Empire, Slave Trade and Slavery: Rebuilding Civil Society in Sierra Leone, Past and Present

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Empire, Slave Trade and Slavery: Rebuilding Civil Society in Sierra Leone, Past and Present

Organizer
Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (University of Hull)
Venue
Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (University of Hull)
Location
Hull
Country
United Kingdom
From - Until
26.09.2008 - 28.09.2008
Website
http://www.hull.ac.uk/wise/Conferences/Eventsin2008/index.html
By
Lovell, Heidi

In 1808, two hundred years ago, Sierra Leone became a British Crown colony. The bicentennial presents the opportunity to re-examine the history of Sierra Leone. The conference will bring together academics from different disciplines, museum professionals, archivists, policy makers concerned with contemporary issues, and individuals interested in human rights and the reconstruction of modern day Sierra Leone.

British influence in Sierra Leone is long standing and took a variety of forms in the transition from slavery to civil society from the eighteenth century to the present day. This part of West Africa was not only a slave supply region on the upper Guinea Coast but also the location for a number of abolitionist experiments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Leading British abolitionists, including Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce, regarded Sierra Leone as a ‘Province of Freedom’ that would transform Africa. It was hoped that the utopian vision of a settlement governed by former slaves would demonstrate African capacity for cultural, moral and economic improvement. To that end, the aims of the Sierra Leone Company, incorporated in 1791, were the destruction of the slave trade and the regeneration of Africa. The development of Freetown in a slave trading region was a bold and ambitious experiment in the implementation of morality and abolitionist economics. Although the Company aimed to develop ‘legitimate’ forms of trade as alternatives to the transatlantic slave trade, it failed to achieve its aims, and in 1808 the settlement was formally transferred to the British Crown.

Sierra Leone experienced a number of phases of resettlement by people of African descent. In 1792 over 1,100 former slaves from Nova Scotia resettled in Freetown with the intention of making their ‘children free and happy’, and some 550 Maroons from Jamaica arrived in Sierra Leone in 1800. After 1807, anti-slavery squadrons disembarked tens of thousands of ‘recaptives’ from various parts of West Africa at Freetown. These immigrant groups constituted a ‘great mixture of Africans … [who] had to rebuild identities and communities in an alien land controlled by Europeans’, as David Northrup has recognized. Through their missionary and commercial endeavours, the ‘recaptives’ also influenced economic, social, and religious development in other areas of West Africa.

The Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation is a particularly appropriate venue for the conference because Freetown, Sierra Leone, and the City of Hull have been twin cities since 1980. The visit of former P.M. Tony Blair to Sierra Leone in May 2007 highlighted the ongoing links between Britain and Sierra Leone and the difficulties of reconstructing civil society in the aftermath of brutal civil war. With the return to peace in 2002, Britain agreed to provide development aid to rebuild Sierra Leone, which had become one of the world’s poorest countries. Hence, the conference will focus on the reconstruction of civil society, both in the context of slavery and abolition and in the context of civil war and its aftermath. In recognition of the historic reasons that Hull and Freetown have been twin cities, the conference will provide a forum to discuss past and present issues of social justice and civil development.

Programm

Provisional programme

The venue for the conference is the University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), located in Oriel Chambers, High Street, Hull. WISE is located next to Wilberforce House in the City of Hull’s Museums Quarter. Except for the conference dinner on Friday, all sessions take place at WISE.

Friday 26 September 2008

Registration opens 8.30am
Refreshments available
WISE reception

10am Keynote
Questions and discussion

Suzanne Schwarz (Liverpool Hope)

11am Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE

11.20am Panel session 1 - Slaving and Trade Networks
Lecture Room, WISE

Carlos F. Liberato (Sergipe, Brazil): Sierra Leone and the rivers of Guine in the eighteenth century

Denise Jones (Liverpool Hope): The British slave trade in Sierra Leone: a case study of Robert Bostock, 1769-92

Sean Kelley (Hartwick College, New York): Panyarring and palaver: violence and the slave trade at Sierra Leone and the Windward Coast in the eighteenth century

Kenneth Morgan (Brunel): British merchants and the slave trade from Sierra Leone, 1750-1807

Karlee-Anne Sapoznik (York): Revisiting the Sierra Leone scheme through the lens of Gustavus Vasa or Olaudah Equiano

1pm Lunch
Streetlife Museum, Museum Quarter

2pm Panel session 2 - Sierra Leone and African Diasporas
Lecture Room, WISE

Celine Flory (Paris), From Sierra Leone to French Guiana and Martinique: Sierra Leone travellers in the mid-nineteenth century

Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman (York): Liberated slaves in Trinidad and Sierra Leone: some comparative data

Philip Misevich (Emory): Freetown and the escape of slaves from the Sierra Leone hinterland

