Children, Education and Empire in Early Sierra Leone

Left in Our Hands

Katrina Keefer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351134415
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Nineteenth-century Sierra Leone presented a unique situation historically as the focal point of early abolitionist efforts, settlement within West Africa by westernized Africans, and a rapid demographic increase through the judicial emancipation of Liberated Africans. Within this complex and often volatile environment, the voices and experiences of children have been difficult to trace and to follow. Enslaved children historically are a challenging narrative to highlight due to their comparative vulnerability. This book offers newly transcribed data and fills in a lacuna in the scholarship of early Sierra Leone and the Atlantic world. It presents a narrative of children as they experienced a set of circumstances which were unique and important to abolitionist historiography, and demonstrates how each element of that situation arose by analyzing the rich documentary evidence. By presenting the data as well as the individuals whose lives were affected by the mission schools (both as teacher or pupil) this study has sought to be as complete as possible. Underlying the more academic tone is a recognition of the individual humanity of both teachers and students whose lives together shaped this early phase in the history of Sierra Leone. The missionaries who created the documents from which this study arises all died in Sierra Leone after having profound impacts on the lives of many hundreds of pupils. Their students went on to become important historical figures both locally and throughout West Africa. Not all rose to prominence, and the book reconstructs the lives of pupils who became local tradespeople in addition to those who had a greater social stature. This book attempts to offer analysis without forgetting the fundamental human trajectories which this material encompasses.

1 The founding of the Sierra Leone colony, 1787–1808

The colony of Sierra Leone was founded for humanitarian reasons relating to the campaign to abolish the slave trade, and opposition to slavery in Britain. After a disastrous first attempt at settlement on the Sierra Leone peninsula in 1787–1789, a new attempt was made in 1793 when former slaves and free blacks arrived from Nova Scotia, comprising the settlement until the arrival of Jamaican Maroons in 1800. The settlement in 1793 was under the auspices of the Sierra Leone Company, which was formed by abolitionists and others interested in developing the commercial prospects of Africa. This chapter explores the context for early settlement on the Sierra Leone peninsula and related settlements at Rio Pongo and elsewhere. It examines the colony on the upper Guinea coast in the period down to 1808, when the administration of the Sierra Leone Company was formally transferred to the British government and the Colony of Sierra Leone was founded. The chapter is divided into four sections that outline the history of the settlement and the relationship of the settlement to the states and societies that dominated the coast and the interior of the region stretching from roughly Cape Mount in the south to Rio Pongo in the north (see Figure 1.1). To situate the transformations which the region underwent, especially those framed and permitted by the schools studied, it’s crucial to understand the metaphorical canvas upon which these events were painted.

The abolitionist movement, dissenters and cultural change

Before looking to the African coast, an examination of the major factors which drove the establishment of a settlement in the region allows a clearer understanding of the actors involved. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, a confluence of events took place in Britain which culminated in the formation of a number of causes dedicated to abolishing the slave trade. Those responsible for much of the impetus and publicity of the antislavery movement were largely men and women whose evangelical Anglican faith demanded charity toward those less fortunate than themselves. For many of these individuals, bettering their fellows had motivations which were both economic as well as religious.¹ This mindset emerged from a free-labour ideology which was increasingly prevalent in Britain at that time. The philanthropists engaged in lending their financial and personal efforts to abolition tended to be wealthy and rarely missed a chance to make a profit personally. At the same time, however, they contributed to causes, and believed firmly in using large portions of their wealth to better the world. Made up of both so-called Dissenters and evangelical Anglicans, this group favoured evangelical social action, founding orphanages, hospitals and schools throughout the English-speaking world.²

Figure 1.1 Upper Guinea coast, 1820.

Source: Henry B. Lovejoy, Africa Diaspora Maps.

