A Merciless Place: Britain's Convict Disaster in Africa

[RZM]

By the time America won its independence in 1783 upwards of 50,000 British criminals had been banished to American shores. The Americans wanted no more and, with the old route stopped up and prisoners piling up in British jails, London had to find another dump. In 1788 the First Fleet to Australia entered Sydney Cove and a new penal colony was born. Between those dates, however, reckless, misconceived and tragic attempts were made to ship convicts off to the slave forts of West Africa.

Christopher then focuses on two overlapping African expeditions. The first, in 1781, saw capitally condemned men ‘pardoned’ on condition of enlisting as soldiers under McKenzie and sailing to guard British slaving forts and to attack the more successful Dutch ones. Thus unfolds an astonishing tale of madness, conspiracy and cruelty in the ‘dying grounds’ of West Africa, where malaria killed many within weeks of landing. The second, in 1783, saw ‘civilian’ convicts (including two women) sent, with an unbelievable lack of planning, to establish a settlement on an island in the River Gambia. The nearest British governor, already without resources to feed and defend his own people and premises, told them to fend for themselves. None survived.

In part because Christopher is principally a historian of the slave trade – her last book was about the sailors who manned the slave ships – the African section of her book is the longest and most interesting and her knowledge of British interventions and personnel on the slaving coasts add enormously to her account. Particularly telling are the reactions of white slavers to the prospect of undermining fragile racial hierarchies, if white convicts were seen being treated as slaves.

http://www.historytoday.com/blog/2012/01/merciless-place-lost-story-britain%E2%80%99s-convict-disaster-africa

Not a well-known story, obviously. The notion of leaving convicts to fend for themselves in the unfamiliar wilderness certainly has many other echoes throughout history, particularly in Stalin's Soviet Union.

[ellisonz]

1. Looks like an interesting read.

A parallel book to this might be Catherine Pybus's "Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty" - love that international history.

During the American Revolution, thousands of slaves fled from their masters to find freedom with the British. Having emancipated themselves--and with rhetoric about the inalienable rights of free men ringing in their ears--these men and women struggled tenaciously to make liberty a reality in their lives.

This alternative narrative includes the stories of dozens of individuals--including Harry, one of George Washington's slaves--who left America and forged difficult new lives in far-flung corners of the British Empire. Written in the best tradition of history from the bottom up, this pathbreaking work will alter the way we think about the American Revolution.

http://www.amazon.com/Epic-Journeys-Freedom-American-Revolution/dp/0807055158/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328694089&sr=1-1

Thanks for posting. I had actually forgotten about Gambia and had to orient myself with wikipedia!