Carolyn Brown (Rutgers): Sierra Leone and returnees to Igboland

3.40pm Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE

4pm Panel session 3 – Building a new society: Sierra Leone in the 19th Century Lecture Room, WISE

Tunde Zack-Williams (Central Lancashire): The legacy of the slave trade in Sierra Leone

Gibril R. Cole (Louisiana State): Edward Wilmot Blyden and the education of Muslim Krio on colonial Sierra Leone

David Skinner (Santa Clara and Edinburgh): From company to colony to nation state: the Islamic factor in the development of Sierra Leone

Andrew Walls (Liverpool Hope): ‘The Morning Star of Africa’: Sierra Leone in Evangelical and Humanitarian Discourse

5.40pm Free time

7.30pm for 8pm Conference Dinner
Lindsey Suite, Staff House, University of Hull campus, Cottingham Road, Hull,. Joseph Opala (James Madison, Virginia) will introduce a video on Bunce Island, Sierra Leone.

Saturday 27 September 2008

9am Refreshments available
Boardroom, WISE

9.30am Keynote
Questions and discussion

Milli Akinsulure

10.30am Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE

10.50am Panel session 4 – Politics and social Inclusion in Sierra Leone in 19th and 20th century Sierra Leone
Lecture Room, WISE

Trina Hogg (New York): The ‘Human Leopard Society’: pacification, policing and prosecution on the Sherbro Coast 1880-1915

Silke Strickrodt (Humboldt, Berlin): ‘Lights shining in a dark place’: female education and African initiative in nineteenth-century Sierra Leone

Christine Whyte (LSE), From servile marriage to slave revolt: the exploitation of women in Sierra Leone

Chalen Westaby (Liverpool Hope), Imperial lethargy: self-determination and the de-colonisation of Sierra Leone 1954-1961

12.30pm Lunch
Streetlife Museum

1.30pm Panel session 5 - Rebuilding Society
Lecture Room, WISE

Richard Fanthorpe (Sussex): Indirect rule in the 21st century? The Biriwa chieftancy election crisis of 2006

Ibrahim Seaga Shaw (West of England): The politics of humanitarian intervention: a critical analogy of Britain’s response to the end of the slave trade and the civil war in Sierra Leone

Mélanie Torrent (Paris Diderot): The Commonwealth contribution to rebuilding civil society in Sierra Leone: achievements and challenges

Fredline M’Cormack (Florida): Can foreign aid promote democracy? The role of NGOs in civil-society building in post-conflict Sierra Leone

3.10pm Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE

3.30pm Panel session 6 - Culture and Identity
Lecture Room, WISE

Prince Kwame Adika (Illinois State): Voodoo child in search of umbilical cord: the trans-national healing aesthetics of Syl Cheney-Coker

Jacqueline Knörr (Max Planck Institute): ‘Out of hiding’: reconstruction of Krio identity in post-war Sierra Leone

Theodore Rose (Chicago): African civil development and British colonial expansion in Sierra Leone: a cultural enquiry

4.50pm Close of day

Delegates are free to make their own dining arrangements. A list of local restaurants and eateries will be available.

Sunday 28 September 2008

9.00am Refreshments available
Boardroom, WISE

9.30am Panel 7: Imagining Connections: Freetown - then and now
Lecture Room, WISE

James Sidbury (Texas, Austen), ‘African’ settlers in the founding of Freetown

Emma Christopher (Sydney) and Maree Defolski (Macquarie): Sydney and Freetown: reclaiming a vanished twin

Lydia Saul (Wilberforce House): Hull’s relationship with Sierra Leone as seen through the Wilberforce House collections

11.10am Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE

11.30am Panel session 8: Roundtable on Archaeology, Archives, Memory and Tourism
Lecture Room, WISE

Joseph Opala (James Madison, Virginia), convenor

Paul Basu (Sussex), David Gundry (World Monuments Fund), Sir Roland Jackson (Bunce Island Coalition (UK) and British Association for the Advancement of Science), and Ibrahim Abdullah (Sierra Leone Archives) will lead a discussion on Bunce Island, archival and other heritage issues in Sierra Leone today.

1.10pm Concluding remarks: Paul Lovejoy (York), David Richardson (WISE), and Suzanne Schwarz (Liverpool Hope)

1.30pm Lunch
Streetlife Museum

2.30pm Close of Conference and departure

Contact (announcement)

WISE (Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation)
University of Hull
Oriel Chambers
27 High Street
Hull
HU1 1NE
Reception: +44(0)1482 305176
Fax: +44(0)1482 305184

Heidi Lovell:
email h.lovell@hull.ac.uk
+44(0)1482 305176

http://www.hull.ac.uk/wise/Conferences/Eventsin2008/index.html
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Published on
05.09.2008
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