Aims and objectives
Digitisation in the Sierra Leone Public Archives will focus on manuscript and printed sources that offer an insight into the lives of people of African origin and descent in and around the colony. These endangered sources include information which makes it possible to trace the identities, social status and residential location of Liberated Africans, as well as some of the earliest settlers in the colony. Political and social relationships with African leaders in the hinterland of the Crown colony in the nineteenth century are documented in a series of Arabic Letter Books and Native Letter Books.
Professor Schwarz has written a blog for the University of Worcester website explaining how her research involves tracing the names and identities of men, women and children forcibly shipped from Africa in the transatlantic slave trade in the early nineteenth century.
Outcomes
This project resulted in the submission of 83 volumes consisting of 49,360 images. This compares to 93 volumes digitised during the previous project (EAP 782) accounting for 43,268 images. The evidence digitised during EAP 1366 ranges in date from 1825 to 1908. The volumes submitted include Arabic Letter Books spanning the period 1883-1887; Aborigines Letter Books spanning 1889-1890; Government Interpreters’ Letter Books dated between 1873 and 1882, Native Affair Letter Books between 1890 and 1894, and Secretary of State Despatches ranging in date between 1825 and 1890. This evidence is particularly important for showing the cultural, social and political relationships that developed between the Crown Colony and local peoples. These manuscript sources also offer important insights into the governance of the Crown colony and the decisions that influenced the formation of the Protectorate of Sierra Leone in the late nineteenth century. The digitised volumes also shed light on the diverse multi-ethnic population of nineteenth-century Freetown. The volumes contain evidence that can be used to reconstruct the identities and experiences of individuals released from slave ships by Royal Navy patrols in the nineteenth century. Overall, the material is vital to an understanding of the social, cultural and political features of the Crown colony of Sierra Leone and the experiences of men, women and children forcibly relocated from diverse areas across West Africa in the nineteenth century.
The following Methodology report was submitted as part of the project outputs:
The collections in the Sierra Leone Public Archives can now be accessed through the newly launched official website: SierraLeonePublicArchives.gov.sl, developed in partnership with Walk With Web. For further information, please read the full Press Release.
