The African Diaspora in West Africa: The Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonial Eras on the Gambia River

Author(s): Liza Gijanto

Year: 2015

Summary

The Gambia River was an active site of the Atlantic slave trade and British efforts to legitimize trade in the 19th century.  African peoples were brought from the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone as part of different commercial and colonial ventures while others were sent to the Americas as enslaved. Geographically part of the African Diaspora as both a site of departure and settlement, this paper explores African populations resettled along the river as slaves and liberated Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries.  In doing so, the aim is to refocus the place of West Africa in diaspora studies from one of secondary enquiry, often engaged with by New World scholars when seeking to define creole ethnicities, to a point of comparison for enslaved and emancipated communities throughout the African Atlantic world.

Cite this Record

The African Diaspora in West Africa: The Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonial Eras on the Gambia River. Liza Gijanto. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Seattle, Washington. 2015 ( tDAR id: 433899)

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Keywords

Temporal Keywords
Atlantic World

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 136