Kroomen - Hunting Down Black Slavers
When, in 1807, Parliament banned British subjects from taking part in the slave trade, the Royal Navy began to patrol the slave coast of West Africa. At first, only a few ships could be spared from the long war against Napoleon. Britain slowly built a system of treaties with European powers, allowing the Royal Navy to search their ships for human trafficking. They also negotiated deals with local African rulers, many of whom engaged in war and kidnapping on behalf of slave traders from Europe and the Americas. When peaceful approaches failed, the Navy sometimes rowed up West Africa's rivers to hunt down slaver bands or instigated wars to dislodge slaving rulers and replace them with African princes who opposed the trade.
The powers and scope of this 'Preventative Squadron' gradually increased. Once the West Coast slave trade had been largely suppressed, by around 1870, the work on Africa's east coast intensified.
A group of black men were the most experienced among these squadrons. These so-called 'Kroomen' from the West African coast were the slaver hunters par excellence. They typically served for the longest period and comprised as much as one third of the manpower of the West Coast squadron. They did the typical duties of an ordinary sailor but also specialized in ship-to-shore communications in canoes that they brought with them onto men-of-war. They built a reputation for acts of bravery, usually forming the lion's share of landing parties hunting for slavers ashore, not least because they seemed to elude local fevers.
The Kroomen originally came from a stretch of coast along today's southeast Liberia, where a small tribe shared the Kru language and a clutch of small villages. But their identity as a nation or community was not based solely on ethnicity or a common homeland. It cannot be disentangled from the rise of European trading along the West African coast and, more importantly, the history of the British Preventative Squadron.
It began simply enough: the Kru speakers were expert navigators and boatmen. When European vessels increasingly began appearing in West African waters, Kru canoeists approached them to trade. This was especially useful for the Europeans because this stretch of coastline had few ports where they could approach land for water, firewood, and provisions. Soon, Europeans and Americans became dependent on the visits of the canoes, while the Kru boatmen reoriented their livelihood to this trade. The connection strengthened when, probably in the late 1700s, ships started taking West Africans aboard to serve as pilots, interpreters, or scouts. Eventually, the Kroomen became capable of running the ships themselves.
At the core of their identity, they shared a fierce opposition to the slave trade. In part, this was due to their conviction that Kroomen could not be slaves. To the frustration of missionaries up and down West Africa, the Kroomen were also steadfast in refusing to convert to Christianity. Furthermore, they tended to refuse to learn or write English.
A special feature of a Krooman's service in the Royal Navy was that he could enter and leave it on terms worked out with the captain. That might mean a change even in the middle of a patrol if beneficial to both sides. For Royal Navy sailors, this kind of semi-autonomy was unthinkable.
Thus, the Kroomen stood apart in many ways, yet they were integrated into the Royal Navy, ranging from ship's boys to able seamen, with commensurate pay and a share in bounties. They were subject to the same hardships and fighting as their shipmates, perhaps more, due to their tendency to seek out opportunities for displays of bravery.
How did British, even American, reliance on Kroomen fit within the prevalent belief in white racial supremacy? For one thing, the Kroomen established their reputation before so-called 'scientific racism' made African inferiority a general, predetermined, almost genetic condition. Before pseudo-science proclaimed that Africans were lower on some kind of universal ladder of evolution, Europeans and Americans could more easily accept that a particular African 'nation' was a particularly estimable 'race'. There is almost no overstating the esteem that captains had for their Kroomen.
The story of the Kroomen as veteran slaver hunters reached its conclusion in the final quarter of the 19th century when the Admiralty issued an edict from London barring the use of Kroomen on Africa's coast and beyond. This met with strong opposition among the captains who valued them so much. The Admiralty's official justification was that it was inconvenient to return the Kroomen to their home coast after their service terms. A better explanation might have to do with the progress of 'scientific racism'.
JOHN BROICH, HISTORY TODAY