DOCSLIB.ORG

The Rhetoric of Africa : Historical Turns in Constructing a Continent, 1780-1890

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-2013 The rhetoric of Africa : historical turns in constructing a continent, 1780-1890. Dexter Peck Mahaffey University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Mahaffey, Dexter Peck, "The rhetoric of Africa : historical turns in constructing a continent, 1780-1890." (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 884. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/884 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE RHETORIC OF AFRICA: HISTORICAL TURNS IN CONSTRUCTING A CONTINENT, 1780-1890 By Dexter Peck Mahaffey B.A., Middlebury College, 1993 M.A., Bread Loaf School of English, 1998 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky August 2013 Copyright 2013 by Dexter Peck Mahaffey All rights reserved THE RHETORIC OF AFRICA: HISTORICAL TURNS IN CONSTRUCTING A CONTINENT, 1780-1890 By Dexter Peck Mahaffey B.A., Middlebury College, 1993 M.A., Bread Loaf School of English, 1998 A Dissertation Approved on August 7, 2013 By the following Dissertation Committee: ___________________________________ Dr. Carol Mattingly, Dissertation Director __________________________________ Dr. Glynis Ridley, Committee Member __________________________________ Dr. Stephen Schneider, Committee Member __________________________________ Dr. Beth Willey, Committee Member __________________________________ Dr. Wyatt MacGaffey (Haverford College), Committee Member ii DEDICATION For Iain and Kai and always, for Era iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My utmost gratitude goes to Dr. Carol Mattingly, longtime advisor, and director of this project from its inception years ago through to the end. Her steadfast encouragement and enthusiasm, her sharp critical eye, and her vision of a field of Rhetoric inclusive of work such as this have been humbling. I am also grateful to the other members of the committee, Dr. Beth Willey, Dr. Stephen Schneider, and Dr. Glynis Ridley, whose insights and critiques at key moments have pushed the work forward to its conclusion. For his frankness, generosity with his long and extensive expertise in African Studies, and willingness to be involved, I am grateful to Dr. Wyatt MacGaffey of Haverford College, and equally so to Dr. Susan Herlan, whose encouragement was ceaseless, and whose friendship and hospitality here and in Ghana are the stuff of legend for a reason. And lastly thanks goes to my extended family whose unflinching support, sympathy and empathy, patience, and interest in the project both allowed it and made it worth the trouble: they are graciousness. iv ABSTRACT THE RHETORIC OF AFRICA: HISTORICAL TURNS IN CONSTRUCTING A CONTINENT, 1780-1890 Dexter Peck Mahaffey August 7, 2013 This dissertation examines historical rhetoric about Africa in British and American writings between the beginnings of the Abolition period and the 1884 Berlin Conference at which the continent was divided by colonial powers. Tracing rhetorical trends of travel writers and their constituents through the explorations of the continent, it demarcates two turns in the way Africans and Africa were constructed rhetorically. In the process it reveals a 19th-century evolution from depicting Africa largely in terms of its viability for commerce and reception of European culture, to an Africa fallen into darkness, to Africa as the Dark Continent, permanently fixed in a savage darkness. These rhetorical turns are examined through the theoretical frameworks of rhetorical imperialism and rhetorical sovereignty. Chapter I explores the creation of Sierra Leone for resettling freed British blacks and the varied, at times contradicting, rhetoric lacking in uniform vision of the continent or its people other than a general trend of focusing on the viability of Africa as a site for British post-slavery endeavor and an ambivalent view of African cultural inferiority. Chapter II explores the American creation of Liberia, revealing a specific rhetoric of Africa as benighted, fallen, and degraded. This chapter demonstrates the rhetorical turn v that occurred between the establishment of Sierra Leone and subsequent founding of Liberia, when the importance of Christian faith came to trump all other concerns for evaluating and characterizing Africa. Chapter III contains two case studies of the extent to which such rhetorical imperialism can be contested, one of Samuel Crowther, a Nigerian recaptive settled in Sierra Leone who then returned to Nigeria years later as an explorer, and another of Martin Delany, a free African American who traveled to Nigeria to seek an emigration site for African Americans fleeing slavery. Chapter IV juxtaposes the rhetorical work of Henry Stanley and his reports on explorations in Central Africa with the simultaneous rhetoric of the Great Zimbabwe debates. In so doing, the arc of rhetorical development since the Sierra Leone era is traced, complicating contemporary definitions of the Dark Continent and suggesting its continued limitation on African rhetorical sovereignty today. