From 1775 to 1783, the time of major conflict between Britain and its American colonies, the number of runaway slaves from southern plantations in the United States spiked dramatically. From this group, two waves of emigrants were brought to the west coast of Africa, the first from London in 1787 and then again from Nova Scotia in 1792. In a Nietzschean and Foucauldian sense, the historical narrative about the Black Loyalists might be called a history of constants, with all its ‘consoling play of recognitions’ between historical event and the contemporary moment (Foucault ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’: 88). In this case, the Black Loyalists are recognizably modern, rights-bearing individuals who make up the heart of liberal politics. They are situated, to an unusual degree, as powerful actors in the emergence of revolutionary – and still culturally animating – ideals. The fictional account of this moment I examine here, the epic novel The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, narrates the Black Loyalists in a manner more akin to a Nietzschean/Foucauldian genealogical history, as the author, Sierra Leone exile Syl Cheney-Coker, uses this historical moment to destabilize the very situatedness that history depends upon to understand the Black Loyalists. Rather than present the Loyalists as recognizable representatives of a particular culture who demand acknowledgement, The Last Harmattan depicts an international story of multiple affiliations and multiple historical influences. In short, rather than see the Black Loyalists as an early example of liberal democratic values, this novel proposes the need to think multihistorically about contemporary affiliations. The Last Harmattan recognizes disparate historical experiences and uneven international connections as integral to contemporary collective identification. By extension, contemporary self-identification with Africa becomes a process of noting these multiple, dynamic histories rather than claiming a cultural affinity for Africa, a place that is typically seen as unchanging, epistemologically separated from modernity as a peripheral site of ‘tradition’ and atavism (Piot Nostalgia for the Future: 8).

Cheney-Coker's novel foregrounds the importance of time and history as negotiable factors in the Black Loyalists’ affiliations with Africa, with a mystical vision of history linking Africa and the Americas through the returnees’ sentiments of belonging. The returnees who are able to gain a sense of themselves in the novel do so by means of the magical – the settlers’ felt sense of belonging comes during moments when magic intervenes in reality.