British Images of West Africa

Abstract

The historiography of British-West African relations between the eighteenth and nineteenth century is typically characterized by narratives that center on the imposition of power by British colonizers onto West African colonized. These histories tend to neglect the dynamic nature of British-West African interaction as well as the importance of West African social, political, and economic history in dictating how and when such power was exercised. Because of this neglect, such histories also tend to frame British-West African relations through the anachronistic application of modern conceptions of race and racism. Rather than understand British-West African relations from the mid-eighteenth to the late-nineteenth century as a one-sided imposition of an increasingly virulent racism, there was instead a marked transition from a culturalist mindset to what now resembles modern conceptions of race and racism. This transition from one mindset to another was heavily influenced by important economic and political changes in both Britain and West Africa throughout this period. Contrasting two sets of case studies elucidates this shift. The first is of British-Fante relations in the slave town of Annamaboe on the Gold coast and the life of Ignatius Sancho in the late eighteenth century. The second, of the life and experiences of West African physicians James “Africanus” Beale Horton and John Farrell Easmon in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Analyzing and contrasting these case studies enables readers to challenge and problematize a popular historical narrative that currently fails to accurately depict these complex dynamics or acknowledge their change over time.