The following facts on EUROPE/AFRICA/AMERICAS history were shared by history professor Dr. Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian, of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, regarding the slave trade in African people after 1808 when Britain made the slave trade -- though not slavery -- illegal. Details shared by Dr. Mamigonian & others can lead us to other records, clues and facts, and help us assemble certain "disconnected" pieces of history we already have. I would add that in my own (paternal) U.S. Black American family, we have a story that someone in our family was brought from BRAZIL to the USA. How could I further research this information? Does anyone know of info on Brazil>>USA migrations during and after slavery? Our connection may have been a Brazil to South Carolina/Charleston migration. Part of our family from the Charleston, SC area is LOWNDES, and I know there are also LOWNDES in Brazil up to today. Are they connected to the Lowndes of South Carolina (and earlier St. Kitts)? Might they have brought Black people from Brazil to SC?? Most of the following are Dr. Mamigonian's remarks. In 1808, Sierra Leone [West Africa] became a [British] Crown Colony and seat of a vice-admiralty court where ships still engaged in the BRITISH slave trade were tried. Africans found on board [British] ships were freed and apprenticed in Sierra Leone. [What did "apprenticed" mean in these cases?] In 1817-1818 BRITAIN signed bilateral agreements with SPAIN, PORTUGAL and THE NETHERLANDS to have slavers [slave ships] under those flags brought before mixed commission courts - on either side of the Atlantic-- in either Freetown, SIERRA LEONE, or in Havana [CUBA], Paramaribo/ PARAMAIBO [SURINAM/former DUTCH GUIANA], or Rio de Janeiro [BRAZIL]. Africans freed from such ships were to be under the responsibility of local governments and to go through a period of apprenticeship. In the 1840s the British, unhappy with their treatment by Brazilians and Cubans and in need of labourers for their own colonies, bypassed the agreements and took the ships to Vice-Admiralty Courts (Freetown, St Helena, Demerara, Cape Colony). From there, the Africans were taken to the BWI [BRITISH WEST INDIES] through the "Emigration scheme". Related reading: Monica Schuler, ALAS, ALAS KONGO (1981); Johnson Asiegbu, SLAVERY AND THE POLITICS OF LIBERATION (1969) and articles on "liberated Africans". Dr. Mamigonian's own dissertation, "To be a liberated African in Brazil: labour and citizenship in the nineteenth century" (University of Waterloo, 2002) deals with liberated Africans handled by the Brazilian government. Further, Dr. Mamigonian asks what happened to Africans found on board slave ships captured by the FRENCH, and parallel U.S. policy to suppress the [African] slave trade; as well as the fate of more such captured Africans, along with research and publication references on the same. My thanks to Dr. Beatriz Mamigonian for her research and for sharing. Marian Douglas www.authorsden.com/MarianDouglas PO Box 14899, Nairobi, Kenya

Marian Douglas asks: : : [What did "apprenticed" mean in these cases?] Africans taken off ships carrying slaves illegally were contraband and became the responsibility of the Collector of Customs in whichever British colony the Vice-Admiralty court was attached to (and these were distributed around the Atlantic). The Act Against the Slave Trade of 1807 and the subsequent regulations of March 1808 stipulated that he had to ensure their maintenance, and where possible he was to apprentice them out to local employers for a term of (generally) fourteen years, monitoring their treatment. They were supposed to be prepared during this time for a Christian life and independence in freedom. Some colonies were known for allowing the apprenticeship term to be renewed continually, thus producing a condition very little different from life servitude. Modern historians tend to the use of the term 'recaptives' to indicate their lack of freedom after being freed from the slave ships, and in fact this term was used officially at the inception of the system as an alternative to 'liberated Africans'. John Weiss Independent Scholar, London See the history links at http://homepage.virgin.net/john.weiss/mcnish-weiss.html