African Civilization Society

The African Civilization Society was formed in 1840, largely due to the efforts of Thomas Fowell Buxton, (1786-1845), Anglican M.P., philanthropist, prison reformer, supporter of the Bible Society, and leader of the British abolitionist movement after William Wilberforce. Buxton led an unsuccessful expedition into the interior of West Africa (Niger) in 1838-1839. Undeterred, he returned to England and published The African Slave Trade (1840), proposing an active role by the British in civilizing Africa as the best means of ending slavery, even recommending, among other things, that the British government purchase the island of Fernando Po. He described the African Civilization Society to an American abolitionist that same year as “instituted to cooperate in various ways, and under the protection of the Government with the ministry, for the deliverance, instruction, and elevation of the African race.” Other abolitionist societies would soon eclipse Buxton’s society, and by 1843 the African Civilization Society had dissolved. Buxton was supportive of the BMS’s plan of acquiring a steam-powered schooner for the mission at Fernando Po. See the Missionary Herald (August 1843), 443; also Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Baptist History Series, Mercer University Press, 2009), 266, 292, 314; also R. R. Gurley, Mission to England, in Behalf of the American Colonization Society (Washington DC: W. W. Morrison, 1841), 17.