Sierra Leone in the Atlantic World: concepts, contours, and exchange

Abstract

Underscoring the unique potential that this region has for the study of the African Diaspora, this article situates the slave trading fort on Bunce Island and the Sierra Leone hinterland in the wider context of Atlantic history. In doing so it underscores the need to view Atlantic exchanges within their specific cultural and historical settings, and to place them within the maritime Atlantic and capitalist world economies. The article further considers the conceptual and methodological challenges faced in tracing African continuities in the Diaspora and in evaluating change in African societies during the period of the Atlantic trade. Bunce Island's history and the trade relations represented present one of the better opportunities to delineate the paths through which enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas. This article examines the specific connections between this portion of Upper Guinea Coast and South Carolina. The importance of an interdisciplinary approach incorporating archaeological data in both the reconstruction of Africa's past and in providing a context for enslaved Africans in the Diaspora is underscored.

Keywords:

• Atlantic history
• slave trade
• West African history
• West African archaeology
• Sierra Leone

Acknowledgements

I thank Ken Kelly for organizing the Walker Institute Workshop at the University of South Carolina and for commenting on initial drafts of this article. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributor

Christopher R. DeCorse is a Professor and past Chair of Anthropology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. His research interests include African archaeology and history, general anthropology, and the portrayal of archaeologists and archaeology in popular culture. DeCorse's publications include: the introductory textbook Anthropology: A Global Perspective (2012, coauthored with Raymond Scupin); In the Beginning: An Introduction to Archaeology, 12th Edition (2005, with Brian Fagan) and; The Record of the Past: An Introduction to Archaeology and Physical Anthropology (2000). DeCorse's books on African archaeology include: An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400–1900 (2001) and West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade (2001).

Notes

1. See Ogundiran and Falola, Archaeology of Atlantic Africa. The Atlantic World, the intersection of Africa with it, and the exchanges that these interactions engendered have emerged as key themes in the social sciences. See surveys in Green, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; Green and Morgan, Atlantic History; Mitchell, African Connections; Thornton, Cultural History; Yelvington, Afro-Atlantic Dialogues; and Yerxa, Recent Themes.

2. The foci of “Atlantic” history and the conceptual framing of the research undertaken are far from unified in terms of either the geographic and temporal parameters represented, or the conceptual vantages taken. For example, see the varying perspectives of the Atlantic World's margins and concepts discussed in Bailyn, Atlantic History; Bailyn and Denault, Soundings; Balachandran, “Atlantic Paradigms”; Cañizares-Esguerra and Seeman, Atlantic in Global History; DeCorse, Post-Colonial or Not?; Fogelman, “Transformation of the Atlantic World”; Gabaccia, “Spatializing Gender”; Kellman, “Beyond Center and Periphery”; and O'Reilly, “Genealogies of Atlantic History.”

3. Tomich, “Atlantic History and World Economy,” 113–115. See also Solow, Slavery and the Rise.

4. For example, see Mitchell, African Connections; Thornton, Cultural History; and Yelvington, Afro-Atlantic Dialogues.

5. As Tomich observes, polities, relations of production, class formation, and ethnicities are not independent of the larger complex of relations of which they were part or of one another, but rather must be seen as constituent relations of the world economy. Tomich, “Atlantic History and World Economy,” 105. The need to situate Atlantic transformations in the deeper context of the pre-Atlantic African past is explored in DeCorse, “Post-Colonial or Not?”

6. Duncan, Atlantic Islands, 17–24.

7. For example, see Eltis, Economic Growth; Fage, “Slavery and the Slave Trade”; Lovejoy, “Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade”; Morgan, “Africa and the Atlantic”; and Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

8. There is documentary evidence for this in areas close to European trading enclaves, but for many areas archaeology is a primary source of information. For example, see DeCorse, West Africa during the Slave Trade; DeCorse, An Archaeology of Elmina, 31–43; DeCorse, “West African Archaeology”; DeCorse and Spiers, “A Tale of Two Polities”; Green, Rise of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 77–84; Kelly, “Archaeology of African-European Interaction”; Monroe, The Precolonial State; and Morgan, “Africa and the Atlantic,” 232–234.

