The Krio of West Africa

Islam, Culture, Creolization, and Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century

Gibril R. Cole

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9780821444788
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Sierra Leone's unique history, especially in the development and consolidation of British colonialism in West Africa, has made it an important site of historical investigation since the 1950s. Much of the scholarship produced in subsequent decades has focused on the "Krio, " descendants of freed slaves from the West Indies, North America, England, and other areas of West Africa, who settled Freetown, beginning in the late eighteenth century. Two foundational and enduring assumptions have characterized this historiography: the concepts of "Creole" and "Krio" are virtually interchangeable; and the community to which these terms apply was and is largely self-contained, Christian, and English in worldview.

In a bold challenge to the long-standing historiography on Sierra Leone, Gibril Cole carefully disentangles "Krio" from "Creole, " revealing the diversity and permeability of a community that included many who, in fact, were not Christian. In Cole's persuasive and engaging analysis, Muslim settlers take center stage as critical actors in the dynamic growth of Freetown's Krio society.

The Krio of West Africa represents the results of some of the first sustained historical research to be undertaken since the end of Sierra Leone's brutal civil war. It speaks clearly and powerfully not only to those with an interest in the specific history of Sierra Leone, but to histories of Islam in West Africa, the British empire, the Black Atlantic, the Yoruban diaspora, and the slave trade and its aftermath.

1

Creolization and (Krio)lization in the Making of Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone

Contrary to the early scholarly narratives, nineteenth-century Freetown and the colony of Sierra Leone harbored a heterogeneous and dynamically changing population. The colony and its emerging capital settlement were not only ethnically pluralistic, but they continuously absorbed different groups that brought along their own cultural influences. Of the more than one hundred linguistic “liberated” African groups that Sigismund Koelle noted in his Polyglotta Africana (1854), the various subgroups from Yorubaland would have the most cultural impact on the evolution of Krio society. These Yoruba subgroups may not have constituted the largest cultural group taken across the so-called Middle Passage during the transatlantic slave trade, but undoubtedly their cultural influences in the Atlantic World, particularly in the post–slave trade settlement of Freetown, have been enormous. Primarily due to the outbreak of war in early nineteenth-century Yorubaland, these groups came to constitute the largest proportion of the African population recaptured from slave ships and subsequently resettled in the colony from about the 1820s onward. They provided the heterogeneous community of resettled Africans much of the cultural foundation on which to reconstitute new identities and cultures in the creolizing environment of nineteenth-century Freetown.

How, and in what ways, did the Yoruba speakers successfully exert their cultural influences on the other groups within the colony? What were the cultural and social institutions brought from the old country, and how did their diffusion in the new colony serve to facilitate the process of cultural fusion and/or creolization in Sierra Leone? Given the cultural pluralism of the group, from the inception of the freed slave settlement to its emergence as an identifiable linguistic and cultural group in the late nineteenth century, it is imperative that we discuss the process of creolization and indigenization involving the groups with extra–Sierra Leonean provenance, including the Yoruba-speaking population and people living in the hinterland, and their coalescing into what we know as Krio society. The creolization process underwent a complex mix of resistance, indigenization, and accommodation to the realities of the sociopolitical and cultural dynamics on the ground in the Sierra Leone Colony. Even though they did not create radically new institutions, as was the case for those West Africans distributed across the Atlantic World in earlier centuries, the Liberated African community forged novel identities and structures that generally embraced Yoruba institutions and, to some extent, those of the Temne, Mende, Mandinka, Soso, and other groups in the colony.

The cultural diversity or pluralism that characterized nineteenth-century Freetown was itself the source of its “cultural vitality.” As Ulf Hannerz has observed, “Creole cultures like creole languages are those which draw in some way on two or more historical sources, often originally widely different.”¹ As dissimilar as the constituent groups may have been in the beginning of the process, they came to “develop and integrate” while cultivating a “political economy of culture.” The Temne, Mende, and other groups from the hinterland that were subsequently integrated into Krio society by the late nineteenth century came to develop a consciousness of, and familiarity with, cultural forms that hailed from outside their own cultural context.² Such a development is not unprecedented in human interactions, for, as Hannerz observes in the context of “the expansion of the present world system into non-Western, non-northern areas,” the developing social structures of early Krio society “provided the matrices within which an international flow of culture . . . continuously entered into varying combinations and syntheses with local culture.”³ Thus Krio society came to constitute in many ways the characteristics of what could be described as a “complex society,” with its attendant “differentiation of experiences and interests,” all of which ultimately allowed for a “differentiation of perspectives among members of the society.” This was best exemplified by the conscious embracing of Islam by a segment of the emergent Krio, a development that non-Muslims were not unaware of and that did not in any meaningful way threaten the social fabric of the new society.