Among their early members were men like William Wilberforce, who was associated with other members of the Clapham Sect which drove the abolitionist movement.³ An evangelical like his fellow Clapham members, Wilberforce went into politics to advance the agenda of social reform. A primary element of Wilberforce’s circle included the need to make the world a better place. As such, so-called “Rational Dissenters” together formed a complex inter-relationship of faith and a desire for social reform which transcended idealism or capitalist interests. This picture of early abolitionism was more complex than either economic or evangelical ideology alone, and was colored by nuances of major cultural reforms present at the time, along with new ideas fuelled by the French and American Revolutions (Brown 2006, 17–18).⁴ Evangelical Anglicans, Dissenters, and men and women carried by ideas of social change or virtue contributed to the establishment of institutions meant to offer a better life to British children and to the so-called “Black Poor” of England. These reforms spread into British colonial regions, and went hand-in-hand with the urge to stem and halt the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Figure 1.2 Plan of Sierra Leone.

By Thomas Clarkson’s accounting, those interested in antislavery and affiliated with the first 1787 committee dedicated to its end were Granville Sharp, William Dillwyn, Richard Phillips, Samuel Hoare, John Barton, George Harrison, Joseph Hooper, John Lloyd, James Phillips, Joseph Woods and Philip Samsom.⁵ Following the path of earlier thinkers who were opposed to slavery, they brought the values of the Enlightenment to bear at a time when their influence was sufficient to enact laws against slavery, and did so with their beliefs serving (alongside other considerations) as a major impetus and unifying force (Coffey 2012, 845).

Committee for the relief of the Black Poor and the early Sierra Leone Company

Many former slaves who placed their trust in the offer of freedom extended by the British side of the American War for Independence elected to accompany their emancipators to England. They joined a mass of escaped and former slaves from the West indies and elsewhere who lived in London, generally called the “Black Poor,” which included both the disenfranchised and such luminaries as Gustavus Vassa (alias Olaudah Equiano). Some fared poorly, and their plight as former veterans aroused sympathies among better-off citizens in London, who eventually formed the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor. Early public concern about this group coalesced in England into an organized form after the London Public Advertiser asked its readers in January of 1786 to assist in charitable work (Braidwood 1994, 63). Initially, the relief work in question was to aid lascars, or sailors from the Indian subcontinent, but rapidly shifted its target, assisting “distressed Blacks” from the Americas as well as those from India. The “Black Poor” became a term which comprised not only former slaves, veterans of the American War of Independence and Africans, but also sailors and workers from India and the Indian subcontinent. The majority of the Committee’s members were or had been bankers or merchants, and several had previously been involved in charitable hospital work (Myers 1996, 23). From providing loaves of bread and broth to London’s poor in its inception, the Committee was able before long to rent rooms, establish a hospital and distribute clothing. This group of philanthropists helped to fund an effort in 1787 to transport members of the Black Poor and similarly disenfranchised Londoners of European descent to journey to Sierra Leone after noting the frequency of interest expressed by their black beneficiaries in returning home to the places from which they had been taken.⁶ For those determined to end the slave trade, Sierra Leone was an ideal location from which to fight slavery due its relative importance in the West African slave trade.⁷ The abolitionist choice of the region situated on a coast known for its export in enslaved Africans, with their intention one of blocking the trade at one of its sources (Turner 1997, 320, 326).⁸ While this first colonizing project proved ultimately fruitless, and its ideals impossible to implement on the ground, the effort to aid London’s Black Poor served as a model for subsequent philanthropic and abolitionist efforts on the coast of West Africa.

British abolitionist members of the subsequent Sierra Leone Company which took up many of the aims and intentions of the Committee were interested in attempting what Suzanne Schwarz has called an experiment “to test out methods of eradicating the Atlantic slave trade.” Shares had been sold to raise capital of £235,000 for the new attempt, and Schwarz’s analysis of the 1,833 shareholders demonstrates that their interests were largely economic as well as philanthropic (Schwarz 2013, 1). The involvement of leading entrepreneurs and capitalists, along with prominent Jews, shows interest not so much in the cultural Christian connection suggested by the Company’s leading figures as in commercial gain from the new settlement.⁹ Propaganda by the Sierra Leone Company promoted the region as one which was worth investing in due to its abundance. The chosen site for settlement was lauded as being fertile for trade in its agricultural products; primarily sugar production. Explicitly intended to “civilize” the West African people of the region, as well as assisting the abolition of the slave trade, the settlement not only offered former slaves a place to live, but presented an opportunity for the colonial expansion of British influence. Much of the Sierra Leone Company’s efforts involved working to persuade Africans engaged in the slave trade to turn to other commerce. To achieve this end, the Company struggled to establish a settlement by the end of the eighteenth century, and facilitated expeditions inland to try to find alternate sources of revenue that did not involve slavery.

