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Slavery kept on doing its terrible thing in many places throughout the 19th century.

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But due to Britain's abolitionist policies, hefty navy, and tendency to attack slave ships [Big ship arrives and British soldiers attack it]

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on sight and conscript their crew…

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…most European countries had stopped buying new slaves from West Africa by about 1820. [People go to a different 'slave stall']

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This was good news for West Africa.

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Well, at least in the sense that having someone briefly stop punching you in the stomach is [Man punching someone in the stomach]

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good news.

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We tend to think about the abolitionist movement as people finally standing up for what's right. [Man standing up against a soldier]

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But abolitionism back in the day wasn't always for moral reasons. [Protesters]

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Many Europeans and Americans supported abolition because they didn't like the competition that

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white workers faced from increasing numbers of slaves and the free poor African-Americans. [Bunch of people looking for work]

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What can we say?

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Sometimes even the good guys are jerks… [Man steals a handback from an old lady]

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Instead of making room in their societies for freed slaves, many abolitionist societies

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schemed to ship freed slaves back to Africa as colonists. [Slaves are put on a boat back to Africa]

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Abolition societies paid to create colonies for free black people at Freetown in Sierra [Abolitionist giving money to a builder]

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Leone, for Afro-Brits….

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And Liberia, for African-Americans.

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Abolition societies at the time said that they were…sending people home. [People waving goodbye next to a cruise ship]

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But the thing is…

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Africa wasn’t a home for these people. [Pictures of ransacked house]

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The reality was that most free black people involved in the scheme had been born in Europe

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or America.

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They’d never even seen West Africa.

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They didn’t speak the languages and were completely different culturally. [Man looking confused]

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Doesn’t sound too homey, right?

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It would be like if you were told you can either stay in horrible poverty and face ridiculous

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racism where you grew up…

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Or you could go colonize Northern Quebec. [Woman with her thumbs up]

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Not an easy choice, although smoked meat poutine is pretty much the best thing ever. [Man eating]

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In the end, though, these new colonies of freed blacks did grow and prosper. [Families looking happy down a street]

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Especially compared to any white colonies that tried to get going. [Man looking confused trying to build a house]

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Without any natural resistance to malaria, sleeping sickness, and yellow fever, white

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colonies tended to wither and die pretty quickly. [Hospital full of white people]

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So it was hard to get whites to move to Africa.

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Sales pitches like…

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“You might live 10 or even 15 years before a fever makes you literally sweat to death. [Man trying to convince someone to go to Africa]

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But jobs and adventure abound...”

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…didn't attract a lot of white colonists.

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But most people of African descent still had above-average immunity to most tropical diseases, [Mosquito tries to bite a man]

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even if they weren’t born on the continent.

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So they were able to thrive.

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Still, they were completely dependent on Western powers. [Man riding a horse in the desert]

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The Western powers wouldn’t have it any other way.

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They’re clingy like that.

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Many in Africa, Europe, and America saw these black colonists as the start of greater Western

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power and influence in Africa.

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Sierra Leone, in particular, became the front door for future British conquest in Africa. [British soldiers queuing at Sierra Leone]

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Because leaving the freed slaves in peace would’ve been too easy.

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On the bright side, the British warships that Sierra Leone resupplied also attacked slave

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traders and forts.

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The British took the slaves they freed and offered to allow them to settle in Sierra [Fence is put up in front of slaves]

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Leone rather than return to the hostile kingdoms that sold them in the first place.

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Not the worst deal we ever heard.

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So even though Britain did use Sierra Leone as the launching pad to colonize more of Africa…in [Rocket with colonization on it takes off]

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some ways it was a haven for freed slaves. [Rocket lands on Africa]

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Sometimes we wish at least one thing in history could be totally good.

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But… we also wish the pigeons outside our window pooped gold, and that’s not going [Pigeon drops gold on the windowsill]

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to happen either…

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