Richard Anderson and Henry B. Lovejoy are both emerging scholars of the trans-Atlantic slave trade whose work has been receiving acclamation and interest within the field. Anderson's area of study concerns the coastal nation of Sierra Leone (founded by abolitionists) while Lovejoy's previous works have focused on the Yoruba peoples and their important Atlantic trajectories. Their scholarship is complementary in Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807–1896, bringing together Atlantic regions and perspectives. In this important volume, they have presented readers with a rich and diverse group of scholars of the slave trade whose work offers insights from a wide range of geographic areas within the nineteenth century. Showcasing both well-established scholars and junior scholars, the volume is diverse not only for the linguistic and global perspectives it highlights but for the innovative ideas presented by its varied contributors. Its genesis was an international workshop held at York University in Toronto, Canada, in June 2017, featuring many prominent scholars of the slave trade, and the book includes both a selection of presentations from the workshop and other essays that further diversify the content.

Together, the contributions illuminate a dynamic and complicated system of interconnected trade routes and abolitionist impulses. This work is extremely rich: in the course of nineteen chapters, the reader finds valuable perspectives on a wide range of subfields within history. As an example, Paul E. Lovejoy's chapter Ali Eisami (aka William Harding) offers a meticulous biographical history that follows the titular historical figure through his enslavement in Borno, ca. 1812 and traces his life into Sierra Leone, where he was one of the linguist Sigismund Koelle's informants. Lovejoy follows Eisami's traces backward through the evidence presented in the Freetown Registers of Liberated Africans, offering readers a view of his methodology, including his systematic narrowing of possible matches through the Register against contextual information until he was able to conclude that one of the entries is almost certainly Eisami himself. Eisami's importance and contribution to Koelle's linguistic work with the Kanuri language is discussed and considered, offering a rich overview of a complex trajectory. It is a stellar piece of scholarship, offering both a narrative and careful testing of evidence throughout the process. Alongside such work are chapters that provide new and interesting insights to the topics the authors discuss. For example, Érika Melek Delgado's chapter on childhood in the context of colonial Sierra Leone is illuminating as a work of demographic analysis than a singular narrative, and the rigor of her analysis is instructive. Beginning by contextualizing the term child itself, Delgado turns her attention to the challenge of determining precisely which liberated Africans within the Registers were indeed children as we, in the twenty-first century, might understand the term. That classification process was more complex than it might seem at first glance, and Delgado's deliberate approach does her credit, as she is able to demonstrate nuances around the lives and experience of children through her close reading of the Registers. As she concludes, her work serves to break down an “artificial collectiveness” that might be assumed by the category of children (97); Delgado has assuredly achieved her goal. Another perspective is provided by Matthew S. Hopper, who offers evidence from the Indian Ocean world and the liberated Africans whose lives were recorded in that context. Hopper's work is a happy medium between the more demographic and analytical rigor of Delgado and the biographical specificity of Lovejoy. Hopper punctuates his consideration of the actual statistics of the trade with evocative and compelling narratives of historical events. He describes the situation in Aden that faced the British representatives—in this case, Assistant Political Resident Stace, as residents of the city sought to acquire newly freed slaves who had been brought into port and were to be disbursed as “servants” to those who wished to take them. (271–72) The scene is a powerful one, and Hopper illustrates it vividly to his readers before elaborating on the broader contexts that led to such a scene. It is an excellent approach, and brings his scholarship very much to life as he takes readers through the less familiar phases of the abolitionist campaign in the Indian Ocean throughout the nineteenth century.

These examples offer a glimpse of the academic relevance of this volume and the accessibility and caliber of writing that make this volume both a pleasure to read and a richly researched piece of scholarship. Evidence presented within the book is drawn from archives around the world, close readings of published and unpublished primary sources, and an excellent and cutting-edge literature review. What is available here is the most recent scholarship on the broad topic of liberated Africans on the global stage during the nineteenth century. The only weakness is that its topic is an enormous one. Liberated Africans were present in many regions, and, if anything, the tremendous range in the chapters’ topics underscores this point. It is therefore challenging at times to trace a coherent path among the chapters despite the editors’ effort to group them thematically or by region. This is only a mild criticism, however, and when set against the many insights and perspectives that are offered in Anderson and Lovejoy's volume, it is a minor issue at most. Given the wide range of topics, and the excellent scholarship, this is a volume that will make an important addition to many bookshelves.