The Original Manuscript Version of William Snelgrave's New Account of Some Parts of Guinea

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 367-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
The West ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
Principal Subject

Captain William Snelgrave's A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave Trade, first published in 1734, is a work well known to historians of West Africa. The largest and most valuable section of it comprises a detailed account of voyages by the author in 1727 and 1730 to the ports of Whydah and Jakin on the Slave Coast, then recently conquered by Dahomey, and offers the earliest extended account of the latter kingdom to be published. The information in Snelgrave's book can also be supplemented by records of testimony which he provided on two occasions, in 1726 and 1731, before the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations in London.Snelgrave was a slave-trading captain with, at the time of his book's publication, some thirty years' experience of the West African trade. The details of his career are documented principally from his book, which in addition to the voyages of 1727 and 1730 (which form its principal subject), also alludes to several earlier slave-trading voyages undertaken by him. Snelgrave's first voyage to Africa, in which he served as purser on a ship commanded by his father, was to Old Calabar in 1704; a second voyage to Old Calabar was undertaken in 1713, a voyage to Sierra Leone (on which Snelgrave was captured by pirates) in 1719, and a voyage to the Gold Coast in 1721-22. This is not, however, a comprehensive catalog of Snelgrave's voyages, since he also alludes to having visited Whydah on “several voyages” before 1727. Other evidence documents two such earlier voyages by Snelgrave to Whydah, in 1717 and 1725. He was apparently still alive in 1735, the year after the publication of his book, when he is mentioned among a group of people involved in legal proceedings to press claims on the estate of Patrick West, a recently deceased merchant of Antigua.

Human Sacrifice

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-154
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
The Self ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
The West ◽  
Southeastern Nigeria ◽  
Forms Of Violence

This chapter recounts the broader Akan world's or Asante's human sacrifice. It notes that the practice, as established by Law, was widespread in those parts of the West African coastal and forest zones largely untouched by Islam, both in powerful states such Benin, Dahomey and Asante and among non-centralized peoples such as the Igbo in present-day southeastern Nigeria. The chapter presents evidence suggesting that human sacrifice may well have increased in magnitude in the era of the Atlantic slave trade, as increasing levels of militarization and accumulation generated new forms of violence, predation and consumption. The earliest evidence for human sacrifice in the region, however, came from the Gold Coast itself, where, as elsewhere in West Africa, it was identified as an integral part of mortuary customs for the wealthy and powerful. The chapter then shows seventeenth-century accounts about the slaves who composed the majority of those immolated at royal funerals. It also explores how the self-sacrifice of certain individuals served on the early Akan states.

The Slave Trade and Coastal West Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth G. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Heritage Tourism ◽  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Archaeological Work

The Atlantic slave trade has been the focus of archaeological work in a number of West African countries. Much of the work has emphasized the impressive trade castles of the Ghana coast, where extensive European constructions demonstrate the importance of the slave trade in the regions’ history. Work has also been conducted on other settings, including in Bénin, where African agency manifested itself differently than on the Gold Coast of modern Ghana; Sierra Leone and Gambia, where European trading establishments were typically smaller; and Guinea, where the ‘illegal’ slave trade of the nineteenth century blossomed. Many of these sites of enslavement have become important parts of local heritage, as well as a global heritage of African-descended people and the heritage tourism associated with the African Diaspora.

The Royal African Company of England's West African Correspondence, 1681-1699

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 173-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Cape Coast ◽  
General Terms ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of

This paper draws attention to an ambitious project in the publication of source material for the precolonial history of West Africa, which has recently been approved for inclusion in the Fontes Historiae Africanae series of the British Academy. In addition to self-promotion, however, I wish also to take the opportunity to air some of the problems of editorial strategy and choice which arise with regard to the editing and presentation of this material, in the hope of provoking some helpful feedback on these issues.The material to be published consists of correspondence of the Royal African Company of England relating to the West African coast in the late seventeenth century. The history of the Royal African Company (hereafter RAC) is in general terms well known, especially through the pioneering (and still not superseded) study by K.G. Davies (1957). The Company was chartered in 1672 with a legal monopoly of English trade with Africa. Its headquarters in West Africa was at Cape Coast (or, in the original form of the name, Cabo Corso) Castle on the Gold Coast, and it maintained forts or factories not only on the Gold Coast itself, but also at the Gambia, in Sierra Leone, and at Offra and Whydah on the Slave Coast. It lost its monopoly of the African trade in 1698, and thereafter went into decline, effectively ceasing to operate as a trading concern in the 1720s, although it continued to manage the English possessions on the coast of West Africa until it was replaced by a regulated company (i.e., one open to all traders), the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, in 1750.

