Description
Book SynopsisTracing 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
Trade ReviewIn The African-British Long Eighteenth Century, Tcho Mbaimba Caulker has provided a vigorous study of the other side of the long eighteenth century, a history and culture beyond slavery, inside and outside empire. Delving deep into the often forgotten archive of Afri-British settlement in Sierra Leone, the author has written a work that will make Africa visible in the powerful narratives of modern identity on the colonial periphery. In this powerful book, Sierra Leone has found its rightful place in the narrative of the "Black Atlantic". -- Simon Gikandi, Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University
The African-British Long Eighteenth Century marks an important paradigm shift at the intersections of colonial history, postcoloninal theory, and eighteenth-century studies. Exploring the discursive and material colonization of Sierra Leone by the British from the eighteenth century to the present, via the study of literature, history, cartography, and postcolonial theory this book re-tells the story of British colonialism from the perspective of Sierra Leone. -- Jyotsna G. Singh, Michigan State University
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: The African-British Long Eighteenth Century Chapter 2 Long Eighteenth-Century Fictive Literature and Filling Vacuum of Africa Chapter 3 British-African Treaty-Making and the Construction of a British Colonial State in Sierra Leone Chapter 4 Reading the British Sierra Leone Company: Colonial Economics and Moral Philosophy of the Long Eighteenth Century Chapter 5 Natural Science, Exploration, and the Colonial Project in West Africa Chapter 6 The Last Harmattan on Alusine Dunbar, and Bringing the Long Eighteenth-Century Archival Past into the Postcolonial Present Chapter 7 Epilogue: The African-British Long Eighteenth Century and Imagination
