num_pages: 216
description: Tracing the development of British colonial administration in West Africa over the course of the long eighteenth century, Caulker illuminates the solidification of the administration as it goes through a learning process of power. This book analyzes the documents and treaties that the indigenous peoples of eighteen-century Sierra Leone made with their future British colonizers, and compares them with the writings of Adam Smith to uncover a colonial philosophy linking European economic success with the process of civilizing Africa through moral education. A discussion of other archival materials demonstrates the ways that an emerging anthropological science and pseudo-scientific methodology contributed to colonial ventures and exploration. The book concludes with an analysis of the postcolonial novel The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar , demonstrating that the study of this long eighteenth-century archive has as much to do with the present postcolonial era as it does with the period of African colonization.
language: English
title: The African-British Long Eighteenth Century: An Analysis of African-British Treaties, Colonial Economics, and Anthropological Discourse
publisher: Lexington Books