GHCC Funding Report
Bronwen Everill
This trip allowed me to make a preliminary investigation of several archives I intend to use in a large
project for which I plan to apply for external grant funding in 2013 to begin in 2014. Getting a
definite idea of what these archives contain and how much time I will need at each archive will allow
me to present a strong, detailed research proposal for the AHRC, Leverhulme and British Academy.
The project explores a number of Atlantic companies involved with the trade from West Africa in this
period and seeks to bring together the literature on ethical consumption movements in Britain and
America with the shift to the idea of ‘legitimate’ (non-slave) commerce in West Africa in the same
period. The project will illuminate the role of consumer movements in directing the progress of the
Atlantic economies in the period after the abolition of the slave trade.
This funding allowed me to judge the extent of the materials available in three American cities
involved in the slave trade and the subsequent ‘legitimate’ trade that replaced it. I spent a week at
the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia which has an extensive collection of papers
relating to the economy and commerce in this period. This proved to be a very fruitful archive, also
containing the papers of the American Free Produce Society, which will be integral to my project.
The second week was spent in Providence Rhode Island at the John Carter Brown Library, which has
extensive materials on trade and business in the colonial period in America, and at the Rhode Island
Historical Society, which has extensive archival records of the businesses engaged in Atlantic trade in
this period. Again these proved to be very fruitful archives, especially the Rhode Island Historical
Society. At the end of the trip I spent a few days at the Louisiana Research Collection at the Tulane
archives in New Orleans, which contain family papers of several families involved in the trade;
however, this proved to be less relevant to the overall project given that much of the trade was
actually transhipping from the Caribbean or Charleston. For the ultimate grant funding, I will
probably try to go to Charleston instead.
I was also able to promote Warwick and the GHCC at both the African Studies Association and
American Historical Association meetings, where I was presenting papers and chairing a panel.
Additionally, my book had just been released at the time of the conferences, so I was able to do
some promotion of that as well.