Rethinking liberated Africans as abolitionists: Bombay Africans, resistance, and ritual integration in coastal Kenya, 1846–1900
Authors: Nyanchoga Samuel , Liebst Michelle 
Published: November 2024

Mission studies has changed over the last few decades, reframing itself as an approach to subaltern cultures, religions, and languages. Yet the scholarship that explores the integral role of Christian missionary societies in ending slavery tends to focus on the actions and ideologies of European missionaries. The Africans of missions, therefore, appear to be peripheral to the history of the abolition of slavery. This article aims to show how we can begin to see the actions of liberated Africans as approaches to ending slavery as much, if not more than, struggles for their own personal advancement. It is based on archival research and testimonies collected from descendants of liberated Africans.This article explores an influential – and well-documented – group of liberated Africans referred to as “Bombay Africans”, many of whom are known to have fought against slavery. These individuals, high-ranking in the mission hierarchy, had been educated in Western India by the Church Missionary Society (CMS). Many of them settled on the Kenyan coast in Mombasa and further inland in Rabai in the second half of the 19th century as a distinct group of African Christian missionaries. Part 1 examines their own struggles against the European missionaries. Given their education, training, and religious upbringing in the mission stations, they accused the British missionaries of double standards and discrimination. Their experiences show how colonial abolitionism could not guarantee full emancipation and integration into the environment in which they found themselves. In part 2, the role of Bombay Africans in harboring fugitive slaves is highlighted. While most CMS missionaries and colonial administrators sought to appease the slaveholding demographics of the coast, fugitive slaves were secretly welcomed into the mission stations of Rabai and Frere Town. The suspicions of missionaries and colonial officials grew as the population of the mission stations increased dramatically and slave owners’ complaints against the mission became increasingly vocal. As Part 3 shows, Bombay Africans took other avenues to secure emancipation by addressing their otherness. By reappropriating local rites indigenous to the Kenyan coast, they attempted to purify themselves of stigma and integrate into the local communities that surrounded the mission stations. This had limited success, however, partly because of the distinctive features of Bombay Africans and their descendants. Their distinctive names, cultures, and tendencies to be outspoken made it difficult for them to erase their slave past. The article reveals several approaches to refuting slavery and slave status. Bombay African abolitionists tried to protect fugitive slaves and end slavery practices in the communities in which they had authority. Other Bombay Africans mobilized against European missionaries to assert their right to full emancipation. Most of the African Christians of the 19th century chose to pursue respectability by integrating socially and culturally into clans that accepted outsiders. All of these methods were ways of ending slavery, one way or another, and this shows the diversity of thought about how slavery and slave status could and should be ended.