9. For example, see DeCorse, “Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau.”

10. See DeCorse and Spiers, “A Tale of Two Polities” and compare Eltis, Economic Growth, 73–77.

11. DeCorse, Postcolonial or Not?; and Kelly, “Using Historically Informed Archaeology”.

12. DeCorse, “Oceans Apart”; Fields-Black, Deep Roots, 51–53; Hauser and DeCorse, “Low-Fired Earthenwares”; Kelly, “African Diaspora Starts Here”; Posnansky, “Toward an Archaeology”; and Posnansky, “Revelations, Roots, and Reactions.”

13. For example, Wilkie and Farnsworth's study of influence of African textile patterns in Afro-Bahamian “aesthetic” choice in European ceramics is strengthened by their consideration of the varied African populations from which they were descended. It should, however, be noted that their consideration could have usefully included reference to the varied textile traditions, as well as other decorative inventories, from across the African regions considered. See Wilkie and Farnsworth, Sampling, 35–68.

14. These interpretive challenges are illustrated by the connections between Elmina in coastal Ghana, site of the Dutch headquarters in West Africa from 1637 to 1872, and Curaçao in the southern Caribbean. As these areas were controlled by the same European power throughout much of the slave trade, the study of their contexts and cultures would seem to hold promise for the untangling of the complexities of the Diaspora. Yet the reality of the historical setting makes this challenging. See Haviser and DeCorse, “African-Caribbean Interaction,” 329–30; and Kea, “When I Die.”

15. Among the most promising of these efforts is the work on names recorded in the Registers of Liberated Africans, which make it possible to at least partially trace the geographic origins of enslaved Africans taken from the Sierra Leone hinterland. See Misevich, “The Origins.” This source is, however, only available for the nineteenth century and is a subset of the number or individuals represented.

16. Robertshaw, A History; Posnansky, “African Archaeology.”

17. DeCorse, Postcolonial or Not?; and Holl, “Worldviews.”

18. Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database; Donnan, Documents. Also see brief overview in Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 250–252. Edward Ball has suggested that four out of ten African Americans have ancestors who first arrived in the United States via the Charleston coast. Ball, Slaves in the Family, 190.

19. Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect; Wade-Lewis, “Impact of the Turner-Herskovits”; Wade-Lewis, Lorenzo Dow Turner.

20. Herskovits, “Significance of West Africa”; and Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past.

21. Morgan, African American Life; and Sengova, “My Mother Dem Nyus.”

22. Barnes and Steen, “Archaeology and Heritage,” 2012; and Singleton, “Reclaiming,” 2010.

23. Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect; and Sengova, “My Mother Dem Nyus.” The 1998 film Language You Cry In, traces the origins of a five line Gullah song to a Mende funeral dirge from southern Sierra Leone. The film by Alvaro Topeke and Angel Serrano highlights work by Joseph Opala, Cynthia Schmidt, and Tazieff Koroma. For review of the interpretive problems see Thomas-Houston, “Review”.

24. See Littlefield, Rice and Slaves; Carney, Black Rice; and Fields-Black, Deep Roots.

25. Torres, Doura, Keita, and Kittles, “Y Chromosome Lineages.”

26. Gondobay Manga Foundation website; McClanahan, “US-funded coalition restores key West African slave-trade ‘castle’.”

27. “A Unique African American Culture.”

28. Amartey and Reid, “Terrestrial and Maritime”; DeCorse, “Bunce Island: A Cultural Resource Assessment”; DeCorse “Archaeological Investigations, Tasso and Bunce Islands”; and DeCorse, “Archaeological Fieldwork.”

29. For example, see Hair, “Early Sources”; and Hair, “Sources on Early Sierra Leone (6)”.

30. Brooks, Euroafricans; and Rodney, A History.

31. Pereira, Esmeraldo, 96; Hair, “Early Sources”; and Hair, “Sources on Early Sierra Leone (12).”

32. Amartey and Reid, “Terrestrial and Maritime”; and DeCorse, “Archaeological Fieldwork.”

33. DeCorse, “Bunce Island: A Cultural Resource Assessment”; DeCorse “Archaeological Investigations, Tasso and Bunce Islands”; and DeCorse, “Archaeological Fieldwork.”

