Padraic X Scanlan
Biographic Data
| ID | 241575 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Padraic X Scanlan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Padraic X |
| FAMILY NAME | Scanlan |
| SIGNATURE | SCANLAN P X |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8552-0803 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Sascha Auerbach , The Overseer State: Slavery, Indenture and Governance in the British Empire, 1812-1916, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024, Pp. 370. £105.00 (ISBN 9781009315777)
From “Offender” to “Employee”: Canadian Prison Labour and Neoliberal Citizenship
This article analyzes a neoliberal redefinition of citizenship as market participation through the lens of prison labour in Canadian federal penitentiaries. We focus on corcan, a special operating agency of Correctional Service Canada, which employs approximately 4,000 prisoners in various industries. Despite performing tasks like those of free workers, incarcerated individuals are not recognized as employees under Canadian law and are excluded f…
Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History. By David McNally
The Great Distress: Wage Labor and British Antislavery after 1815
In 1834, hundreds of thousands of enslaved people in the British empire became free laborers under the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act. In Britain that same year, the Poor Law Amendment Act created the first free market in labor for some of the United Kingdom’s poorest workers, agricultural laborers on British and Irish farms. Although political economists in Britain posited that slavery was estranged from the free market, “free labor”—at least for…
Protecting the Empire's Humanity: Thomas Hodgkin and British Colonial Activism, 1830-1870
Caree A. Banton. More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic
Journal Article Caree A. Banton. More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic. Get access Caree A. Banton. More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 366. Cloth $59.99, paper $32.99. Padraic X. Scanlan Padraic X. Scanlan University of Toronto Email: [email protected] S…
Revisiting Freedom’s Debtors
This essay reconsiders Freedom’s Debtors through the lens of the three Ferguson Prize panelists’ comments. It frames the arguments of the book in relationship to a growing body of scholarship on the history of Sierra Leone, and in relationship to older problems in the history of British imperial political economy. The essay reasserts two of the core contentions in Freedom’s Debtors : the close, and sometimes unacknowledged, proximity between Brit…
Slaves and Peasants in the Era of Emancipation
From the middle of the eighteenth century until the late 1830s, the idea of enslaved people as “peasants” was a commonplace among both antislavery and proslavery writers and activists in Britain. Slaveholders, faced with antislavery attacks, argued that the people they claimed to own were not an exploited labor force but a contented peasantry. Abolitionists expressed the hope that after emancipation, freedpeople would become peasants. Yet the “pe…
Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution
A history of the abolition of the British slave trade in Sierra Leone and how the British used its success to justify colonialism in Africa. British anti-slavery, widely seen as a great sacrifice of economic and political capital on the altar of humanitarianism, was in fact profitable, militarily useful, and crucial to the expansion of British power in West Africa. After the slave trade was abolished, anti-slavery activists in England profited, c…
J oseph J. B angura . The Temne of Sierra Leone: African Agency in the Making of a British Colony
The Temne of Sierra Leone: African Agency in the Making of a British Colony is an important new study of the Temne people in colonial Sierra Leone in the late nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century. The book is divided into three parts. The third part is an interlocking series of social histories of Temne community leaders, including imams, intellectuals, and market women. In this third part of the book, Joseph J. Ba…
Emancipation and captivity in the British Empire
The end of colonial slavery in the British empire, in 1834, was one of the landmark achievements of British imperial liberalism. Emancipation policies, however, were designed to recapture emancipated people; the end of slavery was the beginning of a new kind of captivity to global capitalism and the discipline of wage labour
Freedom's Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution
Freedom's Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution
Freedom’s Debtors is a history of the British movement to abolish the slave trade, told through the lens of the history of early colonial Sierra Leone. After the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, Sierra Leone became the judicial, military, and economic capital of British efforts to interdict slave ships. British antislavery, widely seen as a great sacrifice of economic and political capital on the altar of humanitarianism, was in fact…
Epilogue: MacCarthy’s Skull
