Indian Ocean histories, revealing how abolitionist measures often camouflaged new forms of labor exploitation and forced migration under emerging colonial regimes.

Ferreira’s analysis spans the globe, from Luanda, the kingdom of Kongo, and the Lunda Empire to Havana, Rio de Janeiro, New York City, and Réunion Island. He examines the South Atlantic as a space where politics and race-making were deeply intertwined, with ideas and identities crossing and recrossing the ocean. He considers Portugal’s strategic use of abolition efforts for territorial expansion, its impact on the kingdom of Kongo, and the intricate networks linking West Central Africa to Cuba and Brazil. With Worlds of Unfreedom, Ferreira shows how multiple actors, including Africans, built anti–slave trade politics from the margins. His nuanced, Africa-centered perspective on abolition highlights the resilience and contributions of enslaved Africans in shaping the course of history.

304 pages, Hardcover

Published July 8, 2025

Reviews

[History Today]

Ferreira’s account takes place two centuries later and more than 2,000 miles south in Angola, the main source of captives for the by-then illicit slave trade. As the Portuguese historian João Pedro Marques has suggested, the imperial authorities adopted a gradualist approach after British abolition in 1807, partly as a ‘cautious guarantee’ to Portugal’s domestic antislavery campaigners, and partly to assuage pressure from abroad. The loss of Brazil as the main source of demand for Portuguese trafficking after 1822 meant that the empire had less to lose from enforcing abolition and more to gain by taking some of the initiative back from Britain. Enforcing abolition of the Atlantic trade also enabled Portugal to retain captive labour within its African colonies.

Like the British and French, the Portuguese were intent by the mid-19th century on extracting Africa’s raw materials. They learned from the British how to use antislavery initiatives to pursue this new post-slavery project, invading the Kongo kingdom and taking control of the Bembe copper mines in 1856 on the pretext of suppressing slavery before the British could do so. Their ‘antislavery’ military expedition conveniently carried mining equipment. Abolition thus became ‘a tool for the creation of new forms of unfreedom’. As one French official explained, referring to the British practice of forcing Africans ‘liberated’ from slave ships to work elsewhere in its empire, ‘England herself gives us an example’, the only difference being that the ‘French bought their captives on land and the English seized theirs at sea and forced them to emigrate’. The Portuguese justified the removal of African men and women from Angola to work on the coffee plantations of São Tomé and Príncipe by invoking the British example of forcing ‘apprentices’ from Sierra Leone to work on Caribbean sugar plantations.

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Alan Lester is Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex.