“In the country of my forefathers”

This dissertation examines historical rhetoric about Africa in British andAmerican writings between the beginnings of the Abolition period and the 1884 Berlin Conference at which the continent was divided by colonial powers. Tracing rhetorical trends of travel writers and their constituents through the explorations of the continent, it demarcates two turns in the way Africans and Africa were constructed rhetorically. In the process it reveals a 19 th -century evolution from depicting Africa largely in terms of its viability for commerce and reception of European culture, to an Africa fallen into darkness, to Africa as the Dark Continent, permanently fixed in a savage darkness. These rhetorical turns are examined through the theoretical frameworks of rhetorical imperialism and rhetorical sovereignty.Chapter I explores the creation of Sierra Leone for resettling freed British blacks and the varied, at times contradicting, rhetoric lacking in uniform vision of the continent or its people other than a general trend of focusing on the viability of Africa as a site for British post-slavery endeavor and an ambivalent view of African cultural inferiority.

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“In the country of my forefathers”

Cited by 3 publications

References 12 publications

Pauline Hopkins and the Death of the Tragic Mulatta

Pauline Hopkins and the Death of the Tragic Mulatta

Unraveling the Blood Line: Pauline Hopkins’s Haitian Genealogies

The rhetoric of Africa : historical turns in constructing a continent, 1780-1890.

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