Columbia University Seminar Studies in Contemporary Africa

West Indians in West Africa: Sketches of an Archaeology of the Back-to-Africa Movement from Nineteenth-Century Liberia

Dr. Matthew C. Reilly

Knox Hall, Room 207(Directions), Thursday, April 4th, 6pm – 8pm

In 1865, the brig Cora, with the support of the American Colonization Society, arrived in Monrovia carrying 365 Afro-Barbadians. While relatively diverse in terms of religious affiliation, occupation, and age, the migrants were all eager to take part in the colonizing mission which, having begun a generation earlier with African American settlers, sought to bring civility and Christianity to Liberian shores and provide economic, political, and social opportunities for advancement for the settlers. The town the Barbadians would establish, Crozierville, would, in the years to come, boast grandiose plantation-style architecture, Christian churches, and residents who would go on to hold some of the nation’s highest political offices, including the presidency. Crozierville is one of many settlement towns across Liberia that is understood and embraced as having historical significance. The country’s slogan, “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here”, implies what is often assumed within historical literature about Liberia; namely, that Liberian history begins with colonial settlement. In post-conflict Liberia, however, the intersections of colonialism, violence, and heritage offer fertile ground in which to offer more nuanced ways of understanding the relationship between Liberian’s past and present. An archaeological approach to the settlement of Crozierville offers the potential to examine the complexities of nineteenth-century colonialism while simultaneously exposing the material vestiges of this past and its consequences on the contemporary Liberian landscape.

Dr. Reilly is an anthropological archaeologist interested in race formation processes, whiteness, and colonial modernity in the Atlantic world. His work on the Caribbean island of Barbados, the subject of his forthcoming book, Archaeology below the Cliff: Race, Class, and Redlegs in Barbadian Sugar Society, explores how a group of poor whites known as the Redlegs fit within the social matrix of a system of sugar production and slavery. He is currently working on two related projects in Barbados and Liberia. His work in Barbados focuses on heritage management and the process of building futures with the material remains of the dark histories of plantation slavery. He is also collaborating on a project in the West African nation of Liberia investigating a small village established by Barbadian settlers in 1865. The project uses archaeological and ethnographic approaches to explore the process of “reverse diaspora” and settler-native interactions. At the heart of his research is a critical exploration of the complex relationships between slavery and freedom, colonialism and sovereignty, race, class, and capitalism, the social construction of race and structural racism, and the past, present, and future.

Please RSVP to lc3127@columbia.edu if you would like to join the group for dinner at a nearby restaurant.