Review by Choice Review
Casting a cold eye on British abolitionism, Scanlan (international history, London School of Economics) reexamines Britain's first practical experiment in Sierra Leone. He characterizes the abolitionists' general attitude as economically acquisitive, militarily coercive, and culturally aggressive. He perceptively examines British interactions with various segments of the colony's people under a series of governors between the 1790s and 1820s. These included uprooted North Americans, West Indian Maroons, conscripts in the Royal African Corps, and a plethora of indigenous African communities. Dealing with them required continuous recourse, compromise, deceit, and coercion. Scanlan regards the experiment's legacy as a forerunner of later British imperial expansion in Africa. However, at the close of the 1820s the colony was viewed, even by the leaders of British antislavery, as a dubious experiment in free labor as well as a disappointment in "civilizational" progress. It was by then primarily defended as a humanitarian depository for recaptured victims of the slave trade. British abolitionists were hardly alone in exaggerating the potential extent of European influence on the African continent before, during, and long after the age of revolution. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries. --Seymour Drescher, University of Pittsburgh
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
