IDNO

N.37047.ACH2

Description

On Catalogue Card: "A [sic 4] male and 4 female slaves Mahe, Seychelles."

Group portrait of four men standing, and four women, one of whom is nursing an infant, sitting on a wooden platform. A piece of canvas? has been possibly hung over a doorway to provide a plain backdrop.
The group are annotated as being 'slaves', and may been 'liberated Africans' brought to the Seychelles by the British Royal Navy between 1861 and 1875. [JD 26/01/2026]

Place

E Africa; Indian Ocean; Seychelles; Mahé

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

None

Collector / Expedition

Date

Collection Name

Unmounted Haddon Collection

Source

Format

Glass Negative

Primary Documentation

Other Information

The negative was previously stored in an envelope now numbered C114/31/ which was in a wooden box now marked C114/. The envelope (C114/31/) is re-housed in Neg. Env. Box 5. which is stored in Storage Box A in the Photo Archive room.

Context: When the British took control of the islands in 1811, they enforced the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which legally outlawed the open slave trade. However, a clandestine trade continued, with slavers often circumventing laws by transferring human cargo in the outer islands.
Slavery was finally abolished throughout the British Empire, including the Seychelles, on February 1, 1835. Following this, the Royal Navy began intercepting Arab slave dhows off the East African coast and brought thousands of "liberated Africans" to the Seychelles between 1861 and 1875. [Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Seychelles#:~:text=Slaves%20were%20brought%20to%20the,was%20abolished%20twenty%20years%20later, JD 16/01/2026]