Exchange, Entanglement, and ‘Freedom’: British Anti-Slavery and Nascent Colonialism in coastal Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Considering Frontiers Beyond the Romantic: Spaces of Encroachment, Innovation, and Far Reaching Entanglements" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper examines the history of slavery, abolition, and the transition to nascent colonialism in coastal Sierra Leone from the lenses of the longue durée of history and entanglement concept. It draws on multiple lines of evidence to explore the role of material culture in the entanglement of Freetown and the British Empire. Freetown was established in the 1790s as an anti-slavery and trading post for non-slave goods, but subsequently became a British Crown Colony and a frontier of the African diaspora, that is, a homeland for enslaved Africans disembarked from slave ships. Through discussion of exchange between colonist and ‘freed’ slaves in Freetown, this paper argues that British anti-slavery in Sierra Leone was motivated by economic and political reasons more than freedom and humanitarianism. The paper presents recent archaeological discoveries on this nascent colonialism and exchange networks, placing Sierra Leone within the wider Atlantic world and capitalist world economies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Considering Frontiers Beyond the Romantic: Spaces of Encroachment, Innovation, and Far Reaching Entanglements   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 638