In spite of this differentiation of religious and cultural perspectives in the making of Krio society, a common group identity ultimately emerged by the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. Krio identity both allowed for and transcended religious differences. While the identifiable Muslim communities of Fourah Bay, Fula Town, and Aberdeen retained their fealty to Islam and the Islamic Umma (community), their social and often consanguineous ties to their non-Muslim Krio compatriots remained undiminished. The religious differences between Christians and Muslims in late nineteenth-century Freetown may have been attenuated by what Lamin Sanneh ascribes to “deep theological affinity supported by real social and historical experience, all of which would make religious exclusiveness unappealing.”⁴ This is not to suggest that there was an absence of personal biases among practitioners of the respective faiths with respect to the other. Far from such an impression, it is here suggested that in spite of instances of religious dogmatism, the common cultural affinities of Muslims and Christians served to mitigate the undermining implications of such dogmatic tendencies. In the main, Muslims in Krio society tended to represent Islam as the better facilitator for the preservation of African cultural authenticity, as opposed to the teachings of the European Christian evangelical missions, which, from the perspective of Muslims, “remained superficial to black culture.”⁵ Thus, rather than religion being the most important factor in Krio identity, African (mostly, Yoruba) culture was deemed the most important common denominator.

Like Hannerz, Frederick Cooper and Rogers Brubaker have considered the question of identity and of “how people see themselves and their society” vis-à-vis others. As Cooper and Brubaker posit, “Identity, too, is both a category of practice and a category of analysis. As a category of practice, it is used by [people] . . . to make sense of themselves, of their activities, of what they share with, and how they differ from, others.” Nineteenth-century Freetown and Krio society was a classic example of this effort at “categorical relationships.” In a colonial environment that was largely based on a distinction between natives and non-natives, Krio leaders used the concept of identity to “persuade” their “people to understand themselves, their interests, and their predicaments in a certain way . . . [and] that they are . . . ‘identical’ with one another and at the same time different from others, and to organize and justify collective action along certain lines.”⁶

This was especially so following the extension of British colonial administration into the interior of Sierra Leone in 1896. Indeed, as we are reminded by Harrell-Bond, Howard, and Skinner, the colonial government struggled with the challenge of delineating the legal and cultural differences between “citizens and subjects” in Freetown. Unlike the Krio (descendants of settlers), who were “regarded legally as British subjects, the situation was not so clear as regards the Native residents—that is, both those who had immigrated into the Colony and those born there.”⁷ I employ the term identity in this context to denote the “fundamental and consequential sameness” among members of Krio society that “manifest[ed] itself in solidarity, in shared dispositions or consciousness, or in collective action.”⁸ This shared consciousness remained central to the development of Krio ethnicity, religious differences notwithstanding.

CREOLE SOCIETY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: RETHINKING REPRESENTATION IN THE LITERATURE

In discussing the emergence of colonial Sierra Leone, the extant narrative has tended to focus primarily on the centrality of the manumitted Africans from Europe and North America, the so-called Black Poor, Nova Scotians, and Maroons, and only secondarily on the Liberated Africans in the foundations of Creole/Krio society. The narrative has also privileged the triumphal impact of the European evangelical missions on the returnee population and the elitist culture that emerged from it. The importance of these returnees and the scriptural influences of the Christian missions in the making of nineteenth-century Krio society are undeniable. However, a critical rethinking of the history of the group needs to be undertaken beyond the oft-repeated narrative of the abolition, and the triumph of the social engineering project engendered by the evangelical and colonial officials that produced a hegemonic social entity based on “the three C’s” (Christianity, commerce, and civilization).

The emphasis on the European Christian evangelical movements and their impact on the free Africans and so-called recaptives in the extant literature has had the unmistakable, perhaps not unintended, effect of pushing other religious and cultural identities to the periphery. This emphasis also rendered the history of Krio society as nothing less than a triumph of the hegemony of the Euro-American cultural ideas espoused by the Christian missions, relative to that of marginalized entities. Yet it should be noted that while these other identities may have been relegated to the periphery in the historiography, the censuses undertaken by the colonial state and other sources always seem to refuse to ignore these people. The narrative on the Krio should be much more multicentered, multicultural, and inclusive of those groups that were necessarily excluded from the social engineering project of the Europeans.

The historiography of the Krio, and thus public memory, has been largely shaped by the scholarship of those responsible for the production of knowledge in Sierra Leone during the colonial and immediate postcolonial periods. Such scholarship has rather uncritically attributed the development of Krio culture to the primary influences of the European missions and colonial officials in nineteenth-century Freetown.⁹ Even as Akintola Wyse, for instance, was attempting to set the record straight, as it were, by calling for a consideration of the role and place of other groups in the making of Krio society, he was paradoxically giving primacy to the impact of European influences that he believed to have shaped “the unique nature of the society which the Krios evolved.”¹⁰ Wyse even made an uncritical reference to the oft-repeated characterization of the Krio as “Black Englishmen”; he consequently privileged the Black Poor, Nova Scotians, and Maroons, whom he identified as having “formed the Western foundations of the society, which were reflected in their Christianity, education, politics, ideals and aspirations, civic pride and high sense of individualism, their mode of dress, their articulateness and their language.” Wyse could identify only “a few cultural survivals that recalled from some distant past their African roots.”¹¹ Obviously, such observations were in reference to the above-mentioned groups; however, he was unequivocally crediting Western civilization as the cultural anchor of the new society. Paradoxically, Wyse had been foremost in advocating a reexamination of the makings of Krio society, due to what he perceived as an overemphasis on the extra–Sierra Leonean factor, at the expense of indigenous cultures, in the constituent groups that coalesced to emerge as Krio in the late nineteenth century.

