Slave narratives from the Gambia

In 1839, Wesleyan missionaries in the Gambia recorded the life histories of about a dozen or so former slaves who were members of their congregations. The resulting narratives are a unique source for the history of slavery and Christianity in western Africa. This blog will publish them and explore their significance as historical and biographical artifacts.

The narratives survive in manuscript form in the archives of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in London. They are not polished literary creations. They bear all the hallmarks of their authors' rudimentary literary capabilities: irregular spelling and grammar; extremely long-running sentences; a lack of punctuation, line or paragraph breaks. They are written in a variety of scripts, presumably those of their authors.

The subject matter of the narratives typically embrace the circumstances of their author's enslavement, the means by which they arrived in the Gambia, and their relationship with the Methodist mission. But each narrative emphasizes different aspects of its author's life.

Some provide a detailed picture of the author's life before enslavement; others provide only the sketchiest details. Some describe the circumstances of the author's enslavement and eventual liberation in torturous detail; others gloss over this passage in a few sentences. Some place great emphasis on the author's encounter with Christianity, while others refer only briefly to the influence of the Wesleyan mission.

The last point is particularly significant. These narratives were almost certainly collected to serve as missionary propaganda, although only one was ever published by the Wesleyans. Yet most bear only the loosest resemblance to classical conversion narratives (such as the Life of David Brainard) or to the liberation narratives of Olaudah Equiano and others -- already an established genre by c1839. What makes these narratives remarkable is their individuality.