The trial of Samuel Samo and the trading syndicates of the Rio Pongo, 1797 to 1812

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Periodical article

Title:	The trial of Samuel Samo and the trading syndicates of the Rio Pongo, 1797 to 1812
Author:	Mouser, Bruce L.
Year:	2013
Periodical:	International Journal of African Historical Studies (ISSN 0361-7882)
Volume:	46
Issue:	3
Pages:	423-441
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Sierra Leone
Subjects:	slave trade illicit trade trials 1812
Abstract:	In April 1812, Samuel Samo, a trader who operated factories at Bangara in the Rio Pongo and at the Iles de Los, was on trial at Freetown, Sierra Leone, charged with selling slaves in violation of the Slave Trade Felony Act that Parliament had passed in 1811. By English standards, the record of this trial is minimal at best. Yet, in its time it was an important trial, and by 1815 it had generated a series of pamphlets and articles in periodicals, most of which dealt with aspects that had little to do with Samo's guilt or innocence. Mixed among the legal arguments and reasons to question the leadership of the Sierra Leone colony and events surrounding the trial was information about circumstances faced by traders when the legal slave trade ended in 1808. Based on the trial reports, the author describes practices of slave trade at the Pongo and circumstances faced by traders during the years just after Britain outlawed the slave trade and before passage of the Slave Trade Felony Act in 1811. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]