Socioeconomic Status and Group Belonging: Evidence from Early-Nineteenth-Century Colonial West Africa

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Stefania Galli
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Census Data ◽  
High Status ◽  
Unskilled Labor ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Time Component ◽  
Heterogenous Population ◽  
Socioeconomic Strata

Abstract This study provides a novel analysis of occupational stratification in Sierra Leone from a historical perspective. By employing census data for early-nineteenth-century colonial Sierra Leone, the present study offers a valuable snapshot of a colony characterized by a heterogenous population of indigenous and migratory origin. The study shows that an association between colonial group categorization and socioeconomic status existed despite the colony being of very recent foundation implying a hierarchical structure of the society. Although Europeans and “mulattoes” occupied most high-status positions, as common in the colonies, indigenous immigrants were also represented in high socioeconomic strata thanks to the opportunities stemming from long- and short-distance trading. However, later arrivals, especially liberated slaves, belonged within the lowest socioeconomic strata of the society and worked as farmers or unskilled labor, suggesting that the time component may also have influence socioeconomic opportunities.

The Cultivation System (1830–1870) and its private entrepreneurs on colonial Java

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulbe Bosma
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Cane Sugar ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultivation System ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Plantation Economy ◽  
Private Entrepreneurs ◽  
Colonial Government

AbstractEver since the interregnum from 1811 to 1816 of Lieutenant Governor General Stamford Raffles, British trading interests had been firmly established in colonial Indonesia. The implementation of the Cultivation System in 1830 on Java by the Dutch colonial government was an attempt to bring this potentially rich colony under Dutch economic control, but it is usually considered a departure from the principles of economic liberalism and a phase during which private entrepreneurs were barred from the emerging plantation economy. However, on the basis of census data and immigration records, and with reference to recent literature on the development of the nineteenth-century sugar industry, this article argues that British trading houses present on Java in the early nineteenth century continued to play an important role in the development of the production there of tropical goods, and that the emerging plantation economy attracted a modest influx of technicians and employees from various European nations. This article proposes to consider the Cultivation System and private enterprise not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary in making the cane sugar industry of Java the second largest in the world after that of Cuba.

Sources of the Nineteenth Century Atlantic Slave Trade

1964 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip D. Curtin ◽  
Jan Vansina
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Different Parts

A large proportion of the slaves captured at sea by the British Royal Navy during the early nineteenth century were landed at Sierra Leone. Statistical data on the make-up of the Sierra Leonean population at this period is available from several sources, and it provides some interesting clues to the scope and size of the slave trade from different parts of Africa.

Abolition on shore

2019 ◽  
pp. 41-68
Author(s):  
Mary Wills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Naval Officers

Naval officers played a part in a reconfiguration of relations between Britain and West Africa in the early nineteenth century, as British abolitionist ideals and policies were introduced in the colony of Sierra Leone and increasingly rolled out along the coast. This chapter details the role of naval officers in the pursuit of anti-slavery treaties with African rulers, the encouragement of ‘legitimate’ trade (as non-slave-based trade was termed) and assisting increased exploration and missionary efforts. All were tied to the desire to end the slave trade at source in West African societies via the spread of European ideas of ‘civilization’ among African peoples. Officers’ narratives are revealing of increasing British intervention in West Africa, and how economic and strategic advantages for Britain became inextricable from humanitarian incentives.

scholarly journals Inequality in mortality decreases with age: Evidence from developing countries using census data

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Rubén Castro ◽  
Eduardo Fajnzylber ◽  
Andrés Fortunato
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
Young Age ◽  
Mortality Data ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Household Assets ◽  
Rate Ratios

With some exceptions, studies consistently find that mortality rate ratios between the highest and lowest socioeconomic status (SES) groups are substantially larger among the young-age population, rather than the old one. This pattern is relevant for policy and research, but it has seldom been explored in populations of developing countries. In this study, eight samples in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) that contain mortality data (El Salvador 1992, Rwanda 2002, Senegal 2002, Sierra Leone 2004, Uganda 2002, Malawi 2008, Brazil 2010, and Zambia 2010) and information about household assets are analyzed, and, using SES of equal relative size, results in seven out of eight cases are the same as those in developed societies: ratios are larger among the young age group and among men. Therefore, the ratio of mortality by relative-SES also decreases with age in several developing ones.

Kings, Titles, and Quarters: A Conjectural History of Ilesha I: The Traditions Reviewed

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 109-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.D.Y. Peel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regional Centers ◽  
Conjectural History ◽  
The Town

This is an essay in conjectural history. Its subject is Ilesha, the capital of Ijesha, one of the larger Yoruba kingdoms, founded probably in the early sixteenth century roughly midway between the larger regional centers of Oyo and Benin. Except for some cursory references to Ijesha rescued from slavery in Sierra Leone in the early nineteenth century, there is absolutely no positive contemporary evidence, whether documentary or archeological, until Europeans first visited the town in 1858. Thereafter, since Ilesha was the leading member of the Ekitiparapo alliance which fought Ibadan to a standstill in the 1880s, contemporary documentation becomes fairly abundant. But my concern here is with the evolution of Ilesha's socio-political structure, with what has since come to be considered its “traditional” constitution, over roughly three centuries up to the third quarter of the nineteenth century. For that, virtually all our evidence lies in what people have said and done since the 1880s.African historians have perforce relied greatly on such evidence and since Vansina's Oral Tradition they have been able to use it both more confidently and more critically, especially in the area of Bantu Africa. My fellow sociologists, however, remain more radically sceptical. Despite their admission of the need for history, they have learned too well how dynastic tradition and legends of origin tend to serve as “characters” for contemporary arrangements and need primary interpretation in the light of this -- and have often concretely illustrated the point with devastating and, for those desirous of using oral traditions for historical ends, depressing effect.

Reconstructing the Life Histories of Liberated Africans: Sierra Leone in the Early Nineteenth Century

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 175-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Schwarz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Physical Characteristics ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Biographical Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Archives ◽  
Rare Opportunity

Abstract:This article draws attention to the scope and significance of the Registers of Liberated Africans, which were recently retraced in the Public Archives of Sierra Leone after a period of neglect. These registers, spanning the period between 1808 and 1819, provide details of the names and physical characteristics of the first groups of “recaptives” released at Freetown by royal naval patrols in the immediate aftermath of British abolition of the slave trade. This evidence, when combined with other categories of records generated by colonial administrators, offers a rare opportunity to reconstruct biographical information about enslaved Africans after their release from slaving vessels. The methodology discussed in this article demonstrates how nominal linkage across diverse categories of records surviving in Sierra Leone and Britain makes it possible to trace aspects of the subsequent movements of individuals after their cases had been adjudicated by the Vice Admiralty Court at Freetown.

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