Class B. Correspondence with the British Ministers and Agents in Foreign Countries, and with Foreign Ministers in England relating to the Slave Trade. January 1 to December 31, 1868.

Publisher's soft covers.

Interesting contemporary first hand accounts of the attempts at the suppression of the slave trade by the Royal Navy, and other British officials. After various decades of activity of the Royal Navy as the world's anti slave trade gendarme, the European trade had been considerably reduced and this annual report contains the destruction of one slaver from the Portuguese colony of Angola (along with expressions of Portugese annoyance at British interference). Only one case of the trade hjas been discovered in relation to the Spanish colonies of Cuba or Puerto Rico, with the destruction of a brig carrying 96 slaves off the Congo. However there is an interesting correspondence on the introduction of Chinese indentured labourers into Cuba. By 1868 over 100,000 Chinese labourers had been shipped to Cuba, yet of these only 70,000 were still alive and able to work, suggesting an enormously high rate of sickness and mortality among the Chinese peasants who were imported to replace the African slaves. The report also contains correspondence on the slave trade in various parts of Africa, Brazil, Egypt, Madagascar and Zanzibar. Reference number in crayon on the front cover; some loss to spine, otherwise vg++.