The African-British Long Eighteenth Century

An Analysis of African-British Treaties, Colonial Economics, and Anthropological Discourse

Tcho Mbaimba Caulker

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9798216326953
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Tracing the development of British colonial administration in West Africa over the course of the long eighteenth century, Caulker illuminates the solidification of the administration as it goes through a learning process of power. This book analyzes the documents and treaties that the indigenous peoples of eighteen-century Sierra Leone made with their future British colonizers, and compares them with the writings of Adam Smith to uncover a colonial philosophy linking European economic success with the process of civilizing Africa through moral education. A discussion of other archival materials demonstrates the ways that an emerging anthropological science and pseudo-scientific methodology contributed to colonial ventures and exploration. The book concludes with an analysis of the postcolonial novel The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, demonstrating that the study of this long eighteenth-century archive has as much to do with the present postcolonial era as it does with the period of African colonization.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 01. Long Eighteenth-Century Fictive Literature and Filling the Vacuum of Africa
• Chapter 02. British-African Treaty Making and the Construction of a British Colonial State in Sierra Leone
• Chapter 03. Reading the British Sierra Leone Company: The Sierra Leone Company and its Ties to Emergent Colonial, Economic, and Moral Philosophy of the Long Eighteenth Century
• Chapter 04. Natural Science, Exploration, and the Colonial Project in West Africa
• Chapter 05. The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, and Bringing the Long Eighteenth-Century Archiva lPast into the Postcolonial Present
• Epilogue: The African-British Long Eighteenth Century and Imagination
• Appendix of Treaties
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author