The African-British Long Eighteenth Century

Tcho Mbaimba Caulker

doi:10.5771/9780739134870

Summary

Tracing 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 African colonization.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2009
ISBN-Print: 978-0-7391-2743-8
ISBN-Online: 978-0-7391-3487-0
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 186
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. List of Figures No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
4. Introduction No access
Chapter 01. Long Eighteenth-Century Fictive Literature and Filling the Vacuum of Africa No access Pages 1 - 36
Chapter 02. British-African Treaty Making and the Construction of a British Colonial State in Sierra Leone No access Pages 37 - 56
Chapter 03. Reading the British Sierra Leone Company: The Sierra Leone Company and its Ties to Emergent Colonial, Economic, and Moral Philosophy of the Long Eighteenth Century No access Pages 57 - 88
Chapter 04. Natural Science, Exploration, and the Colonial Project in West Africa No access Pages 89 - 126
Chapter 05. The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, and Bringing the Long Eighteenth-Century Archiva lPast into the Postcolonial Present No access Pages 127 - 164
Epilogue: The African-British Long Eighteenth Century and Imagination No access Pages 165 - 166
Appendix of Treaties No access Pages 167 - 172
Bibliography No access Pages 173 - 180
Index No access Pages 181 - 184
About the Author No access Pages 185 - 186