Buxton's influential book was a catalyst for renewed European imperial interest in exploration, missionaryism and commerce in Africa from the mid-nineteenth century, functioning as a prospectus for his newly established Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and for the Civilization of Africa. He argues that the most effectual means of suppressing the still profitable African slave trade is through "the legitimate commerce and the agricultural cultivation of Africa" (6), making Africa a "confederate" against the slave trade (8) with treaties, and encouraging "the civilization of the continent" (279) through trade with Europe and religious instruction.