Abolition in Sierra Leone

Abolition in Sierra Leone
Author: Richard Peter Anderson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2020-01-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108473547

A history of colonial Africa and of the African diaspora examining the experiences and identities of 'liberated' Africans in Sierra Leone.

Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia

Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia
Author: B. Everill
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2012-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137291818

Bronwen Everill offers a new perspective on African global history, applying a comparative approach to freed slave settlers in Sierra Leone and Liberia to understand their role in the anti-slavery colonization movements of Britain and America.

Freedom's Debtors

Freedom's Debtors
Author: Padraic X. Scanlan
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2017-10-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300231520

A history of the abolition of the British slave trade in Sierra Leone and how the British used its success to justify colonialism in Africa British anti-slavery, widely seen as a great sacrifice of economic and political capital on the altar of humanitarianism, was in fact profitable, militarily useful, and crucial to the expansion of British power in West Africa. After the slave trade was abolished, anti-slavery activists in England profited, colonial officials in Freetown, Sierra Leone, relied on former slaves as soldiers and as cheap labor, and the British armed forces conscripted former slaves to fight in the West Indies and in West Africa. At once scholarly and compelling, this history of the abolition of the British slave trade in Sierra Leone draws on a wealth of archival material. Scanlan’s social and material study offers insight into how the success of British anti-slavery policies were used to justify colonialism in Africa. He reframes a moment considered to be a watershed in British public morality as rather the beginning of morally ambiguous, violent, and exploitative colonial history.

Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896

Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896
Author: Richard Anderson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 1580469698

Interrogates the development of the world's first international courts of humanitarian justice and the subsequent "liberation" of nearly two hundred thousand Africans in the nineteenth century.

Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War

Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War
Author: Joseph Kaifala
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2016-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1349948543

This book is a historical narrative covering various periods in Sierra Leone’s history from the fifteenth century to the end of its civil war in 2002. It entails the history of Sierra Leone from its days as a slave harbor through to its founding as a home for free slaves, and toward its political independence and civil war. In 1462, the country was discovered by a Portuguese explorer, Pedro de Sintra, who named it Serra Lyoa (Lion Mountains). Sierra Leone later became a lucrative hub for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. At the end of slavery in England, Freetown was selected as a home for the Black Poor, free slaves in England after the Somerset ruling. The Black Poor were joined by the Nova Scotians, American slaves who supported or fought with the British during the American Revolution. The Maroons, rebellious slaves from Jamaica, arrived in 1800. The Recaptives, freed in enforcement of British antislavery laws, were also taken to Freetown. Freetown became a British colony in 1808 and Sierra Leone obtained political independence from Britain in 1961. The development of the country was derailed by the death of its first Prime Minister, Sir Milton Margai, and thirty years after independence the country collapsed into a brutal civil war.

Slave Empire

Slave Empire
Author: Padraic X. Scanlan
Publisher: Robinson
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2020-11-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472142322

'Engrossing and powerful . . . rich and thought-provoking' Fara Dabhoiwala, Guardian 'Path-breaking . . . a major rewriting of history' Mihir Bose, Irish Times 'Slave Empire is lucid, elegant and forensic. It deals with appalling horrors in cool and convincing prose.' The Economist The British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than its rivals. But this claim that the British empire was 'free' and that, for all its flaws, it promised liberty to all its subjects was never true. The British empire was built on slavery. Slave Empire puts enslaved people at the centre the British empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In intimate, human detail, Padraic Scanlon shows how British imperial power and industrial capitalism were inextricable from plantation slavery. With vivid original research and careful synthesis of innovative historical scholarship, Slave Empire shows that British freedom and British slavery were made together.

Almost Home

Almost Home
Author: Ruma Chopra
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2018-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300220464

The unique story of a small community of escaped slaves who revolted against the British government yet still managed to maneuver and survive against all odds After being exiled from their native Jamaica in 1795, the Trelawney Town Maroons endured in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone. In this gripping narrative, Ruma Chopra demonstrates how the unlikely survival of this community of escaped slaves reveals the contradictions of slavery and the complexities of the British antislavery era. While some Europeans sought to enlist the Maroons' help in securing the institution of slavery and others viewed them as junior partners in the global fight to abolish it, the Maroons deftly negotiated their position to avoid subjugation and take advantage of their limited opportunities. Drawing on a vast array of primary source material, Chopra traces their journey and eventual transformation into refugees, empire builders--and sometimes even slave catchers and slave owners. Chopra's compelling tale, encompassing three distinct regions of the British Atlantic, will be read by scholars across a range of fields.

The Temne of Sierra Leone

The Temne of Sierra Leone
Author: Joseph J. Bangura
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2017-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 110818734X

Much of the research and study of the formation of Sierra Leone focuses almost exclusively on the role of the so-called Creoles, or descendants of ex-slaves from Europe, North America, Jamaica, and Africa living in the colony. In this book, Joseph J. Bangura cuts through this typical narrative surrounding the making of the British colony, and instead offers a fresh look at the role of the often overlooked indigenous Temne-speakers. Bangura explores, however, the socio-economic formation, establishment, and evolution of Freetown, from the perspective of different Temne-speaking groups, including market women, religious figures, and community leaders and the complex relationships developed in the process. Examining key issues, such as the politics of belonging, African agency, and the creation of national identities, Bangura offers an account of Sierra Leone that sheds new perspectives on the social history of the colony.

Not Made by Slaves

Not Made by Slaves
Author: Bronwen Everill
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674240987

How abolitionist businesses marshaled intense moral outrage over slavery to shape a new ethics of international commerce. “East India Sugar Not Made By Slaves.” With these words on a sugar bowl, consumers of the early nineteenth century declared their power to change the global economy. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists from Europe to the United States to West Africa used new ideas of supply and demand, consumer credit, and branding to shape an argument for ethical capitalism. Everill focuses on the everyday economy of the Atlantic world. Antislavery affected business operations, as companies in West Africa, including the British firm Macaulay & Babington and the American partnership of Brown & Ives, developed new tactics in order to make “legitimate” commerce pay. Everill explores how the dilemmas of conducting ethical commerce reshaped the larger moral discourse surrounding production and consumption, influencing how slavery and freedom came to be defined in the market economy. But ethical commerce was not without its ironies; the search for supplies of goods “not made by slaves”—including East India sugar—expanded the reach of colonial empires in the relentless pursuit of cheap but “free” labor. Not Made by Slaves illuminates the early years of global consumer society, while placing the politics of antislavery firmly in the history of capitalism. It is also a stark reminder that the struggle to ensure fair trade and labor conditions continues.