Author Description

Children of Ham: Freed Slaves and Fugitives Slaves on the Kenya Coast, I 873 to 1907 is a chronological account of the repeated bids for freedom made by slaves and ex-slaves on the Kenya coast and of the obstacles placed in their way by the British, the Busaidi Arabs, and the peoples of the coast. Efforts to escape slavery are as old as slavery itself on the Kenya coast, but the principal story begins in 1873, when Britain pressured the sultan of Zanzibar to abolish the ocean-going slave trade. Thereafter, political and military conflict intensified on the coast, while opportunities for slaves to escape increased accordingly. This period, ending roughly with the abolition of the legal status of slavery in 1907, corresponds to the imperial scramble from its earliest stages to the effective establishment of European rule.