Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information More Auspicious Shores More Auspicious Shores chronicles the migration of Afro-Barbadians to Liberia. In 1865, 346 Afro-Barbadians fled a failed post-emancipation Caribbean for the independent black republic of Liberia. They saw Liberia as a means of achieving their post-emancipation goals and promoting a pan-Africanist agenda while simultaneously fulfilling their “civilizing” and “Christianizing” duties. Through a close examination of the Afro- Barbadians, Caree A. Banton provides a transatlantic approach to understanding the political and sociocultural consequences of their migration and settlement in Africa. Banton reveals how, as former British subjects, Afro-Barbadians navigated an inherent tension between ideas of pan-Africanism and colonial superiority. Upon their arrival in Liberia, an English imperial identity distinguished the Barbadians from African Americans and secured them privileges in the republic’shierarchy above the other group of blacks. By fracturing assumptions of a homogeneous black identity, Banton ultimately demonstrates how Afro- Barbadian settlement in Liberia influenced ideas of blackness in the Atlantic World. Caree A. Banton is Assistant Professor of Afro-Caribbean History at the University of Arkansas. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information More Auspicious Shores Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic CAREE A. BANTON University of Arkansas © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108429634 doi: 10.1017/9781108556217 © Caree A. Banton 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Banton, Caree A., 1982– author. title: More auspicious shores : Barbadian migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the making of an African republic / Caree A. Banton. description: Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2018042765 | isbn 9781108429634 subjects: lcsh: Barbadians – Liberia – History. | Liberia – History – 1847–1944.| Liberia – Emigration and immigration – 19th century. | Barbados – Emigration and immigration – 19th century. classification: lcc dt643 .b36 2019 | ddc 966.6200496072981–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042765 isbn 978-1-108-42963-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information For Mama Hilda Salmon and Isolyn Banton For Papa Joe Gayle and Claude Banton “We are our grandmother’s prayers. We are our grandfather’s dreamings.” “We Are,” Sacred Ground, Sweet Honey in the Rock (1995) © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information Contents List of Figures page viii Preface ix List of Abbreviations xvii Introduction: “Who Is This Man and from Whence Comes He to Rule?” 1 part i caribbean emancipation 1 Not Free Indeed 29 2 African Civilization and the West Indian Avant-Garde 74 3 The Liberian President Visits Barbados to Trade Visions of Freedom 102 part ii the middle passage 4 Middle Passage Baggage 149 part iii african liberation 5 Barbadian Arrival and Social Integration in Liberia 185 6 Making Citizenship and Blackness in Liberia 233 7 A Changing of the Guards: Arthur Barclay and Barbadian Liberia Political Leadership 282 Epilogue: British West Indians in Liberia from Edward Blyden to Marcus Garvey 326 Bibliography 333 Index 352 vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information Figures 1.1 Anthony Barclay’s Goods Sold in His Shop page 36 1.2 Barclay Family Tree 41 2.1 Resolutions of the Barbados Colonization Society 95 3.1 N. M. Condy’s Depiction of the Embarkation of the Liberian President J. J. Roberts from Plymouth on December 16, 1848 103 4.1 Ship Manifest List of Barbados Emigrants to Liberia 151 5.1 The African Repository’s Record of Migrant Ships to Liberia in 1865 186 5.2 Memorial of the Barbadians’ Arrival 187 5.3 Sign Memorializing the Crozierville Settlement 202–03 5.4 Christ Church Episcopal, Named after the Parish of Christ Church in Barbados 222–23 6.1 Sarah Ann Bourne Barclay and Daughter, Laura Ann Barclay 271 6.2 Hon. S. E. F. Cadogan, Barbadian Attorney in Liberia 272 6.3 Map Showing African Polities and Migrant Settlements in Liberia 277 7.1 Liberian Territories Lost During the Scramble for Africa 291 7.2 Photograph of Arthur Barclay as Secretary of the Treasury 298 7.3 Arthur Barclay, Barbadian Migrant, 15th President of Liberia 305 viii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information Preface This book began in a Latin American Studies Research course at Vanderbilt University. I had gone to Vanderbilt fully intending to write about the intersection of Jamaican music and politics. However, acting upon advice to change my research focus, I started to use the Latin American Studies course to explore an old interest in diplomatic history that had culminated in a curiosity about nineteenth-century Liberia. It was then that I discovered Gerard Ralston, a white Philadelphian coloniza- tionist who served as Liberia’s consul general in the mid-nineteenth cen- tury. I had started to write about Ralston and his efforts to negotiate trade and diplomacy on behalf of the imperiled black nation when I found a letter he wrote responding to a group of Barbadians who had expressed interest in emigrating to Liberia. Liberia’s location just next door to Sierra Leone dramatized the Barbadians’ odd interest. Overcome with curiosity, I found myself going down a rabbit hole: Why were British colonial Barbadians interested in migrating to Liberia? What made some emigrate to Liberia as others went elsewhere? What happened after they arrived? An even more complex and fascinating story unfolded in my subse- quent research. The story I uncovered brought together West Indians, African Americans, and Africans in ways that piqued my interest and encapsulated my passions. It struck me that while the Barbadians’ story resembled that of other nineteenth-century migrants, theirs neither shared the common set of tropes nor the sense of narrative inevitability. My initial questions about Liberian diplomacy evolved to black coloniza- tion and emigration and were further complicated by the added layers of identity, which were also shaped by the ghosts of race and colonialism. Throughout the story, it became evident that as black migrants navigated ix © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-42963-4 — More Auspicious Shores Caree A. Banton Frontmatter More Information x Preface the different structures in which they found themselves, they walked the tightrope that often revealed their conflicting human tendencies. Just as early African American black nationalists dreamt of creating an African utopia that often centered around American republican political ideals and Christianity, Afro-Barbadians were pan-Africanists whose ideas tended towards pro-royalist Anglophilia. These human contradictions became even clearer as black migrants increasingly slipped into more sanctimonious and oppressive positions as they took on the posture of white supremacy from which