Liberian Literary Magazine
where relations between settlers
and local communities were
especially fraught in ways that had
long-lasting
repercussions.
However, this declaration left the
question
hanging
of
what
happened with those who, like
West
Indian
Pan-Africansist
Edward Blyden, rejected the
Western models of the colonisers
and sought a more ‘authentic’
African lifestyle or experience.
The work is divided into two
sections:
‘Foundations’
and
‘Interactions’. The first three
chapters detail the make-up of
‘Transatlantic
anti-slavery
networks’, the emergence of ‘An
African middle class’ in the early
colonial history of Sierra Leone
and the first, less directed,
emergence of settlements of
‘Americans in Africa’ in Liberia.
The second section is structured
more ambitiously. Its four chapters
each deal with both colonies on the
themes
of ‘The abolitionist
propaganda war’, ‘Slave trade
interventionism’,
‘Commercial
rivalry and Liberian independence’
and ‘Arguments for colonial
expansion’. These two sections
together cover the period from
1822 to 1861 in detail. A brief
epilogue looks forward to ‘1861
and beyond’, and lays out some
future research questions and
potential areas of study.
The
first
chapter
on
‘Transatlantic
anti-slavery
networks’ sets the scene for the rest
of the book by highlighting the
conflicts between the British and
American projects in West Africa.
She emphasises the economic
threat a second colony posed to
Freetown, though the level of
antipathy towards the American
settlers seems extraordinary, for
example, she quotes the Sierra
Leone Gazette as early as 1822 as
condemning the ‘fatuity’ of both
the settlers and their American
sponsors (p. 29). Fu rther conflicts
emerged
from
religious,
organisational
and
personal
differences between the two
Promoting Liberian literature, Arts and Culture
competing networks. The strange
geographic proximity of the two
colonies, Everill argues, is due both
to this rivalry and pre-existing
networks of knowledge and trade.
The next two chapters sketch a
picture of settler life in the early
period of each colony. Chapter
two, ‘An African middle class’
largely confirms, in great archival
detail, the image of the Freetown
Afro-Victorian
described
by
Christopher Fyfe and others. She
defines this emerging ‘Sierra
Leonean identity’ as ‘pulling
together elements of British
identity with an amalgamation of
West
and
Central
African
traditions’ (p. 33–4). At the same
time, the Freetown colonists are
characterised as developing ‘a
hardening of moral expectations
linked to a fear of “going native”’
(p. 41). This fear, surely
exacerbated by the shared skin
colour of the settlers and the
indigenous
population,
led
Freetonians to an obsession with
the outward performance of
‘Britishness’,
which
Everill
demonstrates through the use of
material culture evidence. The
British
imperial
values
of
‘civilisation, Christianity
and
commerce’
were
then
institutionalised and passed on to
new settlers through a wellorganised
and
near-seamless
educational system and used to
apply pressure to the British
government.
The third chapter, ‘Americans in
Africa’, applies the same kind of
institutional and material culture
analysis to settler society in
Liberia. Unfortunately, due to the
relative paucity of sources in
comparison, the coverage is
necessarily less detailed. The
chapter also emphasises the
contingent and ad-hoc nature of
many of the Liberian assertions of
cultural difference in Africa – most
strikingly in the dearth of colonywide organisation of education or
missionary work. From the first
section, then, the reader gets an
29
impression of two settlements
differing not only in metropolitan
goals, but also in the incipient
settler culture and society. Later, in
the concluding paragraph, Everill
refers to these as ‘cultures of
modernity that were exported and
invented in colonial settings’ (p.
180).
Part two of the volume launches
into the more detailed comparative
work.
‘The
abolitionist
propaganda war’ concentrates on
the
metropolitan
anti-slavery
movements,
emphasising
the
relative strength and cohesion in
Britain, compared with the
fracturing of opinion in the United
States.
American
anti-slavery
activists were forced to confront
the risks of abolition in their own
territory, while the British, more
removed from the practice of
slavery, were able to grant more
effective support to the settlement.
The failure of the American
Colonisation Society (ACS) to
truly comprehend the regional
differences within the United
States provides an insight into the
unevenness, not just of imperial
spaces, but within the metropole
itself. This is mirrored, though less
sharply by the differences with the
UK, between English, Scottish and
Irish concerns.
Chapter five, ‘Slave trade
interventionism’, launches from
the successes of 1838, the abolition
of apprenticeships in the West
Indies for the British anti-slavery
movement and the ratification of a
new constitution and unification of
most state colonies in Liberia. The
early 1840s also marked a period of
renewed interest in slavery and the
slave trade in Africa and the peak
of Anglo-American co-operation.
The curious case of the Amistad
forms a central part of this chapter.
Everill rightly observes how
impotent the ACS appears to be
when the Mende captives from the
Amistad are re-settled in Sierra
Leone, instead of Liberia. This
resettlement accompanied
the
founding of the Mende Mission,