Cape Coast Castle clung to the edge of West Africa like a barnacle, and like a barnacle it faced the sea, growing inland only enough to be anchored securely. The owners of the Castle, the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, were interested in African politics only insofar as it might affect the supply of goods and enslaved people and the security of the fort. By 1822, the fort was in precipitous decline. Joseph Dupuis, a British ambassador to…
Antislavery on a Slave Coast
Before the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire in 1807, colonial Sierra Leone was an experiment in free trade and free labour, founded by the Sierra Leone Company, a joint-stock company led by antislavery activists, and settled by African American Loyalists from Nova Scotia. This chapter explores the early history of the colony, and shows how antislavery was undermined by the routines of the transatlantic slave trade. Meanwhile, Af…
The Absolute Disposal of the Crown
From 1810 until the Court’s powers were dramatically reduced in 1817, the Vice-Admiralty Court of Sierra Leone became the object of intense interest from the British armed forces. Royal Navy and Royal African Corps officers competed for prize money and cruising territory. More and more former slaves were enlisted into both the Royal African Corps and the West India Regiments, a group of regiments composed of black soldiers that fought principally…
Let That Heart Be English
In 1808, the laws abolishing the British slave trade came fully into force, and Sierra Leone became a Crown Colony, governed directly by a Crown-appointed Governor. The first Crown Governor, Thomas Perronet Thompson, was groomed by William Wilberforce for the post; Thompson was expected to follow the rules – including a tradition of very gradual emancipation through extended ‘apprenticeship’ – set by the Sierra Leone Company. He rebelled, and ima…
The Liberated African Department
After the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, the Court of Vice-Admiralty at Sierra Leone lost its place at the centre of the colonial economy. Former slaves released from the slave trade by the Court, and by its successor, the Courts of Mixed Commission, became the focus of intense attention from colonial officials and missionaries. Governor Charles MacCarthy, in conjunction with the Church Missionary Society, established a network of villages, t…
The Colonial Rebirth of British Anti-Slavery: The Liberated African Villages of Sierra Leone, 1815–1824
This article reconstructs and interprets the early history of the Liberated African villages of Sierra Leone, a group of settlements built to settle former captives rescued from the Middle Passage by British ships following the 1807 Slave Trade Act. The Act, which abolished the British slave trade, was designed to be most effective in wartime, making slave ships into prizes eligible for capture. In Sierra Leone, a colony with a longstanding assoc…
Blood, Money and Endless Paper: Slavery and Capital in British Imperial History
The history of slavery in Britain and the British Empire has placed the legislative milestones of anti‐slavery – the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the abolition of slavery in 1833 – at the centre of historical inquiry. This essay considers why the passing of anti‐slavery laws, rather than the implementation of anti‐slavery reforms, has been so pivotal in the historiography. It asks what the history of slavery in Britain and the British…
The Rewards of their Exertions: Prize Money and British Abolitionism in Sierra Leone, 1808-1823
Journal Article The Rewards of their Exertions: Prize Money and British Abolitionism in Sierra Leone, 1808–1823 Get access Padraic Xavier Scanlan Padraic Xavier Scanlan Center for History and Economics, Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 225, Issue 1, November 2014, Pages 113–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu031 Published: 27 October 2014
The Colonial Rebirth of British Anti-Slavery: The Liberated African Villages of Sierra Leone, 1815–1824
This article reconstructs and interprets the early history of the Liberated African villages of Sierra Leone, a group of settlements built to settle former captives rescued from the Middle Passage by British ships following the 1807 Slave Trade Act. The Act, which abolished the British slave trade, was designed to be most effective in wartime, making slave ships into prizes eligible for capture. In Sierra Leone, a colony with a longstanding assoc…
The Rewards of their Exertions: Prize Money and British Abolitionism in Sierra Leone, 1808-1823
Journal Article The Rewards of their Exertions: Prize Money and British Abolitionism in Sierra Leone, 1808–1823 Get access Padraic Xavier Scanlan Padraic Xavier Scanlan Center for History and Economics, Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 225, Issue 1, November 2014, Pages 113–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu031 Published: 27 October 2014
Slaves and Peasants in the Era of Emancipation
