“What Rascals!” Perceptions of Free Labor in the Bulama Settlement, 1792–1793

ABSTRACT:The labor historiography regarding British settlements on the West African coast in the late eighteenth century has concentrated on the successive attempts by British abolitionists in Sierra Leone to create settlements with transatlantic black labor. At the same time as these developments in Sierra Leone, Lieutenant Philip Beaver of the Royal Navy, with the support of the Bulama Association, attempted to create a society of settlers and local labor with the Bulama Settlement in present-day Guinea-Bissau in 1792–1793. The goals of the Association were to promote the values of “cultivation and commerce equaling civilization.” Upon arrival, his leadership skills and organizational abilities were tested by the rapid decimation of the settlers by disease and their intransigence towards the project. Consequently, he used local grumettas as a fungible labor source. Beaver treated the remaining settlers and grumettas as a Royal Navy captain would a crew: organization, discipline, and perseverance became the shipborne principles that were now placed on land. This article describes how labor was transformed from noncompliant settlers to the use of paid African labor. Although viewed as a failure, the Bulama Settlement illustrates that there were alternative paths to “civilization” for Africans other than the religious foundations of the Sierra Leone settlement.