HOMELAND, DIASPORAS AND LABOUR NETWORKS: THE CASE OF KRU WORKERS, 1792-1900 JEFFREY GUNN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO May 2019 JEFFREY GUNN, 2019 ii Abstract By the late eighteenth century, the ever-increasing British need for local labour in West Africa based on malarial, climatic, and manpower concerns led to a willingness of the British and Kru to experiment with free wage labour contracts. The Kru’s familiarity with European trade on the Kru Coast (modern Liberia) from at least the sixteenth century played a fundamental role in their decision to expand their wage earning opportunities under contract with the British. The establishment of Freetown in 1792 enabled the Kru to engage in systematized work for British merchants, ship captains, and British naval officers. Kru workers increased their migration to Freetown establishing what appears to be their first permanent labouring community beyond their homeland on the Kru Coast. Their community in Freetown known as Kroo Town (later Krutown) ensured their regular employment on board British commercial ships and Royal Navy vessels circumnavigating the Atlantic and beyond. In the process, the Kru established a network of Krutowns and community settlements in many Atlantic ports including Fernando Po, Ascension Island, and the Cape of Good Hope, and in the British Caribbean in British Guiana and Trinidad. This dissertation structures the fragmented history of Kru workers into a coherent framework. In this study, I argue that the migration of Kru workers in the Atlantic, and even to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, represents a movement of free wage labour that transformed the Kru Coast into a homeland that nurtured diasporas and staffed a vast network of workplaces. As the Kru formed permanent and transient working communities, they underwent several phases of social, political, and economic innovation, which ultimately overcame a decline in employment in their homeland on the Kru Coast by the end of the nineteenth century by increasing employment in their diaspora. iii At a time when slavery was widespread and the slave trade was subjected to the abolition campaign of the British Navy, Kru workers were free with an expertise in manning seaborne craft. The Kru thereby stand out as an anomaly in the history of Atlantic trade when compared with the much larger diasporas of enslaved Africans. iv Dedication I dedicate my Ph.D. dissertation to my family: Saowakhon Pansri, Sandra and David Gunn, Julie, Frank, Logan, Blake and Hailey Rozsas. v Acknowledgements No great undertaking can be completed alone. In this spirit, I would like to thank my wife, Saowakhon Pansri, my parents, Sandra and David Gunn, my sister and her family, Julie, Frank, Blake, Logan, and Hailey Rozsas for their encouragement, love and support throughout the completion of my Ph.D. I am extremely grateful to my supervisor, Paul Lovejoy, for his mentorship. I thank Paul for always driving me to perform at my best writing ability and for providing the incredible opportunity to travel the world with him to conferences and for research. I would like to give thanks to my committee members Jose Curto, whose teaching style has inspired me, Michele Johnson, whose heart-felt passion for history has impacted my own practice, Deborah Neill, whose critical questions drove this dissertation to the next level, and Dan Yon, whose insights and stories inspired a great part of my interest in Africa. Collectively, their insight and feedback have proved to be invaluable. I also extend thanks to David Trotman for an enlightening course on Caribbean History, and Stephen Rockel for his mentorship while completing course work at the University of Toronto towards my Ph.D. I give special mention to George Brooks at Indiana University for generously providing me with many boxes of unpublished sources. And, I would like to thank Suzanne Schwarz for being my External Examiner. The completion of this Ph.D. dissertation has been a monumental journey, which has led me to conduct research in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, the United Kingdom, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and the United States. None of these research trips would have been possible without the support of several scholarship programs and funding from key institutions. