More Auspicious Shores Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic

More Auspicious Shores chronicles the migration of Afro-Barbadians to Liberia. In 1865, 346 Afro-Barbadians fled a failed post-emancipation Caribbean for the independent black republic of Liberia. They saw Liberia as a means of achieving their post-emancipation goals and promoting a pan-Africanist agenda while simultaneously fulfilling their 'civilizing' and 'Christianizing' duties. Through a close examination of the Afro-Barbadians, Caree A. Banton provides a transatlantic approach to understanding the political and sociocultural consequences of their migration and settlement in Africa. Banton reveals how, as former British subjects, Afro-Barbadians navigated an inherent tension between ideas of pan-Africanism and colonial superiority. Upon their arrival in Liberia, an English imperial identity distinguished the Barbadians from African Americans and secured them privileges in the Republic's hierarchy above the other group. By fracturing assumptions of a homogeneous black identity, Banton ultimately demonstrates how Afro-Barbadian settlement in Liberia influenced ideas of blackness in the Atlantic World.

List of maps and figures; Preface; List of abbreviations; Introduction: 'who is this man and from whence comes he to rule?'; Part I. Caribbean Emancipation: 1. Not free indeed; 2. African civilization and the West Indian avant-garde; 3. The Liberian president visits Barbados to trade visions of freedom; Part II. The Middle Passage: 4. Middle passage baggage; Part III. African Liberation: 5. Barbadians arrival and social integration in Liberia; 6. Making citizenship and blackness in Liberia; 7. A changing of the guards: Arthur Barclay and Barbadian Liberia political leadership; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

Caree A. Banton is Assistant Professor of Afro-Caribbean History at the University of Arkansas.