The Idea of Sierra Leone

Abstract

In March 2008, the Racial Equality Council in Plymouth, England, slammed a couple (Leroy Lander and Laura Ashenford) for naming their pub “Hawkins Meeting House” (The Daily Mail, March 28, 2008). Situated in an area close to the birthplace of John Hawkins (1532-95) the ruthless sixteenth-century English slaver who was knighted for his exploits against the Spanish Armada in 1588, Lander thought of honoring his hero by naming his pub after him. The Racial and Equality Council, which has its offices only about two hundred meters away from the pub, however, was not impressed; it was outraged and strongly objected to the honoring of Hawkins in such a way because of his shameful past as a pioneer of the English slave trade (The Daily Mail, March 28, 2008). Indeed John Hawkins was a ruthless slave trader and belligerent man; at age twenty he killed a barber in Plymouth “because he could not avoid him” (Routh 1990: 389). Walter Raleigh credits him for the rise of the English war spirit in the sixteenth century and for teaching the English the efficacy of military force in overseas expansion and trade (Hakluyt 1965: 47ff).

I have told the men that I shall form a very unfavorable opinion of those who may show an inclination to be servants to any gentlemen, when they have an opportunity of becoming their own masters, and valuable members of society if they please, and that in short, the character of the black people for ever after will depend on the manner they conduct themselves, and that the fate of millions of their complexion will partly be affected by it.

—Governor John Clarkson, Diary (Freetown, 1792)

You teach the youth about the pirate Hawkins And you said he was a very great man

— Peter Tosh, You Can’t Blame the Youth