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The story of slavery's abolition in Great Britain and the United States is well known. But that chapter in the history of oppression was made possible by the slavery that had been practiced in Africa for centuries. So, who abolished slavery in 19th-century Africa? When historian Lamin Sanneh set out to explore this question, he came upon some surprising answers.

Sanneh's latest book, Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa, tells a hitherto almost unknown story of the end of slavery: what black Christians did in Africa. Born to a Muslim family in Gambia, West Africa, Sanneh became a Christian while in high school. He earned his Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the University of London, and is the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale University. CT senior writer Tim Stafford reached Sanneh at his home in Connecticut.

Your book tells how a small band of freed slaves from America planted a Christian society in Freetown, Sierra Leone, that had revolutionary effects. Who were these ex-slaves?

For the most part, they were American blacks who, as a result of the American Revolution, were eventually repatriated through Nova Scotia to West Africa. There they planted successful colonies for freed slaves, becoming antislavery champions. In the medieval period, European missionaries went to Africa with the aim of converting the aristocracy, on the ground that if you convert the chiefs, that would inspire the rest of society to become Christianized. This "top-down" approach was tried in Africa for 300 years (between 1475 and 1785). It didn't have much of an impact.These new antislavery blacks, though, started from the bottom up, first converting former slaves, then instructing them in the Christian life; they showed them how to equip themselves through education, skills, and the institution of the family. They started benevolent societies that looked after the poor. These institutions, created and led by former slaves, were such a powerful example for the rest of society that Christianity spread, beginning with the establishment of Sierra Leone in 1792. Nigerian and Ghanaian colonies were in some ways extensions of the Sierra Leone colony.

How entrenched was slavery in Africa?

The trans-Saharan Arab slave trade was in place for at least 700 to 800 years before Europeans started their own slave trade. Europeans realized that the trade was going on in Africa and that they could profit from it, and thus they introduced the transatlantic slave trade. But prior to that, African society had already been profoundly influenced by slavery. It was part and parcel of the African value system. Had there been no moral crisis in that value system, no matter who said slavery was wrong, people would still have practiced it.

How did that "moral crisis" come about?

It was actually based on a simple but profound evangelical or Puritan idea: we are each made in the image of God. Evangelical religion seized on that idea, of human personhood founded on divine right, and then targeted the individual as the fundamental unit of society--not the collection but the individual. These individuals--emancipated slaves, ex-captives, repressed women--formed the cornerstone of the new community. This was without precedent.African captives themselves took to this kind of religion with gusto. They embraced it. You can see why: in their own societies, once a slave always a slave. You always carried with you this stigma. This doctrine said that the stigma is dissolved in the blood of Christ.

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July 10 2000, Vol. 44, No. 8