Book contents
- Abolition in Sierra Leone
- African Identities: Past and Present
- Abolition in Sierra Leone
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on the Text
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Liberated African Origins and the Nineteenth-Century Slave Trade
- 2 Their Own Middle Passage
- 3 “Particulars of disposal”
- 4 Liberated African Nations
- 5 Kings and Companies
- 6 Religion, Return, and the Making of the Aku
- 7 The Cobolo War
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Select Bibliography
- Index
4 - Liberated African Nations
Ethnogenesis in an African Diaspora
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2020
- Abolition in Sierra Leone
- African Identities: Past and Present
- Abolition in Sierra Leone
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on the Text
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Liberated African Origins and the Nineteenth-Century Slave Trade
- 2 Their Own Middle Passage
- 3 “Particulars of disposal”
- 4 Liberated African Nations
- 5 Kings and Companies
- 6 Religion, Return, and the Making of the Aku
- 7 The Cobolo War
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
While the first three chapters explore the regional origins of Liberated Africans and the experiences of their forced migrations to Sierra Leone, the later chapters explore the new communities and identities these migrants forged. Chapter 4 investigates the multifarious “nations” that were at the center of Liberated African identity formation and political life. Within Liberated African society, Africans formed communities based on common language and experience, referred to in colonial and missionary documents as nations. The chapter explores how the most prominent of these nations – the Aku, Igbo, Popo, Hausa. Cosso, Moko, Congo, and Calabar – were diasporic creations whose members congregated based on similar language and place of origin. It looks at the varying meanings of these “national” categories from the perspectives of Liberated Africans, missionaries, and colonial officials. The chapter’s discussion fits within larger debates over the meaning of ethnicity in colonial Africa and the diaspora and how identity was shaped by particular imperial contexts.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Abolition in Sierra LeoneRe-Building Lives and Identities in Nineteenth-Century West Africa, pp. 127 - 166Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020