Ethnographic Collecting and African Agency in Early Colonial West Africa

The early collections from Africa in Liverpool's World Museum reflect the city's longstanding shipping and commercial links with Africa's Atlantic coast. A principal component of these collections is an assemblage of several thousand artefacts from western Africa that were transported to institutions in northwest England between 1894 and 1916 by the Liverpool steam ship engineer Arnold Ridyard. While Ridyard's collecting efforts can be seen to have been shaped by the steamers' dynamic capacity to connect widely separated people and places, his Methodist credentials were fundamental in determining the profile of his African networks, because they meant that he was not part of official colonial authority in West Africa. Kingdon's study uncovers the identities of many of Ridyard's numerous West African collaborators and discusses their interests and predicaments under the colonial dispensation. Against this background account, their agendas are examined with reference to surviving narratives that accompanied their donations and within the context of broader processes of trans-imperial exchange, through which they forged new identities and statuses for themselves and attempted to counter expressions of British cultural imperialism in the region. The study concludes with a discussion of the competing meanings assigned to the Ridyard assemblage by the Liverpool Museum and examines the ways in which its re-contextualization in museum contexts helped to efface signs of the energies and narratives behind its creation.

Zachary Kingdon is Curator of African Collections at National Museums Liverpool, UK.

List of Illustrations List of Colour Plates Acknowledgements 1. Introduction Approach Structure and Outline 2. Prologue: Western Africa, Africans, and Liverpool's Municipal Museum After the Slave Trade The Niger Expedition Joseph Mayer and the Inauguration of Liverpool's Ethnography Collection Between Empire and Trade Conclusion 3. Arnold Ridyard and his Assemblage Ridyard's Family Background and Methodist Identity Maritime Career, Collecting Practices and Social Networks Acquisition and Generosity Ridyard's Dissenting Interests Conclusion 4. Diasporic Dialogues: The Sierra Leonean Donors I W. R. Renner, West African Capitalist Krio Diaspora: Collecting and Culture in the Early Twentieth Century Women Donors: Mrs W. E. Johnson and Miss B Yorke The Muslim Donors: Colonial Exclusion, African Regional Trajectories Conclusion 5. Trans-Imperial Identities: The Sierra Leonean Donors II Freetown, Architecture, and Krio Self-Orientation Krio Male Elites 'Upbuilding' and Empire Claudius D. Hotobah During Conclusion 6. Coastal 'Kings': The Gold Coast Donors I Ababio IV, Amonu V, Acquah II, and Prince Tackie Kojo Ababio IV, Accra Political Player Potters of Accra's Western Plains Ambiguous 'Traditionalist': E. W. Quartey-Papafio Dr. Edward Mettle, 'Man of Mystery and Power' Conclusion 7. Coastal Cosmopolitans: The Gold Coast Donors II Frederick Lutterodt, West African Photographer Arthur Robert Chinery, Euro-Ga Professional John Mensah Sarbah, 'Cosmopolitan Patriot' J. P. Brown, C. J. Bannerman and other 'Cosmopolitan Patriots' Mobile Elites: C. J. Reindorf, H. Van Hien and others Conclusion 8. Museum Meanings: Regimes of Classification, Representation and Display Exhibiting Order Re-arranging and Re-evaluating the Liverpool Museum African Collection in the 1930s Erosion and Occlusion: The Ridyard Assemblage at the Liverpool Museum, 1905 to 1968 Conclusion Epilogue References Index