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………......iv ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………..v INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER I: The Discovery of Sierra Leone: Britain Goes Exploring in West Africa…………………………………………………………………………33 I. Henry Smeathman, the Committee for the Black Poor, and a Plan for Sierra Leone……………………………………………………..36 II. In the Eye of the Public: the Establishment of Sierra Leone and The Times………………………………………………………..51 III. Sierra Leone as Company and the Rhetoric of the Corporate Document......................................................................................59 IV. Success in Africa: The Times’ Ongoing Relationship with Early Sierra Leone……………………………………………………..75 CHAPTER II: Liberia and the Christian Turn in the Rhetoric of Africa.……………87 I. The Founding of Liberia……………………………………………...93 II. The Lexicon of Africa: A Focus on American Writing at the Occasion of Liberia……………………………………………………….109 III. American Explorers in Africa: American Colonization Society Expeditions, 1818-1821………………………………………...116 CHAPTER III: Diasporant Rhetorical Constructions: The Limits of Rhetorical Sovereignty in the Travel Writings of Samuel Crowther and Martin Delany..136 I. Samuel Crowther’s Transnational African Experience...……………140 II. Martin Delany’s Transatlantic African Experience……………....…156 CHAPTER IV: The Second Rhetorical Turn: The Dark Continent, Inhumanity, and the Place That Never Could………………………...………………………...183 vii I. Rhetoric of Africa after Liberia: Politics, Science, and Unchecked Racism………………………………………………….………194 II. The Africa That Never Could: Dark Continent Rhetorics and Great Zimbabwe…………………………………………….….203 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………..………...220 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………….…….228 CURRICULUM VITAE……………………………………………………....……...243 viii INTRODUCTION After visiting Africa for the first time in 2006, culinary-adventurer Anthony Bourdain introduced it to his television audience by saying it was “once known as the Dark Continent because so little was known about it.”1 In early 2013, the BBC aired a new television series entitled, “Africa: Eye to Eye with the Unknown,” in which the program presents “the world’s wildest continent as you’ve never seen it before...venturing into genuinely unexplored places and capturing never-seen-before behavior.” The New York Times review quoted in the video’s promotions proclaims that the BBC program “turns the dark continent bright.”2 The ability of contemporary media to depict Africa as a Dark Continent, wild, unknown, and unexplored assumes an audience literate with such a metaphor. That literacy did not come to be through a constant, repeated use of the term over the course of several hundred years, but rather through nuanced shifts in rhetoric taking place over the course of a century of western expeditions to Africa, between the beginnings of the Abolition movement in the 1770s and the division of the continent by colonial powers at the 1884 Berlin Conference. Over the course of that period, the rhetoric of Africa made two major rhetorical turns that 1 Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations. The Travel Channel. Season 2, Episode 10, 3 September 2006. 2 Africa: Eye to Eye with the Unknown. 2013. London: BBC Home Entertainment, 2013. DVD. 1 ended with the creation of the Dark Continent metaphor, one understood at the time to mean something quite different from its connotations today. When the Clapham Sect created Sierra Leone as a dumping ground for freed British slaves in the 1780s, British writers and explorers depicted the continent through a broad set of differing rhetorics that in general had to do with Africa’s viability for post- slavery commercial and abolitionist interests. And while British writing typically portrayed Africans as overall somewhat inferior, they did not develop a
Recommended publications
  • Cloth, Commerce and History in Western Africa 1700-1850

