Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction The Transatlantic Corridor Antislavery Establishment Structures Antistructure The American Factor The Frame of Interpretation Historiography 1. The American Slave Corridor and the New African Potential The Historical Significance of Olaudah Equiano Antislavery and Black Loyalists in the American Revolution The Black Poor in London The Sierra Leone Resettlement Plan Antislavery and Early Colonization in America Thomas Peters: Moving Antislavery to Africa Freedom and the Evangelical Convergence Upsetting the Natural Order New Light Religion:Pushing at the Boundaries 2. "A Plantation of Religion" and the Enterprise Culture in Africa Antislavery and Antistructure David George Moses Wilkinson The Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion Paul Cuffee The Voluntarist Impulse Christianity and Antinomianism 3. Abolition and the Cause of Recaptive Africans Sir Charles MacCarthy:Christendom Revisited Recaptives and the New Society The Example of Samuel Ajayi Crowther The Strange Career of John Ezzidio 4.The Niger Expedition, Missionary Imperatives, and African Ferment Change in the Old Order Recaptives and the New Middle Class: Brokers or Collaborators? Thomas Jefferson Bowen and the Manifest Middle Class Crowther and the Niger Expedition The Niger Mission Resumed Antislavery and Its New Friends The Native Pastorate and Its Nemesis Martin Delany: Anatomy of a Cause Debacle Reaction and Resistance 5. American Colonization and the Founding of Liberia Colonization Sentiments Commercial Motives: Purse and Principle The Humanitarian Motive and the Evangelical Impulse Colonization without Empire: America 's Spiritual Kingdom Colonization before Antislavery: Mission of Inquiry African Resettlement: Fact and Fiction The Founding of Liberia: Privatization of Public Responsibility Lott Carey and Liberia Expansion and Exclusion Black Ideology Conclusion Antislavery Antistructure The American Factor Crowther, the CMS, and Evangelical Religion Colonialism, Christendom, and the Impact of Antistructure New World Lessons Notes Sources Index

Promotional Information

Abolitionists Abroad tells the story of the cultural revolution engineered by freed slaves who traversed the Atlantic--again--to help destroy Africa's peculiar institution. Engrossing, inspiring, impeccably researched, Sanneh's book will change the way you think about Africa. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

About the Author

Lamin Sanneh was Professor of History and D. Willis James Professor of World Christianity, Yale University.

Reviews

Sanneh (history and world Christianity, Yale Univ.) argues that modern antislavery in Europe and America emerged from an evangelical Christianity centered on personal salvation that empowered a bottom-up social movement of ex-slaves, ex-captives, and their allies (Olaudah Equiano, David George, Paul Cuffee, and Samuel Ajayi Crowther, for example). These downtrodden outcasts created an "antistructure" in the form of an alternative community that broke old structural traditions as best illustrated by the Sierra Leone colony created by blacks displaced during the American Revolution. There, Sanneh argues, a new society based on freedom and human dignity formed a foundation for modern West Africa. Sanneh's complex argument demands close reading and promises to compel scholarly attention as it shifts the focus of antislavery to an Africa-based movement. For collections on anti-slavery movements, the Atlantic world, African American and African history, and the history of social activism in religion in general and Christianity in particular.--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

In his most recent work, Lamin Sanneh offers a novel perspective on nineteenth-century antislavery movements. Instead of the usual narratives of William Wilberforce in England or William Lloyd Garrison in America, Sanneh tells of the vital role Africans--albeit often Americanized or Anglicized Africans--played in the abolition of slavery both on their own continent and around the globe...Sanneh's narrative poses some of the broadest and most important questions in the history of global colonization and modernization. Should we agree with him that the imposition of Western liberal cultural values and social organization in Africa--when these values were promoted by Africans themselves--was unambiguously a good thing? Should the entire world therefore be made over in the image of the United States with its notion of individual rights? -- Stewart Davenport and Wiebe Boer * Books & Culture *
In this absorbing study, Sannah argues for the historical significance of the settlement in Freetown, West Africa, established by nearly 1,200 freed slaves in 1792 as the foundation for a powerful anti-slavery movement that influenced social policy in both America and Europe. Using journals, letters and other evidence gleaned from public records, he shows that freed slaves and former captives such as Olaudah Equiano, David George, Paul Cuffee and others believed that abolitionist sentiment, together with Christianity, with its theme of God-giving humanity, could become an effective liberating force...This well-documented book offers sharp historical insights on an important but often neglected chapter in the history of American slavery. * Publishers Weekly *
Sanneh argues that modern antislavery in Europe and America emerged from an evangelical Christianity centered on personal salvation that empowered a bottom-up social movement of ex-slaves, ex-captives, and their allies. These downtrodden outcasts created an 'antistructure' in the form of an alternative community that broke old structural traditions as best illustrated by the Sierra Leone colony created by blacks displaced during the American Revolution. There, Sannah argues, a new society based on freedom and human dignity formed a foundation for modern West Africa. -- Thomas J. Davis * Library Journal *
Sanneh focuses on the colonization or 'back to Africa movement' as an outgrowth of the abolitionist-antislavery movement...[He] recounts the experiences of the black abolitionists to illustrate the conflicts and cross currents in the slave trade debate that are not generally discussed...Sanneh's work reflects the conflict of Christian values with domestic politics, which provided the opportunity for black Americans to influence the development of modern West Africa. -- Vernon Ford * Booklist *
Abolitionists Abroad tells the story of the cultural revolution engineered by freed slaves who traversed the Atlantic--again--to help destroy Africa's peculiar institution. Engrossing, inspiring, impeccably researched, Sanneh's book will change the way you think about Africa. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Lamin Sanneh's book seeks to redirect the study of black abolitionism by accentuating the importance of Black Loyalists' return to Africa after the American Revolution Sanneh's provocative interpretation broadens the study of abolitionism into an Atlantic perspective and re-centres abolitionism to include the Black Loyalists. -- Graham Russell Hodges * The International History Review *

In this absorbing study, Sanneh, a historian and professor of world Christianity at Yale University, argues for the historical significance of the settlement in Freetown, West Africa, established by nearly 1,200 freed slaves in 1792 as the foundation for a powerful antislavery movement that influenced social policy in both America and Europe. Using journals, letters and other evidence gleaned from public records, he shows that freed slaves and former captives such as Olaudah Equiano, David George, Paul Cuffee and others believed that abolitionist sentiment, together with Christianity, with its theme of God-given humanity, could become an effective liberating force. While the settlements of freed slaves in Sierra Leone and, later, Liberia were often plagued with controversy, political infighting and epidemics, Samuel Ajayi Crowder, an ex-slave from Nigeria, used the models of earlier antislavery communities to build new ones in Nigeria. Sanneh suggests the zeal of the repatriated ex-slaves and their evangelical Christianity not only threatened the old traditional African tribal chieftain hierarchy, but challenged Christian practices in Europe and the New World. His comments on the reaction of leading black intellectuals of the day to the complex social questions posed by the Liberian settlement are sketchy. Yet overall, this well-documented book offers sharp historical insights on an important but often neglected chapter in the history of American slavery. (Feb.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.