From the middle of the eighteenth century until the late 1830s, the idea of enslaved people as “peasants” was a commonplace among both antislavery and proslavery writers and activists in Britain. Slaveholders, faced with antislavery attacks, argued that the people they claimed to own were not an exploited labor force but a contented peasantry. Abolitionists expressed the hope that after emancipation, freedpeople would become peasants. Yet the “pe…
Blood, Money and Endless Paper: Slavery and Capital in British Imperial History
The history of slavery in Britain and the British Empire has placed the legislative milestones of anti‐slavery – the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the abolition of slavery in 1833 – at the centre of historical inquiry. This essay considers why the passing of anti‐slavery laws, rather than the implementation of anti‐slavery reforms, has been so pivotal in the historiography. It asks what the history of slavery in Britain and the British…
Emancipation and captivity in the British Empire
The end of colonial slavery in the British empire, in 1834, was one of the landmark achievements of British imperial liberalism. Emancipation policies, however, were designed to recapture emancipated people; the end of slavery was the beginning of a new kind of captivity to global capitalism and the discipline of wage labour
The Rewards of their Exertions: Prize Money and British Abolitionism in Sierra Leone, 1808-1823
Journal Article The Rewards of their Exertions: Prize Money and British Abolitionism in Sierra Leone, 1808–1823 Get access Padraic Xavier Scanlan Padraic Xavier Scanlan Center for History and Economics, Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 225, Issue 1, November 2014, Pages 113–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu031 Published: 27 October 2014
The Colonial Rebirth of British Anti-Slavery: The Liberated African Villages of Sierra Leone, 1815–1824
This article reconstructs and interprets the early history of the Liberated African villages of Sierra Leone, a group of settlements built to settle former captives rescued from the Middle Passage by British ships following the 1807 Slave Trade Act. The Act, which abolished the British slave trade, was designed to be most effective in wartime, making slave ships into prizes eligible for capture. In Sierra Leone, a colony with a longstanding assoc…
Blood, Money and Endless Paper: Slavery and Capital in British Imperial History
The history of slavery in Britain and the British Empire has placed the legislative milestones of anti‐slavery – the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the abolition of slavery in 1833 – at the centre of historical inquiry. This essay considers why the passing of anti‐slavery laws, rather than the implementation of anti‐slavery reforms, has been so pivotal in the historiography. It asks what the history of slavery in Britain and the British…
Freedom's Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution
Freedom's Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution
Freedom’s Debtors is a history of the British movement to abolish the slave trade, told through the lens of the history of early colonial Sierra Leone. After the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, Sierra Leone became the judicial, military, and economic capital of British efforts to interdict slave ships. British antislavery, widely seen as a great sacrifice of economic and political capital on the altar of humanitarianism, was in fact…
Epilogue: MacCarthy’s Skull
Cape Coast Castle clung to the edge of West Africa like a barnacle, and like a barnacle it faced the sea, growing inland only enough to be anchored securely. The owners of the Castle, the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, were interested in African politics only insofar as it might affect the supply of goods and enslaved people and the security of the fort. By 1822, the fort was in precipitous decline. Joseph Dupuis, a British ambassador to…
Antislavery on a Slave Coast
Before the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire in 1807, colonial Sierra Leone was an experiment in free trade and free labour, founded by the Sierra Leone Company, a joint-stock company led by antislavery activists, and settled by African American Loyalists from Nova Scotia. This chapter explores the early history of the colony, and shows how antislavery was undermined by the routines of the transatlantic slave trade. Meanwhile, Af…
The Absolute Disposal of the Crown
From 1810 until the Court’s powers were dramatically reduced in 1817, the Vice-Admiralty Court of Sierra Leone became the object of intense interest from the British armed forces. Royal Navy and Royal African Corps officers competed for prize money and cruising territory. More and more former slaves were enlisted into both the Royal African Corps and the West India Regiments, a group of regiments composed of black soldiers that fought principally…
Let That Heart Be English
In 1808, the laws abolishing the British slave trade came fully into force, and Sierra Leone became a Crown Colony, governed directly by a Crown-appointed Governor. The first Crown Governor, Thomas Perronet Thompson, was groomed by William Wilberforce for the post; Thompson was expected to follow the rules – including a tradition of very gradual emancipation through extended ‘apprenticeship’ – set by the Sierra Leone Company. He rebelled, and ima…