34. The first of these was Castelo São Jorge da Mina (now known as Elmina Castle) in coastal Ghana, founded in 1482. DeCorse, “Early Trade Posts”; and Hair, The Founding; Lawrence, Trade Castles and Forts.

35. Hancock, Citizens of the World, 198–214.

36. For example, see Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone, 4–5, 7, 9–10, 65–66, 78, 108–110, 118, 152; Hancock, Citizens of the World, 172–220; and Kup, History of Sierra Leone, 21–22, 26, 48, 55–61, 70–72, 83–96, 100, 107–116.

37. Hancock, Citizens of the World, 172–220.

38. Ibid., 172.

39. Ibid., 184–185.

40. Ibid., 199–200. Oral traditions also recount the story of Gumba Smart, who was a slave at Bunce Island who became a trusted agent and then an independent slave trader. See Ball, Slaves in the Family, 421–425.

41. Amartey and Reid, “Terrestrial and Maritime.”

42. Fields-Black, Deep Roots, 52.

43. Ball, Slaves in the Family, 194; “Priscilla's Homecoming.”

44. Hamer, The Papers, 35–36.

45. Akam, “George W. Bush's Great-Grandfather.”

46. Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, for example, is far more impressive than Bunce Island in size but it has remained in continuous use over the past three and half centuries, serving as a prison until the 1980s. See Kankpeyeng and DeCorse, “Ghana's Vanishing Past.”

47. DeCorse, “Bunce Island: A Cultural Resource Assessment,” 16–66.

48. Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone, 7.

49. DeCorse, “Bunce Island: A Cultural Resource Assessment.” The only fortifications consist of two semicircular bastions and curtain wall, facing west toward the anchorage. Included in the fort were spaces for the storage of goods, housing for the European garrison, and workshops.

50. DeCorse, “Archaeological Investigations Tasso and Bunce,” 8.

51. See discussion of British forts in DeCorse, “Tools of Empire.” The view from the back windows of Bance Island House in 1791 was poignantly described by Anna Maria Falconbridge, wife of British abolitionist Alexander Falconbridge, who had dinner with the slave traders on the upper story of Bance Island House. See Falconbridge, Narrative of Two Voyages, 32.

52. Hancock, Citizens of the World, 193.

53. Bunce Island may have been the first European fort in West Africa to be proposed as a monument to the slave trade. In 1922, J. B. Chinsman suggested that the City Council of Freetown purchase the island from the British Colonial government “so that its caves and tombstones could be preserved as historical monuments of the slave trade.” Quoted in Wyse, “Bankole-Bright and Politics,” 24. Current work under the supervision of the Sierra Leone Monuments and Relics Commission is seeking to preserve and stabilize the island's ruins and provide interpretive facilities.

54. For example, see Deveneaux, Political and Social Impact, 178–191; Mouser, American Colony on the Rio Pongo; Misevich, “The Origins.” Slave trading in the Sierra Leone Estuary continued after British abolition. For example, Laing writing in 1825 attributes the “knavery” and “indisposition to honest labour” among the Timne to their long participation in the slave trade and to the fact that one of the principal markets of the slave trade was at the mouth of a river in their territory. Laing may have been referring to Bunce Island. Laing, Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko and Soolima, 106–107. In the 1855, the HMS Teazer was dispatched to attack Medina, just northeast of Bunce Island, because the chief was reputed to be dealing in slaves. See Kingston, Blue Jackets.

55. Hancock, Citizens of the World, 203.

56. See Misevich, “The Origins.”

57. For example, see Laing, Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko and Soolima; Blyden, “Report on the Expedition to Falaba”; Garrett, “Sierra Leone and the Interior”; Reade, African Sketch-Book; Trotter, The Niger Sources; Zweifel and Moustier, Voyage aux Sources du Niger.

