On the Frontier of "Freedom:" Abolition and the Transformation ofAtlantic Commerce in Southern Sierra Leone, 1790s to 1860s Pubblico
Misevich, Philip R. (2009)
Published
Abstract
This study examines the impact of transformations in Atlantic commerce on Africans living in southern Sierra Leone between 1790 and 1861. Extant studies of 19th century Africa have outlined a linear progression from the suppression of the slave trade to the rise of "legitimate commerce," leading ultimately to Africa's colonization. My dissertation argues that in their effort to suppress the Sierra Leone slave trade, British officials were forced to intervene in the political affairs of Freetown's interior, opening new spaces for slaves to challenge their owners and negotiate new rights for themselves. In Sierra Leone, the relationship between the suppression of the slave trade, colonialism and slavery was time and again re-forged based on actions taken by slaves, masters and colonists in the first half of the century.
The study begins with an analysis of changes in the coastal organization of slave exports in the 19th century and their effect on the African interior. The establishment of Freetown - a settlement that became Britain's first African colony and a point from which the British attempted to suppress the slave trade - brought drastic changes to the operation of the Sierra Leone slave trade. Slave dealers moved away from the Sierra Leone River, where Freetown was based, and operated from new settlements in southern Sierra Leone. The rise of Gallinas and Sherbro as slave ports put new pressures on societies in their immediate hinterland, from which a majority of the region's captives came.
Southern Sierra Leone's external slave trade developed together with a dynamic market for slaves in the African interior in the 19th century. The Atlantic slave trade stimulated demand for agricultural commodities produced in southern Sierra Leone. Sherbro farmers also supplied Freetown with hundreds of tons of rice each year. When the Atlantic slave trade ended, southern Sierra Leone's internal slave trade evolved to meet domestic needs. From the 1830s thorough the 1860s, Islamic slave dealers began transporting thousands of captives from the Gallinas and Sherbro to work on peanut plantations north of Freetown. As a result, southern Sierra Leone slaves became an important part of fueling the industrial revolution.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction, 1
Chapter 1. Southern Sierra Leone and the Atlantic World
from the 15th through the mid-19th Centuries, 22
Chapter 2. The Origins of Captives Leaving Southern Sierra
Leone in the 19th Century, 67
Chapter 3. Feeding Freedom, Feeding the Slave Trade: Southern
Sierra Leone and the Provisions Trade, 1787-1856, 97
Chapter 4. Diasporic Transformations: Islam, Adaptation and
Innovation in Sierra Leone's Slaving Networks in the Early
Period of the Commercial Transition, 1840s to 1860s, 163
Chapter 5. Freetown and "Freedom?" Colonialism and Slavery
in Sierra Leone, 1790s to 1861, 204
Conclusion, 244
Appendix, 250
Bibliography, 254
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