Robert Thorpe was an Irish judge and abolitionist. Following a career in Canada and later serving as Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, he was dismissed from office in 1815 by the colonial secretary Lord Bathurst.

Thorpe’s departure from Sierra Leone was the end of his legal career but he continued to publish pamphlets regarding conditions in West Africa. This 1818 pamphlet remarks on the increase in Spanish and Portuguese involvement in the transatlantic slave trade following Britain’s abolition of it in 1807. Thorpe disagreed with the approach taken by William Wilberforce in effecting abolition and criticised the African Association for how it proposed to ‘civilise’ the continent, and offered his own solutions.