    Cloth, Commerce and History in Western Africa 1700-1850

    The Texture of Change: Cloth, Commerce and History in Western Africa 1700-1850 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Benjamin, Jody A. 2016. The Texture of Change: Cloth, Commerce and History in Western Africa 1700-1850. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493374 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Texture of Change: Cloth Commerce and History in West Africa, 1700-1850 A dissertation presented by Jody A. Benjamin to The Department of African and African American Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of African and African American Studies Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2016 © 2016 Jody A. Benjamin All rights reserved. Dissertation Adviser: Professor Emmanuel Akyeampong Jody A. Benjamin The Texture of Change: Cloth Commerce and History in West Africa, 1700-1850 Abstract This study re-examines historical change in western Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the lens of cotton textiles; that is by focusing on the production, exchange and consumption of cotton cloth, including the evolution of clothing practices, through which the region interacted with other parts of the world. It advances a recent scholarly emphasis to re-assert the centrality of African societies to the history of the early modern trade diasporas that shaped developments around the Atlantic Ocean.
  • New Approaches to the Founding of the Sierra Leone Colony, 1786–1808

    New Approaches to the Founding of the Sierra Leone Colony, 1786–1808

    Bowling Green State University ScholarWorks@BGSU History Faculty Publications History Winter 2008 New Approaches to the Founding of the Sierra Leone Colony, 1786–1808 Isaac Land Indiana State University, [email protected] Andrew M. Schocket Bowling Green State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/hist_pub Part of the Cultural History Commons, and the United States History Commons Repository Citation Land, Isaac and Schocket, Andrew M., "New Approaches to the Founding of the Sierra Leone Colony, 1786–1808" (2008). History Faculty Publications. 5. https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/hist_pub/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History at ScholarWorks@BGSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@BGSU. New Approaches to the Founding of the Sierra Leone Colony, 1786–1808 Isaac Land Indiana State University Andrew M. Schocket Bowling Green State University This special issue of the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History consists of a forum of innovative ways to consider and reappraise the founding of Britain’s Sierra Leone colony. It originated with a conversation among the two of us and Pamela Scully – all having research interests touching on Sierra Leone in that period – noting that the recent historical inquiry into the origins of this colony had begun to reach an important critical mass. Having long been dominated by a few seminal works, it has begun to attract interest from a number of scholars, both young and established, from around the globe.1 Accordingly, we set out to collect new, exemplary pieces that, taken together, present a variety of innovative theoretical, methodological, and topical approaches to Sierra Leone.
  • Athens Campus

    Athens Campus

    Athens Campus Athens Campus Introduction The University of Georgia is centered around the town of Athens, located approximately 60 miles northeast of the capital of Atlanta, Georgia. The University was incorporated by an act of the General Assembly on January 25, 1785, as the first state-chartered and supported college in the United States. The campus began to take physical form after a 633-acre parcel of land was donated for this purpose in 1801. The university’s first building—Franklin College, now Old College—was completed in 1806. Initially a liberal-arts focused college, University of Georgia remained modest in size and grew slowly during the Figure 48. Emblem of the antebellum years of the nineteenth century. In 1862, passage of the Morrill Act University of Georgia. by Congress would eventually lead to dramatic changes in the focus, curriculum, and educational opportunities afforded at the University of Georgia. The Morrill Act authorized the establishment of a system of land grant colleges, which supported, among other initiatives, agricultural education within the United States. The University of Georgia began to receive federal funds as a land grant college in 1872 and to offer instruction in agriculture and mechanical arts. The role of agricultural education and research has continued to grow ever since, and is now supported by experiment stations, 4-H centers, and marine institutes located throughout the state. The Athens campus forms the heart of the University of Georgia’s educational program. The university is composed of seventeen colleges and schools, some of which include auxiliary divisions that offer teaching, research, and service activities.
  • BLACK LONDON Life Before Emancipation