English in West Africa

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Gut
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Structural Properties ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Current Role ◽  
British Colonization

This chapter describes the history, role, and structural properties of English in the West African countries the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, the anglophone part of Cameroon, and the island of Saint Helena. It provides an overview of the historical phases of trading contact, British colonization and missionary activities and describes the current role of English in these multilingual countries. Further, it outlines the commonalities and differences in the vocabulary, phonology, morphology, and syntax of the varieties of English spoken in anglophone West Africa. It shows that Liberian Settler English and Saint Helenian English have distinct phonological and morphosyntactic features compared to the other West African Englishes. While some phonological areal features shared by several West African Englishes can be identified, an areal profile does not seem to exist on the level of morphosyntax.

scholarly journals The Court of Vice Admiralty at Sierra Leone and the Abolition of the West African Slave Trade

2006 ◽  
Vol 115 (5) ◽  
pp. 1122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara Helfman
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
African Slave

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.

Some Problems in the Development of Air Transport in West Africa

1953 ◽  
Vol 57 (512) ◽  
pp. 477-490
Author(s):  
Hubert Walker
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
West African ◽  
Early History ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Air Transport ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
History Of

West Africa, particularly British West Africa, has been one of the last areas to be opened up to Air Transport and because of physical and financial difficulties, progress has been slower than in most other parts of the Empire.As West Africa, even today, is not very well known in other parts of the Empire, it will be useful to give a brief description of the territory and the early history of aviation there before dealing with the special problems encountered in the development of air transport. While the particular territories dealt with in this lecture are the four British West African Colonies and Protectorates of the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria, it will be necessary, from time to time, to make passing reference to the adjacent French territories and even to the Anglo–Egyptian Sudan. The four British territories, unlike those in East Africa, are not contiguous but each is surrounded on the land side by the intervening French territories of Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Volta, Niger, Chad and the Cameroons.

The West Africa Committee, London

1967 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Economic Advantage ◽  
West African ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Mutual Economic ◽  
English Speaking

The chief purpose of the West Africa Committee, established in May 1956, is to aid and stimulate the economic development of the English-speaking West African countries—Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Gambia—by firms, companies, and individuals from outside West Africa, to the mutual economic advantage of these countries and of the members of the Committee.

Henry Smeathman, the Flycatcher

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deirdre Coleman
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West African ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
The West ◽  
Plantation Slavery ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
The World ◽  
African Coast

In 1771 Joseph Banks, John Fothergill and other wealthy collectors sent a talented, self-taught naturalist to Sierra Leone to collect all things rare and curious, from moths to monkeys. The name of this collector was Henry Smeathman, an ingenious and enterprising Yorkshireman keen on improving his position in the world. His expedition to the West African coast, which coincided with a steep rise in British slave trading in this area, lasted four years during which time he built a house on the Banana Islands, married several times into the coast’s ruling dynasties, and managed to negotiate the tricky life of a ‘stranger’ bound to landlords and local customs. In this book, which draws on a rich and little-known archive of journals and letters, Coleman retraces Smeathman’s life and his attitudes to slavery, both African and European, as he shuttled between his home on the Bananas and two key Liverpool trading forts—Bunce Island and the Isles de Los. In the logistical challenges of tropical collecting and the dispatch of specimens across the middle passage we see the close connection forged in this period between science, collecting, and slavery. The book also reproduces and discusses Smeathman’s essay describing his journey on a fully slaved ship from West Africa to Barbados, a unique account because it is written by a passenger unconnected to the slave trade. After four years in the West Indies observing plantation slavery Smeathman returned to England to write his ‘Voyages and Travels’.

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