Leo Spitzer has been among those whose scholarship has uncritically attributed primacy to the European factor in the makings of Krio society.¹² And, like the other sources of production of knowledge on the Krio in the early postcolonial period, Spitzer sought to define Krio culture based on the limited outlook of the upper stratum of the emergent society in the late nineteenth century. He appropriated the description of the group as “Black Englishmen” by one of its more socially prominent members, A. J. Shorunkeh-Sawyerr, and thus sought to interpret the term as reflective of the general cultural outlook of the society. Even as he took pains to demonstrate that European influences were, in the main, much more impactful on the upper-class Krio, Spitzer nevertheless concluded that Krio society in general was pervasively European in outlook.¹³ However, the fact that upper-class Krio “aspired to and inculcated European social values” did not necessarily render the society uniformly European in cultural outlook. Also, simply because members of the upper stratum of the group may have affected European speech patterns, and attitudes and assumptions, that did not necessarily account for the cultural evolution of the society as a whole. Certainly upper-class Krio sought membership in European social institutions such as the Freemason lodge in colonial Freetown; nonetheless, the vast majority of Krio belonged to the working class and developed a decidedly different cultural outlook from that of the upper-class educated elite. Working-class Krio were less interested in entering the restricted social environment of the Freemason lodge than they were in undergoing the ritual (Mawo) ceremony into the equally esoteric Yoruba-derived cultural organizations like the Orjeh, Egunuko, Akpansa, Gelede, and Odeh.

Thus, the critical and erroneous assumption of the Krio as having embraced English values, which has been responsible for the much-repeated characterization of the Krio as “Black Englishmen,” is unsustainable and in need of revision. Clearly, the suggestion of cultural alienation on the part of the Krio does not take into consideration the complex historical evolution of the group. If the suggestion of cultural alienation did indeed constitute a historical accuracy, how, then, do we account for the role and place of the Temne, Baga, Bullom/Sherbro, and Soso in the process of resocialization in nineteenth-century Freetown? Tracing the ethnic provenance of a significant proportion of Liberated Africans to any number of these groups, and the cultural contributions of these ethnicities to the making of Krio society, will have the inevitable consequence of undermining the oft-repeated, but erroneous assertion of the Krio as but a caricature of Victorian English culture. A quick perusal of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database will reveal that while many of the Liberated Africans resettled in Freetown beginning in 1819 began their transatlantic journey from such diverse locations as Badagry, Bonny, Calabar, Cape Grand Mount, Cameroons River, Gabon, Lagos, Little Popo, Whydah, and unspecified ports in the area of the Bight of Benin, many others embarked from “ports unspecified” in Sierra Leone.¹⁴

While the early returnee groups (i.e., the Nova Scotians and Maroons) and their progeny may have aspired to Western cultural values, they were hardly representative of the society that congealed into what became Krio by the late nineteenth century. Indeed, the Black Poor, Nova Scotians, and Maroons constituted around 10 percent of the population of the colonial settlement that by the late 1820s and early 1830s was being dominated by the Liberated Africans who had not experienced life in New World environments. The Liberated Africans who landed on the Sierra Leone Peninsula from the 1820s and after entered a “stratified and élite-oriented society,” dominated by the former groups; however, Liberated Africans, due to their numerical strength and their entrepreneurial skills and disposition, soon experienced an upward social mobility that closed the gap between them and the more established early settlers.

Contrary to Wyse and other scholars who presupposed a Christian prerequisite for Krio identity, this work argues that no such requirement existed. There was a significant number of Muslims in the Liberated African community and in what subsequently became Krio society. There were undeniable tensions between Christian and Muslim Krio, but there was also extensive cooperation, which allowed fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Creolization and (Krio)lization in the Making of Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone
• Chapter 2: Islam, Christianity, and the State in Colonial Freetown
• Chapter 3: Trade, Religion, and the Colonial State
• Chapter 4: The Krio Diaspora in Nigeria
• Chapter 5: Piety and PraxisReligion in Daily Life
• Chapter 6: Education and Educational Reform within the Muslim Community
• Postscript
• Appendix Imams of Communities of Fourah Bay, Fula Town, and Aberdeen (1833–1908)
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index