Freedom among the mangroves: Liberated African villages in colonial Gambia and the environmental limits of abolitionist settler colonialism, 1816–1869

This paper examines British colonial expansion in the Gambia River Basin through territorial expansion and land reclamation in the thick mangrove estuaries that line large parts of the River. I argue that much of this expansion was the result of contradictions between abolitionist settlement polices for Liberated Africans on the one hand, and the physical environment in which those policies were meant to be actualized. British abolitionist and colonial officials believed that the most moral and effective way to “civilize” Liberated Africans “rescued” from slave ships was to turn them into peasants engaged in agriculture for the colony. Yet, the colony as it was composed in the mid-19th century was poorly suited for this task: as it comprised mainly of meandering creeks, flood plains, salty soil and mangroves where colonial cash crops did poorly. British officials in attempting to overcome these contradictions and limits through expansion redefined freedom for Liberated Africans.

Lamin Manneh is a Gambian historian of West Africa with a research focus on urban and environmental history, British colonialism, and the legacies of the Atlantic slave trade. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2023 and is currently a Past & Present Fellow at the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London. Lamin’s current research examines Liberated African political formation and everyday life in Colonial Bathurst—the capital of British Gambia—in relation to wetland drainage and land reclamation in the city. Lamin is also in the process of co-authoring a sourcebook with Gambian secondary school teachers for Gambian urban history. The goal of this public and participatory history project is to create a textbook for use in the secondary school classroom that will bring under-utilized and hard-to-access archival materials into the hands of students and teachers.

All welcome- this seminar is free to attend, but booking is required.