    BLACK LONDON Life Before Emancipation

    BLACK LONDON Life before Emancipation ^^^^k iff'/J9^l BHv^MMiai>'^ii,k'' 5-- d^fli BP* ^B Br mL ^^ " ^B H N^ ^1 J '' j^' • 1 • GRETCHEN HOLBROOK GERZINA BLACK LONDON Other books by the author Carrington: A Life BLACK LONDON Life before Emancipation Gretchen Gerzina dartmouth college library Hanover Dartmouth College Library https://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/digital/publishing/ © 1995 Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina All rights reserved First published in the United States in 1995 by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey First published in Great Britain in 1995 by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. The Library of Congress cataloged the paperback edition as: Gerzina, Gretchen. Black London: life before emancipation / Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0-8135-2259-5 (alk. paper) 1. Blacks—England—London—History—18th century. 2. Africans— England—London—History—18th century. 3. London (England)— History—18th century. I. title. DA676.9.B55G47 1995 305.896´0421´09033—dc20 95-33060 CIP To Pat Kaufman and John Stathatos Contents Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi 1. Paupers and Princes: Repainting the Picture of Eighteenth-Century England 1 2. High Life below Stairs 29 3. What about Women? 68 4. Sharp and Mansfield: Slavery in the Courts 90 5. The Black Poor 133 6. The End of English Slavery 165 Notes 205 Bibliography 227 Index Illustrations (between pages 116 and 111) 1. 'Heyday! is this my daughter Anne'. S.H. Grimm, del. Pub­ lished 14 June 1771 in Drolleries, p. 6. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. 2.
  • Writing African History in France During the Colonial Era Sophie Dulucq

    Writing African History in France During the Colonial Era Sophie Dulucq

    Writing African History in France during the Colonial Era Sophie Dulucq To cite this version: Sophie Dulucq. Writing African History in France during the Colonial Era. Thomas Spear. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 2018, 10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.313. halshs- 01939221 HAL Id: halshs-01939221 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01939221 Submitted on 29 Nov 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Writing African History in France during the Colonial Era Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History Writing African History in France during the Colonial Era Sophie Dulucq Subject: Colonial Conquest and Rule, Historiography and Methods , Intellectual History Online Publication Date: Oct 2018 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.313 Summary and Keywords In the second half of the 19th century, French imperial expansion in the south of the Sahara led to the control of numerous African territories. The colonial rule France imposed on a diverse range of cultural groups and political entities brought with it the development of equally diverse inquiry and research methodologies. A new form of scholarship, africanisme, emerged as administrators, the military, and amateur historians alike began to gather ethnographic, linguistic, judicial, and historical information from the colonies.
  • Challenging the Reliability of the English Slaving Narrative As a Primary Source

    Challenging the Reliability of the English Slaving Narrative As a Primary Source

    Wesleyan University The Honors College “We were much better people than their own Countrymen”: Challenging the Reliability of the English Slaving Narrative as a Primary Source by Mahalia Sarah Binstock Class of 2019 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in History Middletown, Connecticut April, 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements........................................................................................................1 Introduction....................................................................................................................2 Chapter 1: Introducing and Defining the Slaving Narrative........................................13 Chapter 2: The Slaving Narrative as Travel Literature................................................41 Chapter 3: Pro-Slave Trade Agendas at Work in Slaving Narratives..........................82 Conclusion.................................................................................................................110 Bibliography..............................................................................................................113 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis simply would not exist without the incredible help and support I’ve received from so many quarters, both during the writing process and during my time at Wesleyan in general. To my advisor, Professor Eudell: your instruction over the past several years has profoundly broadened and deepened
  • Introduction: the Cowpastures

    Introduction: the Cowpastures

    Cambridge University Press 0521632137 - Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery Deirdre Coleman Excerpt More information Introduction: the Cowpastures In June 1788, five months after the establishment of a convict colony in New South Wales, the colony’s black cattle, consisting of five cows and a bull, strayed into the bush and disappeared without trace. Their loss was a considerable blow. They had been purchased at the Cape for a high price, and survived many difficulties on the passage out. Their sudden disappearance was a riddle, leading to much speculation about their fate, whether speared by the natives, or furtively eaten by convicts. Regret at their loss reverberated throughout the colony’s early years. In 1792, the Deputy Governor remarked that livestock was the only item missing from the colony’s bid for independence and self-sufficiency: ‘Could we once be supplied with cattle, I do not believe we should have occasion to trouble old England again.’1 It was not until the end of 1795 that the mystery of the cattle was solved, when their descendants were found more than twenty miles inland, at the place now called the Cowpastures. Having escaped enclosure in search of a better life, they had found their way inland to rich, well-watered land where they had multiplied ten times over, expanding from an original six to over sixty animals. According to those who first encountered them, they were in very good condition, surviving the inland heat by summering on the hill-tops. The high lands across which they travelled were places in which ‘they seem to delight’, cool spots where they could enjoy ‘refreshing breezes’.2 The discovery of the Cowpastures, with its gratifying movement from loss to ‘abundant recompense’, stands as an allegory of a persistent utopian and Romantic strand of imagining about the shape of new world colonies in the late eighteenth century.
  • A Reflection on Arabia-Africa in the Mappa Mundi of the Chosŏn Dynasty

