AFRICAN INSTITUTION.
Seventh Report of the Directors of the African Institution.
London: Printed by Ellerton and Henderson; Sold by J. Hatchard, 1813.
$9,800.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-152520
+$500
Rare First Edition of the Seventh Report of the Directors of the African Institution
Exceptionally rare first edition of the seventh annual report of the African Institution, the influential London society formed in 1807 to suppress the slave trade and promote the improvement of Africa in the wake of British abolition. Octavo, bound in contemporary full calf with gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, morocco spine label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers. Read at the annual general meeting of the 24th of March, 1813, the report surveys the continuing traffic in enslaved people carried on by other nations, the efforts of the Royal Navy to suppress it, and the affairs of the colony of Sierra Leone, together with an appendix and a list of subscribers. Contemporary bookplate of James Elliott. Some toning and scattered foxing. A handsome copy of an important abolitionist document, with only one example appearing at auction in the last 100 years.
The African Institution was founded in London in 1807, immediately after the abolition of the British slave trade, by many of the same reformers who had achieved abolition, among them William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Henry Brougham, and Zachary Macaulay, with the Duke of Gloucester as its president. Its purpose was to monitor and enforce the abolition of the slave trade, to press other nations to abandon their own participation in it, and to encourage legitimate commerce, education, and agriculture in Africa, particularly in the British settlement of Sierra Leone. The Institution’s annual reports are a principal source for the history of the campaign against the slave trade in the years after 1807, documenting the persistence of the illegal traffic and the efforts of the British government and navy to suppress it.
Seventh Report of the Directors of the African Institution.
$9,800.00
In Stock