Abolition in Sierra Leone
Re-Building Lives and Identities in Nineteenth-Century West Africa

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

Richard Peter Anderson (Author)

9781108473545, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 January 2020

306 pages, 3 b/w illus. 3 maps 12 tables
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.6 kg

'Abolition in Sierra Leone is a substantial contribution to the rethinking of identity and community formation among Africans who disembarked in Sierra Leone, a British colony, between 1808 and 1863, following the end of the slave trade … Anderson uses the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, court records, and the Liberated African registers from Sierra Leone's archives to explore the history of the trauma of enslavement and the brutality of the Middle Passage … Although their welcome was far from warm, the narratives from the registers demonstrate that this new wave of involuntary migrants contributed to a vibrant and evolving set of African identities that remade the colony of Sierra Leone … Highly recommended.' C. Higgs, Choice

Tracing the lives and experiences of 100,000 Africans who landed in Sierra Leone having been taken off slave vessels by the British Navy following Britain's abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, this study focuses on how people, forcibly removed from their homelands, packed on to slave ships, and settled in Sierra Leone were able to rebuild new lives, communities, and collective identities in an early British colony in West Africa. Their experience illuminates both African and African diaspora history by tracing the evolution of communities forged in the context of forced migration and the missionary encounter in a prototypical post-slavery colonial society. A new approach to the major historical field of British anti-slavery, studied not as a history of legal victories (abolitionism) but of enforcement and lived experience (abolition), Richard Peter Anderson reveals the linkages between emancipation, colonization, and identity formation in the Black Atlantic.

Introduction. Sierra Leone: African colony, African diaspora
1. Liberated African origins and the nineteenth century slave trade
2. Their own middle passage: voyages to Sierra Leone
3. 'Particulars of disposal': life and labor after 'liberation'
4. Liberated African nations: ethnogenesis in an African diaspora
5. Kings and companies: ethnicity and community leadership
6. Religion, return, and the making of the Aku
7. The Cobolo War: Islam, identity, and resistance
Conclusion. Retention or renaissance? Krio descendants and ethnic identity
Appendices. A. 'Nations' of children in CMS school rosters by probable coastline of embarkation, 1816–1824
B. 1848 Sierra Leone census
C. Koelle's Aku informants
D. Liberated African memorials in Freetown churches
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Migration, immigration & emigration [JFFN], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], African history [HBJH]