The Slavery Argument of a Modern African Thinker

Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitaine was taken as a slave and sold in what is now the Ivory Coast. He wrote an essay called Call of the Heathen arguing for missionary work in non-Christian lands like his native Africa. In 1728 he was automatically manumitted, meaning that slavery was illegal in the Netherlands even though the Dutch were keeping and selling slaves elsewhere in the world. His conclusion is that slavery is an institution established not by nature, but the law of nations.