The Yoruba Church Missionary Society Slavery Conference 1880

Abstract

Two types of unfree labor were widely used in Yorubaland during the nineteenth century namely slavery and pawnship. Church Missionary Society members used both types of unfree labor. From the 1850s, the CMS pushed unsuccessfully for its agents to shun the practice of owning enslaved people and pawns. In the 1870s, under a new crop of leaders, the CMS restarted the anti-slavery campaign with an 1879 ruling, an ultimatum, ordering its agents to free their enslaved workers and pawns and a conference in Lagos in 1880 to review compliance with the ruling and formulate best practices for the manumission of unfree laborers. This paper addresses the 1879 ruling and the 1880 conference as they relate directly to issues of forced labor, financial reform, and church-state relations in nineteenth-century Yorubaland. The paper argues that the commitment of many Christians to anti-slavery was only half-hearted before 1880, but the conference produced far-reaching decisions that contributed to ending the practice of Christians owning enslaved people and pawns.