PROGRAMME
Thursday, 23 September 2010
9.45 Arrival
10.15 Welcome by Andreas Gestrich, Director of the German Historical Institute London, and Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz and Silke Strickrodt
10.45 Keynote 1: David Eltis (Emory University), The Slave Trade and Commercial Agriculture in an African Context before the Nineteenth Century
Chair: Silke Strickrodt (GHIL)
11.45 Short Break
12.00 Panel 1: Beginnings
Chair: Paul Lovejoy (York University, Toronto)
Gerhard Seibert (Centro de Estudos Africanos, Lisbon), São Tomé and Príncipe: The First Plantation Economy in the Tropics
Tobias Green (King’s College London), The Export of Rice and Millet from Upper Guinea into the Sixteenth-Century Atlantic Trade
13.30 Lunch and Coffee (in the Common Room)
14.30 Keynote 2: Robin Law (Stirling University/University of Liverpool), ‘There’s nothing grows in the West Indies but will grow here’: English and Dutch projects of plantation agriculture in West Africa, 1650s-1750s
Chair: Paul Lovejoy (York University, Toronto)
15.30 Short Break
15.45 Panel 2: Pre-Abolitionist Projects
Chair: Adam Jones (Universität Leipzig)
Colleen Kriger (University of North Carolina), ‘Our Indico Designe’: Planting and Processing Indigo for Export, Upper Guinea Coast, 1686-1702
Walter Hawthorne (Michigan State University), Non-Slave Commerce from Upper Guinea, Sierra Leone and Cape Verde before 1815
Paul Richards (Wageningen University), African/Asian Rice Hybrids: Towards a History of an Anti-Commodity on the Upper West African Coast
17.45 (to c.19.30) Drinks Reception with the Africanist Baroque Ensemble (in the Library)
Participants should make their own arrangements for dinner (see list of restaurants in conference pack)
Friday, 24 September 2010
9.30 Keynote 3: Christopher L. Brown (Columbia University), The Origins of Legitimate Commerce (1750-1790)
Chair: Robin Law (University of Stirling/University of Liverpool)
10.30 Tea & Coffee
11.00 Panel 3: Early Danish Initiatives
Chair: Ben Marsh (University of Stirling)
Yaw Bredwa-Mensa (Legon University), The Archaeology of the Danish Plantation System on the Gold Coast, 1789-1850
Per Hernaes (University of Trondheim), Frederiksnopel: Isert's Plans for a Danish Plantation Colony in Akuapem, 1788
Daniel Hopkins (University of Missouri-Kansas City), Two Danish Agricultural Entrepreneurs in West Africa and the Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, c.1790-1810
12.30 Lunch (in the Common Room)
13.30 Panel 4: The Intellectual Background to Abolitionist Projects
Chair: Richard Reid (SOAS)
Elizabeth Elbourne (McGill University), Imagined Africa and the Quest for a Moral Economy: Thomas Fowell Buxton and the Niger Expedition of 1841-42
David Lambert (Royal Holloway, University of London), Geographical Knowledge and ‘Legitimate’ Commerce in Africa: James MacQueen, the ‘Armchair Explorer’
Kay Wright Lewis (Rutgers University), By Every Means: African American Ideas about African Labor and Commercial Agriculture in the 1850s
Andrew Walls (Liverpool Hope University), T. B. Freeman and Agricultural Development in Wesleyan Mission Policy
15.30 Short Break
15.45 Keynote 3: Gareth Austin (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva), Abolitionism and Commercial Agriculture in West Africa, 1787-1863 (and Beyond)
Chair: Phia Steyn (University of Stirling)
17.15 Panel 5: Abolitionist Projects in West Africa
Chair: Suzanne Schwarz (Liverpool Hope University)
Bronwen Everill (King’s College London), ‘The Colony has Made No Progress in Agriculture’: Misconceptions about Farming in the Colonies of Sierra Leone and Liberia
Kehinde Olabimtan (Institute of Mission Studies, Lagos/ Overseas Ministries Study Center, New Haven), Henry Venn and Ulrich Graf—A Synergy for the Transformation of the Colony of Sierra Leone
Howard Temperley (University of East Anglia), The Niger Expedition of 1841-42
19.30 Conference Dinner (in the Library)
Saturday, 25 September 2010
9.00 Panel 6: Commercial Agriculture on the Ground in West Africa
Chair: Barbara Bush (Sheffield Hallam University)
Roquinaldo Ferreira (Virginia University), Abolition and its Aftermath: Agricultural Enterprise and the Growth of Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Angola
Philip Misevich (Denison College), Feeding Freedom, Feeding the Slave Trade: Southern Sierra Leone and the Provisions Trade, 1787-1856
Bruce Mouser (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse), Coffee Production as an Alternative to Slave Trading in the Rio Pongo during the 1820s
Olatunji Ojo (Brock University), More than a Backwater Economy: Non-Oil Based Agricultural Production in Precolonial Yorubaland
11.00 Tea & Coffee (in the Common Room)
11.30 Panel 7: From Abolition to Colonialism
Chair: Andreas Eckert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Maciel Santos (Universidade de Porto), Backing the Colonial Power: Natural Rubber in Angola (1880-1920)
Steven Serels (McGill University), Cotton before the Condominium: Cotton Cultivation, the Sudanese Slave Trade and British Influence in the Sudan, 1884-1890
Andrew Zimmerman (George Washington University), West Africa as the American New South: Booker T. Washington, German Colonialism, and the Transformation of the Ewe Cotton Industry in German Togo
13.00 Lunch (in the Common Room)
13.30 Visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, with Guided Tour (from 3pm, entrance fee – c.£12 - to be paid by the participants)
N.B. As places on the guided tour are limited, they are reserved for participants appearing on this programme.
From c.19.00 Should participants wish, we can book a restaurant for dinner (paid by participants).