    A Reflection on Arabia-Africa in the Mappa Mundi of the Chosŏn Dynasty

    Article／論文 A Reflection on Arabia-Africa in the Mappa Mundi of the Chosŏn Dynasty A Study Based on the Honil kangni yŏktae kukto chido ( 混一疆理歷代國都之圖 ), or The Unified Map of Territories and Capitals of the States of 1402(1) CHOI, Chang-Mo Ⅰ . Introduction Ⅱ . Arab and Africa Geographical and Topographical Characters and Names Ⅲ . Conclusion 조선시대 고지도(古地圖)의 아라비아-아프리카 이해 소고 《혼일강리역대국도지도(混一疆理歷代國都之圖)》 (1402년)를 중심으로 崔 昌模 고지도는, 기본적으로는 과거가 이해하고 있던 실재 세계를 보여주는 ‘재현된 시각예술 의 한 형태’（이미지）로서, 본질적으로는 특정한 사실과 이야기를 공간적/지리적 상황에 서 보여주는 ‘재현된 담화의 한 형태（언어）로서, 역사이해의 ‘거울’이자 ‘텍스트’이다. 고지도에는 당시의 역사-지리적 지식-정보뿐만 아니라 과학기술 및 예술성 등이 도상학적 27 A Reflection on Arabia-Africa in the Mappa Mundi of the Choso˘ n Dynasty (Choi) 中東学会28-2.indb 27 2013/02/14 13:15:27 기호와 상징적 이미지를 통해 투영되어 있으며, 더 나아가 그 속에는 한 개인과 사회의 지 배적인 사상과 이념, 권력과 신앙 등의 ‘가치’가 담겨 있다. 특히 세계지도 ― 고지도의 여 러 유형들 가운데서 ― 는 지역 간 공간정보의 교류와 당시 사람들의 세계관/세계인식 혹 은 세계이해의 공적 소통구조를 엿볼 수 있는 ‘해독이 필요한 시각언어’이다. 본 논문에서는 아직까지 본격적으로 논의된 바 없는《혼일강리역대국도지도》（1402） 에 나타난 아라비아-아프리카지역의 지리적-지형적 특성과 지도에 표시된 약 71개 ― 아 라비아 24개, 아프리카 47개 ― 의 지명（地名）들과 조선시대가 보여주고자 했던 아라비 아-아프리카지역, 즉 ‘외부세계’에 대한 인식을 일반적인 역사적 배경 ― 지도제작의 목적, 과정, 지리적 정보의 유래, 지도제작자 등 ― 에서 살펴보되, 지도에 담긴 담론과 지도콘텐 츠 ― 그런 의미에서 지도의 역사는 담화와 이미지의 한 형태로서 해석될 수 있으며, 지도 학은 문학비평, 미술사, 지식사회학 등과 이론적으로 관련된다.
  • The African-American Emigration Movement in Georgia During Reconstruction

    The African-American Emigration Movement in Georgia During Reconstruction

    Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History Summer 6-20-2011 The African-American Emigration Movement in Georgia during Reconstruction Falechiondro Karcheik Sims-Alvarado Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Sims-Alvarado, Falechiondro Karcheik, "The African-American Emigration Movement in Georgia during Reconstruction." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2011. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/29 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EMIGRATION MOVEMENT IN GEORGIA DURING RECONSTRUCTION by FALECHIONDRO KARCHEIK SIMS-ALVARADO Under the Direction of Hugh Hudson ABSTRACT This dissertation is a narrative history about nearly 800 newly freed black Georgians who sought freedom beyond the borders of the Unites States by emigrating to Liberia during the years of 1866 and 1868. This work fulfills three overarching goals. First, I demonstrate that during the wake of Reconstruction, newly freed persons’ interest in returning to Africa did not die with the Civil War. Second, I identify and analyze the motivations of blacks seeking autonomy in Africa. Third, I tell the stories and challenges of those black Georgians who chose emigration as the means to civil and political freedom in the face of white opposition. In understanding the motives of black Georgians who emigrated to Liberia, I analyze correspondence from black and white Georgians and the white leaders of the American Colonization Society and letters from Liberia settlers to black friends and families in the Unites States.
  • The Cowpastures