Black Poor, Nova Scotians and Maroons

After the American War for Independence in 1783, former slaves took the opportunity to escape their former owners’ reach, leaving for both Britain and for Nova Scotia. When the Sierra Leone settlement was re-established in 1791 due to the continuing efforts of English abolitionists after the failure of the first settlement, a second wave of 1,131 settlers came from Nova Scotia after being recruited by John Clarkson, younger brother of the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. These former slaves who had left the newly formed United States in 1783 for promised land grants in Nova Scotia had found themselves in a difficult position at Birchtown, Nova Scotia, without much land and facing hostility from the European settlers already present. They were also situated in an environmentally challenging new land with poor soil and harsh winters. The friction between Black Loyalists and the white population focused largely on issues of labour (Walker 1976, 48; Whitfield 2010, 23–40). Former soldiers rioted in Shelbourne, Nova Scotia, in 1784 in protest of the cheaper labour which the black settlers offered. Freed blacks were also in danger of being re-enslaved in a society where slavery persisted; the threat of re-enslavement was a very real one. After Clarkson visited the various blacks in the region, speaking to churches and congregations, many of those who heard him speak enthusiastically of Sierra Leone were decided on journeying there. An ambitious list was drawn up of those wishing to emigrate to Sierra Leone, mostly made up of men and women from Nova Scotia, many of them comprising full congregations and their respective preachers. The first list, made in 1791, tallies the would-be settlers at 151 men, 147 women, 220 children and 26 additional interested people “who got to Halifax by stealth,” totalling 544 settlers. Eventually this number nearly doubled, and required 15 ships in January 1792 to make the journey, with many eager settlers abandoning large plots of land in Nova Scotia for presumably better land and less racial tension in Sierra Leone.

The final wave of colonists from the Americas to Sierra Leone were 500 Jamaican Maroons who were sent to the colony by way of Nova Scotia after being exiled from Jamaica. Following the second Maroon War, during which the Maroons of Trelawny declared war on the British, the governor, Alexander Lindsay, chose to deport the Maroons in a bid to preserve the island despite promising not to deport the rebels.¹⁰ These exiles were therefore sent to two ships waiting for them, which sailed to Nova Scotia. Despite arriving in midsummer 1796 in Halifax, the Jamaican Maroons were shocked enough by the subsequent winter – which was notably harsh and severe – and they refused to co-operate with efforts to settle them in Canada. After repeated petitions and pleas to the authorities to be removed to a climate they considered more hospitable, the Maroons were eventually sent to Sierra Leone. They were ordered to bring with them implements for agriculture and husbandry, as part of the ongoing effort to promote a self-sufficient colony along the upper Guinea coast. The Maroons had remained a cohesive group in Nova Scotia, and arrived in Sierra Leone as a well-disciplined force under their own officers.

Granville Town 1787–1789

Granville Sharp, a philanthropist and constitutional scholar known for his generosity and concern for the Black Poor, obtained a grant from the British treasury in the early 1780s, and led the attempt to establish a colony in West Africa which he named the “Province of Freedom.” Sharp envisioned a commonwealth of sorts, to be self-governing, and drew up a set of idealistic rules and codes of behaviour for the settlement. In 1787, the Black Po...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The founding of the Sierra Leone colony, 1787–1808
• 2 A new kind of Protestantism in Sierra Leone
• 3 The CMS and its missionaries
• 4 Initiation camps, karanthes and mission schools
• 5 The CMS school communities, 1806–1819
• 6 The pupils at the mission schools
• 7 The children of the CMS
• Conclusion: mission education and leadership in transforming Sierra Leone
• Appendix A: 1809–1816 compiled Bashia pupil list
• Appendix B: 1811–1816 compiled Canoffee pupil list
• Appendix C: 1814–1816 compiled Yongroo Pomoh pupil list
• Appendix D: 1815 Îsles de Los pupil list
• Appendix E: 1817–1819 compiled Leicester pupil list
• Appendix F: 1819 Gloucester Town pupil list
• Appendix G: 1816 Goree pupil list
• Index