Smith, Victoria Ellen (2011) If walls had mouths : representations of the Anglo-Fante household and the domestic slave in nineteenth-century Cape Coast (Ghana). PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The existence of indigenous slavery in the Gold Coast’s British settlements and the
Fante wives of British officials were inconvenient truths of mid-nineteenth century
Cape Coast. As such, they were marginalised within contemporary documents in
favour of heroic narratives of thwarting the efforts of pirate slavers and outlawing the
custom of human sacrifice. However, evidence reached London in 1839 that forced
the British government to respond to rumours that merchants tasked to enforce British
law were continuing to aid the slave trade. In 1841 Dr Madden was sent to the Gold
Coast as Commissioner of Inquiry to investigate the claims. He found merchant
magistrates engaging in domestic slavery and wrote a report to expose them in the
hope of bringing about its abolition.
In the absence of sufficient documentary evidence and with the aim of offering a
voice to the marginalised historical residents of Cape Coast’s Anglo-Fante
households, an interdisciplinary approach incorporating literary, historical and
anthropological research has been developed. Previously undocumented family
histories have been recorded and interpreted in the context provided by
historiography, archival documents and literary works including plays, poetry, novels,
and nineteenth-century memoirs. Having critically evaluated these sources in terms of
the authorial motive, verifiable data and historical instability that are identifiable
within oral and written memory, the accumulated evidence is employed to create an
imaginative representation of Madden’s time on the Gold Coast. Within the narrative
Madden visits the Fante wives of British officials - collectively referred to as the
Principal Mulatto Females of the Gold Coast - to explore the existence of domestic
slavery. This creative piece forms part of a wider historical and theoretical
consideration of a slave-holding community that is publicly forgotten and privately
remembered in Cape Coast society, and of the function of memory within the
relationship between history and literature.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DT Africa
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Cape Coast (Ghana) -- History -- 19th century, Slavery -- Cape Coast (Ghana)
Official Date:	August 2011
Dates:	Date Event August 2011 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Dabydeen, David ; O'Brien, Karen, Dr. ; Gilmore, John, 1956-
Extent:	vii, 349 leaves : ill.
Language:	eng

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