“MORE AUSPICIOUS SHORES”: POST-EMANCIPATION BARBADIAN EMIGRANTS IN PURSUIT OF FREEDOM, CITIZENSHIP, AND NATIONHOOD IN LIBERIA, 1834 – 1912 By Caree A. Banton Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY August, 2013 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Richard Blackett Professor Jane Landers Professor Moses Ochonu Professor Jemima Pierre To all those who labored for my learning, especially my parents. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to more people than there is space available for adequate acknowledgement. I would like to thank Vanderbilt University, the Albert Gordon Foundation, the Rotary International, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation for all of their support that facilitated the research and work necessary to complete this project. My appreciation also goes to my supervisor, Professor Richard Blackett for the time he spent in directing, guiding, reading, editing my work. At times, it tested his patience, sanity, and will to live. But he persevered. I thank him for his words of caution, advice and for being a role model through his research and scholarship. His generosity and kind spirit has not only shaped my academic pursuits but also my life outside the walls of the academy. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to the members of my dissertation committee: Jane Landers, Moses Ochonu, and Jemima Pierre. They have provided advice and support above and beyond what was required of them. I am truly grateful not only for all their services rendered but also the kind words and warm smiles with which they have always greeted me. My sincere thank you also goes to the non-teaching staff at Vanderbilt University: Heidi Welch, Brenda Hummell, and Jane Anderson. I would also like to thank several archivists. Verlon Stone at the Liberia Collection at the University of Indiana, Bloomington as well those at the archives at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, The Barbados National Archives, the Barbados History and Museum Society, the Albert Porte Memorial Library in Liberia, the Philadelphia Library Company, and the libraries at the University of Liberia. Sustained encouragement and moments of much needed laughter and joy came from my parents, family, friends, and an entertaining group of classmates. I thank them all for their moral support and for making this experience a very memorable one. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Dedication ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF FIGURES vii INTRODUCTION viii CHAPTER I “Laboring under Infatuation”: To be Free Indeed in Post- Emancipation Barbados 1 Slavery in the Making of Caste in Barbados 7 Emancipation across the Caribbean 13 Emigration and the Geopolitics of Free Labor 26 Slighting the Middle Class’ Political Agenda 43 The Emergence of Interest in Transatlantic Migration 51 Conclusion 57 CHAPTER II Imagined Geographies of Redemption: Barbadian Emigrants and the Idea of African Civilization 59 Afro-Barbadians in Post-Slavery 68 Africa in the Barbadian Imagination 91 The Question of Pan-Africanism 100 Barbados in the 1860s 103 CHAPTER III “Come over and Help US…We Have a Gem of an Empire” The ACS, Barbadians, African Americans, and Liberian Emigration 108 African Americans, West Indians, and the Idea of Africa 118 Black Colonization and Emigration 125 The Legacy of the ACS 134 Liberia Attracting Barbadians Across the Atlantic 146 Gerard Ralston and the Barbadians 155 iv CHAPTER IV Shifting Frontiers of Freedom, Citizenship, and Nationhood: Black Encounters, Identity, Plurality, and Stratification in Liberia 160 Migrants and the Transformation of Liberia 163 The Settlement of African Ethnicities 170 “A Place for the Despised Children of Ham” 174 Re-captives in Liberia 183 The Insertion of Barbadians into Liberian Life 189 Settlements and Social Plurality in Liberia 201 Conclusion 213 CHAPTER V The Politics of a Black Nation Building Citizenship and Nationhood and the Making of a Transnational Black Identity 215 Ideological Contestations over Liberia 219 From Colony to Nationhood 227 Negotiating Black Citizenship in a Black Republic 234 West Indians and the Body Politic 249 Conclusion 257 CHAPTER VI "This is Another National Experiment:" Barbadian Political Leadership in Liberia and the Scramble for Liberia 261 Post-Independence Liberian Leadership 267 Arthur Barclay and Transatlantic Post-emancipation 273 Arthur Barclay and Changing Liberian Presidential Policies 283 Barclay and the Indigenous 293 Barclay, Liberia, and the League of Nations 302 Conclusion 306 EPILOGUE 308 Liberia in the Imaginary of Twentieth Century Pan-Africanists 308 APPENDIX A Resolutions unanimously passed by the Committee, of the Barbados Colonization Society for assisting in the suppression of the slave trade and the introduction of Christianity into Africa 326 APPENDIX B Emigration From Barbados To Liberia 328 v APPENDIX C Gerard Ralston Letter to the Members of the Barbadian Company for Liberia 329 APPENDIX D Barclay Genealogy 331 APPENDIX E TRANSCRIPT OF COURT CASE of RICHARD J. Wiles, Appellant, vs. FLORENCE J. Wiles, Appellee 338 APPENDIX F Map of Liberia 340 APPENDIX G Treaty Declaration of the President of Liberia 341 APPENDIX H Letter From Gerard Ralston to Edward Everett 345 APPENDIX I British and Foreign State Papers, Volume 52 (Great Britain. Foreign Office); 925 - 929 348 APPENDIX J The First Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Drawn Before 1780. 