| RegID | LA-E-2312 |
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| Case Name | Emancipation certificates at Rabai |
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| Year | 1888 |
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| Government Department | Colonial and Foreign Offices, Great Britain |
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| Court | Imperial British East Africa Company, Rabai |
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| Trial Outcome | Condemned |
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| Enslaved Total | 264 |
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| Liberated Africans Total | 264 |
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| Registered Total | 264 |
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| Notes | On the east coast of Africa, there was a long time dispute between slave owners and missionaries who were accused, especially by Mejikenda, of harboring enslaved people who had run away to the missions at Freretown around Mombasa. As colonization began to take route, the Imperial British East Africa Company eventually negotiated terms to compensate slave owners and issue emancipation certificates for 1,421 people in late 1888 and early 1889. The cost of compensation amounted to £3,500 - £1,300 came from the company; £1,200 from Church Missionary Society; £800 from British Treasury; and £200 from United Methodist Free Churches. Starting on 30 October, George S. Mackenzie, W. S. Price, and Lloyd Mathews traveled to Rabai, where for the following few weeks they recorded the names of all runaway enslaved people at Rabai, Jomvu, Ribe, and Jimba. Of the total names recorded, 907 people were "runaways from the coast," and of these 656 lived at Rabai. At Rabai, 456 people ran away from owners residing in Mombasa. The documentation runaway enslaved people of the Mejikenda totaled as follows: Rabai 256 people, Ribe 103, Jomvu 102, and Jimba 20. The "coast runaways" at the other stations were as follows: Ribe (Methodist), 208; Jomvu (Methodist), 28; and Jimba (Evangelical Lutheran Mission in East Africa of Hersbruk, Bavaria), 40. It is worth noting that the Ribeq station acquired most of its runaways while under the direction of Rev. R. A. Heroe, who was an ordained minister from Sierra Leone. The mass redemption of runaway enslaved people at Rabai was the last episode in the mission's struggle with the practical question of harboring runaways. Lloyd Matthews of the Church Missionary Society took a photograph entitled "Presenting Papers of Freedom to 1422 Runaway Slaves, At Rabai, 1st January, 1889." |
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| Sources | P. L. McDermott, British East Africa or IBEA: A History of the Formation and Work of the Imperial British East Africa Company (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1893), front matter; Roger Frederic Morton, "Slaves, Fugitives, and Freedmen on the Kenyan Coast, 1873-1907 (Ph.D. thesis, Syracuse University 1976), 279-280 and 285; The National Archives, UK, FO 541/28, "Mackenzie to Euan Smith," 15 Nov. 1888, f. 441-46; The National Archives, UK, FO 541/29, "Mackenzie to Euan Smith,"23 Nov. 1888, f. 25-26; The National Archives, UK, FO 403/117, "Mackenzie to Euan Smith," 5 Jan. 1889, f. 151. |
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