Drawn by Richard Westall from a sketch taken in Africa by Carl Bernhard Wadstrom. It is a relatively unusual image on two grounds. First, for its relatively unusual focus on the role of Africans who worked with European slave traders, in mounting inland raids on other tribes to seize captives (or buy others), for sale to them on the coast. James Field Stanfield, for example, in his 'Observations on a Voyage to the Coast of Africa' (1788) mentions the coastal Fantee people of Benin as particular collaborators in this. Second - given the subject - in its compositional sophistication, which was presumably aimed at the well-educated anti-slavery audience of the time. The plate was made by (more correctly) Marie Catherine Prestel, a noted German-born female printmaker (who also did a set of Pacific-view plates for John Webber from his work on Cook's last voyage). The Cornish-born Quaker publisher, James Phillips (1745-99), was a leading member of the Abolitionist movement and - particularly working with Thomas Clarkson - produced most of the Quaker and Abolitionist literature of the time (including Stanfield's 'Observations'), some prints and Clarkson's influential stowage plan of the Liverpool slave-ship 'Brookes' (sometimes 'Brooks'). Part of the Michael Graham-Stewart slavery collection.