The Liberated African Department
After the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, the Court of Vice-Admiralty at Sierra Leone lost its place at the centre of the colonial economy. Former slaves released from the slave trade by the Court, and by its successor, the Courts of Mixed Commission, became the focus of intense attention from colonial officials and missionaries. Governor Charles MacCarthy, in conjunction with the Church Missionary Society, established a network of villages, t…
Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution
A history of the abolition of the British slave trade in Sierra Leone and how the British used its success to justify colonialism in Africa. British anti-slavery, widely seen as a great sacrifice of economic and political capital on the altar of humanitarianism, was in fact profitable, militarily useful, and crucial to the expansion of British power in West Africa. After the slave trade was abolished, anti-slavery activists in England profited, c…
J oseph J. B angura . The Temne of Sierra Leone: African Agency in the Making of a British Colony
The Temne of Sierra Leone: African Agency in the Making of a British Colony is an important new study of the Temne people in colonial Sierra Leone in the late nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century. The book is divided into three parts. The third part is an interlocking series of social histories of Temne community leaders, including imams, intellectuals, and market women. In this third part of the book, Joseph J. Ba…
Emancipation and captivity in the British Empire
The end of colonial slavery in the British empire, in 1834, was one of the landmark achievements of British imperial liberalism. Emancipation policies, however, were designed to recapture emancipated people; the end of slavery was the beginning of a new kind of captivity to global capitalism and the discipline of wage labour
Slaves and Peasants in the Era of Emancipation
From the middle of the eighteenth century until the late 1830s, the idea of enslaved people as “peasants” was a commonplace among both antislavery and proslavery writers and activists in Britain. Slaveholders, faced with antislavery attacks, argued that the people they claimed to own were not an exploited labor force but a contented peasantry. Abolitionists expressed the hope that after emancipation, freedpeople would become peasants. Yet the “pe…
Revisiting Freedom’s Debtors
This essay reconsiders Freedom’s Debtors through the lens of the three Ferguson Prize panelists’ comments. It frames the arguments of the book in relationship to a growing body of scholarship on the history of Sierra Leone, and in relationship to older problems in the history of British imperial political economy. The essay reasserts two of the core contentions in Freedom’s Debtors : the close, and sometimes unacknowledged, proximity between Brit…
Caree A. Banton. More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic
Journal Article Caree A. Banton. More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic. Get access Caree A. Banton. More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of an African Republic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 366. Cloth $59.99, paper $32.99. Padraic X. Scanlan Padraic X. Scanlan University of Toronto Email: [email protected] S…
The Great Distress: Wage Labor and British Antislavery after 1815
In 1834, hundreds of thousands of enslaved people in the British empire became free laborers under the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act. In Britain that same year, the Poor Law Amendment Act created the first free market in labor for some of the United Kingdom’s poorest workers, agricultural laborers on British and Irish farms. Although political economists in Britain posited that slavery was estranged from the free market, “free labor”—at least for…
Protecting the Empire's Humanity: Thomas Hodgkin and British Colonial Activism, 1830-1870
Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History. By David McNally
Sascha Auerbach , The Overseer State: Slavery, Indenture and Governance in the British Empire, 1812-1916, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024, Pp. 370. £105.00 (ISBN 9781009315777)
From “Offender” to “Employee”: Canadian Prison Labour and Neoliberal Citizenship
This article analyzes a neoliberal redefinition of citizenship as market participation through the lens of prison labour in Canadian federal penitentiaries. We focus on corcan, a special operating agency of Correctional Service Canada, which employs approximately 4,000 prisoners in various industries. Despite performing tasks like those of free workers, incarcerated individuals are not recognized as employees under Canadian law and are excluded f…
History (15 works) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (12 works) · African history and culture studies (10 works) · Economic history (10 works) · Ethnology (10 works) · Sierra leone (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Sociology (9 works)