Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T19:59:34.530Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Religion, Return, and the Making of the Aku

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2020

Richard Peter Anderson
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen
Get access

Summary

The penultimate chapter broaches the question of why, given the multifarious origins of Liberated Africans, a single recaptive nation – the Aku – came to dominate colonial and missionary discourse on recaptives, as well as most subsequent historical accounts of Liberated African society. Most studies of Sierra Leone have asserted that “Aku” was a colonial term for Yoruba peoples from present-day Nigeria and have echoed contemporary observations that they were the largest and “most cohesive” group within Sierra Leonean society. This chapter considers the role of language in shaping Aku identity, and the interaction between Islam, Christianity, and “traditional” oriṣa worship in defining the Aku. It then traces the shifting relationship between diaspora and homeland, as Aku merchants and missionaries returned to coastal towns near their ancestral homes after 1838, bringing with them a more encompassing sense of Yoruba ethnicity. This chapter argues that what it meant to be Aku in Sierra Leone and what it meant to be Yoruba in Yorubaland were defined and reinforced through a dialogue along the Atlantic coast of West Africa. In doing so it advocates for a nonlinear conception of diaspora that applies not only to the Americas but to diasporas within the African continent.

Type
Chapter
Information
Abolition in Sierra Leone
Re-Building Lives and Identities in Nineteenth-Century West Africa
, pp. 192 - 226
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×