On Wednesdays We Wear Prints: Fashion Rules in the African Atlantic

September 18, 2018 By Sara Georgini in Colonial Couture, Roundtables, Uncategorized Tags: African history, Britain, Fashion, History of Fashion, Sierra Leone, Slavery, women's history 2 Comments

Stella McCartney Spring/Summer 2018 ready-to-wear fashion collection, Paris, Oct. 2, 2017. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

Today’s #ColonialCouture post is by Bronwen Everill, lecturer in history at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University, and author of Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Cambridge Series in Imperial and Post-colonial Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Follow her @BronwenEverill.

In 2017, Stella McCartney ran into trouble during Paris fashion week. Her faux pas was cultural appropriation: using Nigerian Ankara fabrics, reportedly pretending to have “discovered” them, and dressing her almost exclusively white group of models in the fabric.

In 1791, British traveller Anna Maria Falconbridge complained of the failure of her own attempt to promote cultural appropriation of European fashions, while describing her visit to the Temne, in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Spending time with Clara, the wife of the royal secretary, “I endeavoured to persuade her to dress in the European way, but to no purpose; she would tear the clothes off her back immediately after I put them on. Finding no credit could be gained by trying to new fashion this Ethiopian Princess, I got rid of her as soon as possible.”[1] Now, maybe it’s just me, but I always think Anna Maria would have given Gretchen Wieners a run for her money as Regina George’s BFF. Her book, Two Voyages in Sierra Leone, is full of snarky comments about fashion in Sierra Leone, but it comes across as so much posturing. Continue reading →

Star Wars, Food Diplomacy, and Second Book Projects

January 9, 2017 By Rachel Herrmann in Research Tags: #AHA17, Alamo Drafthouse, American Historical Association, cannibalism, conferences, Ewoks, Food Diplomacy, Fula, Hoth, Hunger, Hunger creation, Hunger prevention, James Watt, Leia, Maritime history, Riverine history, Rogue One, Second Book Projects, Sierra Leone, star wars, Temne, Timbo 2 Comments

Over the winter break I was back in Austin, catching up with grad school friends and reveling in a week’s worth of breakfast tacos. Part of this week included a trip to the Alamo Drafthouse to see Rogue One, because we all know work/life balance is important. For the uninitiated, the Drafthouse is a magical movie theater where you can view new movies while eating and drinking. They’re famous for their all-day Lord of the Rings marathon, complete with second breakfast and elevenses. So I was pretty excited to see what themed food and beverages the theater managed to create using inspiration from the Star Wars cannon. Remember how I said work/life balance is important? Well it is, but sometimes I have trouble switching off.[1] Continue reading →

Evolution of an Article

March 16, 2016 By Rachel Herrmann in Publishing, Research Tags: academic publishing, Black Loyalists, food, Food laws, Hunger prevention, Journal Articles, Loyalists, peer review, Publishing, Sierra Leone 6 Comments

In summer 2010 I sat in the house furnished by Rhys Isaac in Colonial Williamsburg, and attempted to write my first dissertation chapter. I’d just finished my first research trip, to Library and Archives Canada, in Ottawa, and was in the middle of my second, at the John D. Rockefeller Library. I was trying to follow advice I’d read to write as I researched. There was no Wi-Fi in the house, which was a curse and a blessing. I couldn’t get distracted, but I also did not have instantaneous access to articles and books, which meant I couldn’t check basic facts and chronologies, which, turns out, tend to be missing from your research! Continue reading →

A Humorous(?) Post about People Traveling by Canoe

September 22, 2014 By Rachel Herrmann in From the Archives Tags: African history, Atlantic History, Boats, Canoes, Maritime history, Native Americans, Ships, Sierra Leone 5 Comments

Crossing the bar of Gallinas River, near Sierra Leone and Liberia. During the 1820s and 1830s, slave ships stopped at the mouth of the Gallinas River, to collect slaves. Image taken from The illustrated London News. Originally published/produced in London, 1849. British Library Images Online, Shelfmark P.P.7611.237, filename 080997

This summer I started research for my second book project, which I will admit feels a bit ridiculous when my first book project is still in process. I’m blithely ignoring this problem at the moment. In brief, the project, currently-horribly-titled “Aquatic Foodways” asks two related questions: 1) Where, why, and how did people fight over food when crossing water in the early modern Atlantic, and 2) What happened when people disembarked and interacted with indigenous peoples as they searched for sustenance? After a month of preliminary research at the British Library this summer, I’m decidedly more interested in the second question, but have a sense that I’ll need to answer the first question before proceeding forward. Continue reading →