    The Cowpastures

    Cambridge University Press 0521632137 - Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery Deirdre Coleman Excerpt More information Introduction: the Cowpastures In June 1788, five months after the establishment of a convict colony in New South Wales, the colony’s black cattle, consisting of five cows and a bull, strayed into the bush and disappeared without trace. Their loss was a considerable blow. They had been purchased at the Cape for a high price, and survived many difficulties on the passage out. Their sudden disappearance was a riddle, leading to much speculation about their fate, whether speared by the natives, or furtively eaten by convicts. Regret at their loss reverberated throughout the colony’s early years. In 1792, the Deputy Governor remarked that livestock was the only item missing from the colony’s bid for independence and self-sufficiency: ‘Could we once be supplied with cattle, I do not believe we should have occasion to trouble old England again.’1 It was not until the end of 1795 that the mystery of the cattle was solved, when their descendants were found more than twenty miles inland, at the place now called the Cowpastures. Having escaped enclosure in search of a better life, they had found their way inland to rich, well-watered land where they had multiplied ten times over, expanding from an original six to over sixty animals. According to those who first encountered them, they were in very good condition, surviving the inland heat by summering on the hill-tops. The high lands across which they travelled were places in which ‘they seem to delight’, cool spots where they could enjoy ‘refreshing breezes’.2 The discovery of the Cowpastures, with its gratifying movement from loss to ‘abundant recompense’, stands as an allegory of a persistent utopian and Romantic strand of imagining about the shape of new world colonies in the late eighteenth century.
  • The Nature of British Mapping of West Africa, 1749 – 1841

    The Nature of British Mapping of West Africa, 1749 – 1841

    The Nature of British Mapping of West Africa, 1749 – 1841 Sven Daniel Outram-Leman University of Stirling PhD History Submitted 1st May 2017 Author’s declaration The work contained in this thesis is entirely my own. The views expressed are entirely my own, and not those of the University of Stirling 1 Abstract By focusing on the “nature” of mapping, this thesis falls under the category of critical cartography closely associated with the work of Brian Harley in the 1980s and early 1990s. As such the purpose of this research is to highlight the historical context of British maps, map-making and map-reading in relation to West Africa between 1749 and 1841. I argue that maps lie near the heart of Britain’s interactions with West Africa though their appearance, construction and use evolved dramatically during this period. By beginning this study with a prominent French example (Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville’s 1749 “Afrique”) I show how British map-makers adapted cartography from France for their own purposes before circumstances encouraged the development of new materials. Because of the limited opportunities to make enquiries in the region and the relatively few people involved in affecting change to the map’s content, this thesis highlights the episodes and manufactured narratives which feature in the chronology of evolving cartographies. This study concludes with the failure of the 1841 Niger Expedition, when Britain’s humanitarian agenda saw the attempted establishment of a model farm on banks of the Niger River and the negotiation of anti-slave trade treaties with nearby Africans.
  • A CARTO-BIBLIOGRAPHY of the MAPS in EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH and AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY BOOKS BARBARA BACKUS Mccorkle

    A CARTO-BIBLIOGRAPHY of the MAPS in EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH and AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY BOOKS BARBARA BACKUS Mccorkle

    A CARTO-BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE MAPS in EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH AND AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY BOOKS BARBARA BACKUS McCORKLE ISBN 978‐1‐936153‐02‐2 http://hdl.handle.net/1808/5564 Copyright ©2009 Barbara Backus McCorkle This electronic edition created by Digital Publishing Services, an initiative of the University of Kansas Libraries Creative Commons License Deed Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported You are free: • to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: • Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.) • Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes. • No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. With the understanding that: • Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. • Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license: o Your fair dealing or fair use rights; o The author's moral rights; o Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights. • Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page. 5 PREFACE This study of eighteenth-century geography books published in the British Isles and United States began some years ago when I was an associate rare book librarian at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.