An African Family Archive

Download or read book An African Family Archive written by Adam Jones and published by Fontes Historiae Africanae. This book was released on 2005-09-22 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a rare and detailed account of what it meant to individual Africans to be turned almost overnight into colonial subjects in the nineteenth-century. The Lawson family of Aneho, a small town on the coast of Togo, possesses a letterbook of 718 documents in English, and this is the first attempt to publish such a source in its entirety. The correspondence dates mainly from the periods 1841-77 (relating to the transition from the Atlantic slave trade to 'legitimate trade', mainly in palm oil) and 1883-85 (a period dominated by the efforts of King G. A. Lawson III to prevent Aneho and its surroundings from becoming part of a French or German colony). The volume also contains documents from the early twentieth-century, including some illuminating pieces of local historiography. The documents are framed by a comprehensive editorial apparatus.