352 APPENDIX K Poetry Composed by Dr. Gibson for Arthur Barclay 353 BIBLIOGRAPHY 354 vi LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1 Eras within which Liberian Emigrants were Born 10 Figure 2 Map of the Atlantic World 59 Figure 3 Parish Map of Barbados 70 Figure 4 Some of the Declared Professions of the Liberian Emigrants 77 Figure 5 Age Profiles of the 346 Barbadian 87 Figure 6 The African Repository’s Record of Migrant Ships to Liberia in 1865 160 Figure 7 Map Showing African Polities on the Liberian Coast 172 Figure 8 Liberian Territories Lost during the Scramble for Africa 261 Figure 9 Photograph of Arthur Barclay 283 vii INTRODUCTION So much hope was wrapped up in the outcome of the 1841Niger Expedition, a new wing of the abolitionist movement formed by Thomas Buxton, the Church Missionary Society (CMS), and the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade in England.1 Their intention, to eradicate the slave trade once and for all. With agriculturalists, scientists, missionaries, and liberated slaves as interpreters, the expedition sought to promote free-produce cultivation as an alternative to slave trade- derived capital. This would facilitate the emergence of "legitimate commerce" as well as sow the seeds of civilization and Christianity among African natives. A few days after arriving in Africa, the chief medical officer of the expedition logged that "fever of a most malignant character" had broken out.2 It had not only "paralyzed the whole expedition" but also added further fuel the view of Africa being the "white man's grave" and whites being unsuitable for missionary work there. Despite their failures on the Niger, however, abolitionists did not give up their platform. Instead, they turned their attention to liberated slaves, those Africans rescued from slave ships on the Atlantic, to be the new vehicles of civilization, Christianity, and commerce in Africa. News of the events on the Niger crossed the Atlantic and quickly penetrated the Caribbean grapevine. In a February 17, 1841 letter to the editor of The Liberal, a Barbadian newspaper, a writer operating under the pen-name, Africanus, alerted Barbadians to “a rumor afloat of a scheme of the British people for the civilization of 1 For more on the Niger Expedition see Howard Temperley, White Dreams, Black Africa: The Antislavery Expedition to the River Niger 1841-1842 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). 2 See William Simpson, A Private Journal Kept During the Niger Expedition from May, 1841, Until June, 1842 (London, 1843); Samuel Crowther, Journal of an Expedition up the Niger and the Tshada in 1854 (London, 1855). viii Africa.” With Buxton's Niger Expedition taking place within the growing civilizing spirit of the mid-nineteenth century, Africanus surmised that “[t]he energies of the British people, pent up for years, now seek an outlet in philanthropic acts.”3 Through the medium of his editorial, Africanus in his efforts to reveal British actions on the Niger, tacitly entered West Indians into a broader transatlantic dialogue about Africans worldwide. Africanus' effusive praise of British efforts created a means by which diasporic interests in global African affairs could be reflected. He summoned the image of a united diasporic as he mused: “How exalted ought to be the emotions of gratitude, in the breast of every descendant of Africa to the British nation that so disinterestedly, so humanely, extends the hands of succor to the sons of that despised land, with a view of raising them to a station among the civilized nations of the earth!"4 Though grateful for the British efforts and while their interests in Africa corresponded with empire's vision for the continent, West Indians like Africanus went further to consider notions of participation and leadership. To be sure, they considered themselves to be important stakeholders in ideas of slave trade abolition and African civilization. For whereas abolitionists saw instructing liberated Africans in missionary work as the best policy for African civilization, West Indians regarded themselves as central to any new campaign geared towards this end. Indeed, Africanus declared in his editorial: “It is necessary for the practical success of the scheme that the children of Africa in the colonies should lend their zealous cooperation in this gigantic undertaking.”5 3 The Liberal, February 17, 1841. 4 Ibid. 5 See Melanie J. Newton, The Children of Africa in the Colonies: Free People of Color in Barbados in the Age of Emancipation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008).