{{short description|Dutch slave trader}} {{Infobox criminal | name = Samuel Samo | image_name = | image_size = | image_caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = | birth_place = | death_date = | death_place = | alias = | height = | conviction = feloniously dealing in slaves under the Slave Trade Felony Act 1811 | conviction_penalty = pardoned | conviction_status = | spouse = | children = }}
'''Samuel Samo''' was a Dutch slave trader who was the first person to be prosecuted under the British Slave Trade Felony Act 1811.<ref name="Haslam">{{cite book|last1=Haslam|first1=Emily|article=Redemption, Colonialism and International Criminal Law|editor1-last=Kirkby|editor1-first=Diane|title=Past law, present histories|date=2012|publisher=ANU E Press|location=Canberra, Acton, A.C.T.|isbn=9781922144034}}</ref>
Samuel Samo was the uncle of John Samo, a Dutch shopkeeper who served as King's Advocate and Member of His Majesty's Colonial Council of Sierra Leone. Samo was also a colleague of William Henry Leigh. On one voyage, 500 Africans died.<ref name="WACD">{{cite book|last1=Swartz|first1=B.K.|title=West African Culture Dynamics: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives|date=1980|publisher=Walter de Gruyter|location=United States}}</ref><ref name="Trial" />
Samo was based in the Îles de Los, a group of islands off Conakry in modern-day Guinea.<ref name="Schafer">{{cite book|last1=Schafer|first1=Daniel l.|editor1-last=Heuman|editor1-first=Gad J.|editor2-last=Walvin|editor2-first=James|title=The Slavery Reader, Volume 1|date=2003|publisher=Routledge|location=London}}</ref> He was seized along with Charles Hickson from there in early 1812 and taken to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to be put on trial.<ref name="Schafer"/>
The trial was held under the auspices of the Vice admiralty court in Sierra Leone.<ref name="Haslam"/> Robert Thorpe was the presiding judge.<ref name=Trial>{{cite wikisource |title=Trials of the Slave Traders Samo, Peters and Tufft |year=1813 }}</ref> Samo was charged with five counts of slave-trading between August 1811 and January 1812.<ref name="Haslam"/> Samo was convicted but given a royal pardon by Governor Charles William Maxwell.<ref name=Trial /> The convict was enjoined to never again engage in slave trading.<ref name=Trial /> Two other slave traders were convicted in Sierra Leone between April and June 1812. William Tufft was sentenced to three years of hard labour, and Joseph Peters was sentenced to 7 years of transportation.
== See also == * George Warren (missionary)
==References== {{reflist}}
{{Wikisource|Trials of the Slave Traders Samo, Peters and Tufft}} {{Netherlands-bio-stub}} {{crime-bio-stub}} Category:Dutch slave traders Category:Dutch mass murderers Category:19th-century Dutch businesspeople Category:Dutch people imprisoned abroad Category:Recipients of British royal pardons Category:Foreign nationals imprisoned in the United Kingdom