58. See reviews by Fyfe, Our Children; and Handler, “Survivors of the Middle Passage.”

59. For example, see Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade; Lane and MacDonald, Slavery in Africa.

60. For example, see Atherton, “Early Economies of Sierra Leone,” 33; Deveneaux, Political and Social Impact, 112–114; Hair, “Sources on Early Sierra Leone (12),” 31. However, detailed evidence for specific trade linkages between the coast and hinterland are limited until the late nineteenth century. Archaeological evidence for European trade materials also appears limited until the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

61. Evidence for this dates to the nineteenth century. For example, see Deveneaux, Political and Social Impact, 112–126; Fyle, The Solima Yalunka Kingdom, 93–98; and Laing, Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko and Soolima, 25–26.

62. See DeCorse, “Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau.”

63. Laing, Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko and Soolima, 381, 399–419. In Temne country, a clamor was purportedly raised against Laing when he was accused of being “one of those white men who prevented the slave-trade, and injured the prosperity of their country.” See Laing, Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko and Soolima, 106.

64. There is no direct evidence for this in the case of Sierra Leone. However, surveying archival sources for the Senegambia, Green cites evidence for slave raiding and political instability going back to the second half of the fifteenth century. Green, Rise of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 78–82.

65. Laing, Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko and Soolima, 133, also see 364.

66. Deveneaux, “Political and Social Impact,” 112–117; Howard, “Big Men, Traders, and Chiefs,” 37–40, 150–160; and Mitchell, “Trade Routes.”

67. For example, see Garrett “Sierra Leone and the Interior”; Trotter, The Niger Sources, 34. For the history of the Sierra Leone Colony, see Peterson, Province of Freedom.

68. For example, see Fyle, The Solima Yalunka Kingdom; and DeCorse, “Limba, Yalunka and Kuranko Ethnicity”.

69. For example, see Fyle, The Solima Yalunka Kingdom, 117–123; and Lipschutz, Northeast Sierra Leone, 62–79. In the 1880s and early 1890s, Samori Touré’s Islamic state extended across the West African savannah from the Futa Jallon in Guinea eastward through Mali and Burkina Faso to northern Ghana.

70. For example, see Alie, New History of Sierra Leone, 152–157; DeCorse, “Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau”; and Donald, “Changes in Yalunka Social Organization,” 128–135.

71. DeCorse, “Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau.” The organization of these settlements is difficult to characterize given the limited information. However, family and kinship ties that were central to the labor needs of a subsistence economy were likely important.

72. Chiefs, who largely functioned as secular leaders, utilized personal ties and charismatic authority to extend their political influence. Other sociopolitical structures such as kinship groups (both maternal and paternal), affines, age grades, and secret societies (evidence for which is all poorly perceived archaeologically) provide cross-cutting forms of more heterarchical social organization.

73. For example, by 1800 the Yalunka settlements in northern Sierra Leone had coalesced into what Fyle refers to as the Solima Yalunka Kingdom. Trade, including slaves, may have been an important factor in the Kingdom's origins and available data suggest that there were a significantly higher proportion of slaves within the Yalunka area. Fyle, The Solima Yalunka Kingdom, 49–64; also see Donald, “Changes in Yalunka Social Organization,” 9–12, 44–55; and Lipschulz, Northeast Sierra Leone,185.

74. For example, see Abraham, “Pattern of Warfare and Settlement,” 129–131; Alldridge, Sherbro and Its Hinterland, 97, 115, 219, 230, 298–300; Atherton, “Protohistoric Habitation Sites”; Atherton, “Ethnoarchaeology in Africa,” 86–90; DeCorse, “Limba, Yalunka and Kuranko Ethnicity”; DeCorse, “Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau”; Jones, From Slaves to Palm Kernels, 169–173; Laing, Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko and Soolima, 220–221, 264; Malcolm, “Mende Warfare,” 48–49; and Siddle, “War-Towns in Sierra Leone”.

75. DeCorse, “Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau.”

76. For example, see Alie, New History of Sierra Leone, 31; Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone. Fyle discusses the potential contribution of archaeology, but underscores the limited work undertaken. See Fyle, History of Sierra Leone, 7.

77. Siddle, “War-Towns in Sierra Leone” and compare DeCorse, “Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau.”