enabled me to see my work and interests from other angles and in much broader and longer-term frameworks. Thank you to the Global Economic History Network, London School of Economics, for organizing conferences on cotton textiles as a global industry in 2005. Many thanks as well to Beverly Lemire for including me on her panel for the XIV World Economic History Congress in 2006, and also to Joseph Inikori for inviting me to contribute to his panel at the XV World Economic History Congress in 2009. An especially stimulating conference held in Stirling, Scotland, in 2009, called “Rethinking Africa and the Atlantic World,” was where I first began to think deliberately about writing a book along the lines of this one. Thank you to the Department of History at University of Stirling for bringing together scholars of African and American Atlantic history. Another inspiring conference, organized by Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke Strickrodt, addressed the complex interrelationships of commercial agriculture and slavery in Africa (sixteenth to twentieth c.). I am indebted to all the organizers of these conferences and fellow participants for their commitment to world history.
At a crucial time when I was designing this project and preparing a proposal to the press, four special colleagues generously offered comments and support. My most sincere thanks to Ralph Austen, Pat Manning, Peter Mark, and Don Wright.
I gratefully acknowledge assistance my university has given me by providing funds and release time for carrying out this research. I thank the provost of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) for a research assignment awarded to me in the fall of 2012, and to the Kohler Fund, the International Programs Center, and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for providing international travel support. Thank you also to the Lloyd International Honors College at UNCG for a Chancellor’s Resident Fellowship and research stipend in 2013/14. A Faculty First grant from the provost at UNCG provided me with much-needed funding for travel and time spent in the United Kingdom in 2015 as I was completing my work in The National Archives and The London Metropolitan Archives.
A very deeply felt thank you goes to everyone involved with The National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, for awarding me the Hurford Family Fellowship during the academic year 2014/15. I could never have written this book while also teaching, as it entailed intensely focused concentration day after day in preparing to write and then shaping the writing itself. This gift of uninterrupted time brought with it the most rewarding intellectual experience in my career. Compounding that very personal internal pleasure was the amiable company of my fellow fellows of the NHC class of 2014/15. Knowing we were all experiencing similar struggles was a relief, and our lunchtime conversations were a balm. I will forever be in awe of all of you.
Many people have made it possible for me to bring this project to a close. I praise especially the consistently courteous and efficient staff at The National Archives, United Kingdom, whose expertise made my work enjoyable over these years of visits. For visual images and permissions to publish them, I thank the following: Rogier Bédaux for the digital image of the Sanga cotton tunic and Ingeborg Eggink of the Nationaal Museum van Wereld Culturen, the Netherlands, for permission to publish it; Karin Guggeis, Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich, for her generosity and helpfulness with the image of their beautiful creole ivory horn; Tom Cohen and Joan Stahl of The Catholic University of America and Oliveira Lima Library for assistance with permission to publish images from Froger; staffs at The National Archives, United Kingdom, and The Massachusetts Historical Society for their efficient online permissions processes; Sally Welch, Ohio University Press, for her assistance with images in the public domain; Nancy Basmajian, managing editor of Ohio University Press, and copyeditor Brian Bowles, for their superb editing; and at UNCG, the incomparable Dan Smith, photography wizard, and Gaylor Callahan, interlibrary-loan librarian extraordinaire.
Long-standing colleagues and friends (with whom I now hope to spend more time!) have always been with me throughout this project. Apologies and affectionate thanks to Julia Fish, Françoise Grossen, Adrienne Middlebrooks, Ann O’Hear, Richard Rezac, Wendy Thomas, and Lisa Tolbert. Words are not sufficient to acknowledge Oded.
Finally, many years ago I had the great good fortune to spend a year as a Fulbright student at the University of Ife, Nigeria (now Obafemi Awolowo University), and one of the highlights was being inducted into the Palm-wine Drinkerds’ Club. The many afternoons I spent with my fellow comrades drinking palm wine at the Uppermost Shrine were not just jovial occasions—I also got a taste of Nigerian Pidgin English and the creativity and wit it engenders. I thought of those times often as I wrote this book, remembering how wise it was for the club to flip the university’s motto “For Learning and Culture” to “For Culture and Learning” as a deliberate turn toward singing and storytelling in the face of Western education. I might not have become so deeply interested in African history were it not for the club. I am honored to be a fellow, and so to all my comrades worldwide I say, You Are Carried!
INTRODUCTION
Atlantic Lives
Anglo-African Trade in Northern Guinea
A EURO-AFRICAN widow named Hope Heath traveled the main carriage road leading from her residence in Leyton, Essex, to London in July 1697. There, on July 10, she married Samuel Meston at St. James Duke’s Place, the Anglican parish church of Aldgate Ward in the City of London.1 Her second marriage must have been a welcome new beginning for Hope and her two-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, after enduring several years of difficult family disputes and legal struggles in the wake of her husband’s death. What had set off seemingly endless rounds of acrimonious controversy were the deaths of two important English men in Hope’s life—John Booker, her former master; and William Heath, her first husband. It was because of them both that she had left the northern Guinea Coast, land of her birthplace, to live the life of a free woman of color in London.
These three people were brought together by the Guinea trade and England’s Royal African Company (RAC) at James Island fort on the lower Gambia River. Booker had first arrived at James Island in 1680 and quickly rose to serve as assistant to the company’s principal agent there. William Heath arrived in June 1683, serving as a soldier at the fort and then at Juffure, a company outpost on the mainland. In March 1686, Heath assumed the important position of company factor, which put him in charge of keeping track of the trade goods stored in their warehouse and handling the company’s sales and purchases.2 It was around this same time that Esperança (Hope) must have come to James Island, though involuntarily as a child captive. Where she had come from and who named her Esperança will probably never be known. She had been born into a community on the mainland in about 1675, but she then suffered some kind of horrible calamity that tore her from home and family and forced her into captivity. On James Island, she lived and worked as one of Booker’s personal household slaves inside the fort, along with her so-called brother, Sanko. In assuming for himself the role of paterfamilias to his child slaves, Booker sent her away to a boarding school in England in the 1680s to learn to read and write in English. And young Esperança came to be known among English-speakers as Hope Booker.3
Her life changed dramatically upon the death of John Booker in early June 1693. Calling her “my girle Speranca,” Booker gave Hope in a codicil to his will her unconditional freedom, title to her jewelry and other personal possessions, stewardship of his slaves, and an impressive lifetime annuity of £25 for her maintenance.4 If Hope Booker and William Heath had not been acquainted earlier, they certainly did get to know each other very well as they collaborated to carry out Booker’s funeral and burial arrangements and set about administering his personal estate at James Island. Heath began to court her, pleading that she agree to marry him there according to the local custom on the Guinea Coast and promising that at the first opportunity they would marry again in a formal Christian ceremony. Their marriage took place on the island in October 1693 at a public celebration in which they pledged before God and an audience of witnesses their lifelong love and devotion to each other.5
The following March, William Heath sent