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the support I received to finance my doctoral studies from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Ontario Graduate vi Scholarship Program (OGS), The Harriet Tubman Institute, the Faculty of Graduate Studies at York University, and the Department of History at York University. I would like to give thanks to those friends whose efforts made for successful research trips including Aiah Yendeh, Taziff Koroma, and Abdullai Brima, for their guidance and lodgings in Freetown and to Charles for motorcycle transport from Sierra Leone to Liberia; Kae Sun for arranging lodgings in Accra, Rev. Kwaku Darko-Mensah for his hospitality and Sidney Palupa for his guidance, transportation and translations; Connie Abbe and Silvastone for providing lodgings in London while I worked at the British Library, The National Archives and SOAS; Nigel Baptiste and his family for providing lodgings while researching at the National Archives and the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago; Eon and Marilyn Sinclair for providing contacts in Guyana, and Osric Best for his time and generosity; and George and Elaine Brooks for their hospitality in Bloomington, Indiana. My dissertation was written in various locations including Toronto, Rice Lake, Thailand and the Hollywood Hills. I would like to thank the Pansri family in Nakhon Ratchasima for their hospitality while completing the final chapters of my dissertation. I would also like to thank Donald Colhour and Terrence Jon for their generosity and the opportunity to write at the Luftschloss in the Hollywood Hills. I am grateful to my past professors at York University including Modupe Olaugun who sparked my interest in African literature and music, which inspired me to travel the African continent in my twenties. I thank Nigel Leask and Willy Maley at the University of Glasgow for an enriching experience during the completion of my Master’s degree that provided a solid foundation for further study in my Ph.D. vii I would like to recognize my Ph.D. cohort colleagues Vanessa Oliveira and Katrina Keefer. I thank my academic sisters for their friendship, insight and encouragement to complete my Ph.D. I send special thanks to Maria Cristina Fernandes and Francesca Sierra who created the maps used in this dissertation based on my sources. I would also like to thank Henry Lovejoy, Richard Anderson, Leidy Alpizar, Karlee Sapoznik, Tracy Lopes, Myles Ali, Abu Fofana, Funke Aladejebi, Bruno Véras, Francesca Cuthbert and all of my Tubman family who have enriched my time as a graduate student. I thank my friends beyond academia who have encouraged me including Emmanuel Jal, Michael Morris, Julie Quinn, Jeff Vanderby, Julie Tamaki, Jon Brohman, Matt Lindsay, Bill Merritt, Josh Mills, Steve Loweth, Scot Clarke, Jay Craig, Padmini Padiachy, Rashmee Karnad-Jani, and Andrew McLaughlin. It is a great privilege to share the story of the Kru. I give thanks to the Universe and God for the opportunity to research and present my findings here. It has been a grand adventure. viii Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………….…………………….…………..ii Dedication………………..……………………………………………………………………….iv Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………..v Table of Contents………………………………………………….…………………………….viii List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………..ix List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………..x Introduction………..………………………………………………………………………………1 Dissertation Chapters…………………………………………………………………………..9 Overview of the Literature……………………………………………………………………14 Sources......................................................................................................................................19 Methodology…………………………………………………………………….....................28 Chapter 1 Kru Coast and the Slave Trade……..............................................................................32 Kru Origins and Language…………………………………………………………………....33 Social Organization……………….…………………………………………………………..44 The Slave Trade…………………….…………………....……………….……………….….51 Chapter 2 Founding of Freetown and the Suppression of the Slave Trade……………………...71 Kru and the Foundation of Freetown…………………………………………………………72 British Suppression of the Slave Trade and the Kru.................................................................78 Terms of Employment………………………………………………………………………..88 Relationship with the Homeland…………………………………………………………….100 Chapter 3 Krutowns as Labouring Communities in Atlantic Ports and the Shift to Legitimate Trade……………………………………………………………………………………..…106 Coastal West Africa………………………………………………………………………...107 Lagos after British Occupation in 1851 and Formal Annexation in 1861………….……....133 Palm Oil Production, Legitimate Trade, and Kru Employment…………………………....136 Chapter 4 Kru Diaspora in the British Caribbean……….….…………………………………..143 Context for Hiring Kru in the British Caribbean………………….......................................144 Policy and Immigration……………………………………………………………………..150 Labour in the Caribbean….………………………………………………………………....157 Settlements Patterns………………………………………………………………………...163 Chapter 5