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African Girls' Samplers from Mission Schools in Sierra Leone (1820s to 1840s)1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Silke Strickrodt
Silke Strickrodt*
Affiliation:
German Historical Institute London
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Extract

In an article in this journal almost fifteen years ago, Colleen Kriger discussed the reluctance of historians of Africa to use objects as sources in their research. She pointed to the rich reservoir of objects “made by African hands” in museum collections around the world, which lies virtually untapped by historians. However, she also noted that while objects are “unusually eloquent remnants from the past,” they are problematic sources, presenting “special difficulties in evaluation and interpretation.”

The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the existence of a number of embroidery samplers that were stitched by African girls in mission schools in the British colony of Sierra Leone in the period from the 1820s to the 1840s. So far, I have found thirteen of these samplers, which are preserved in a number of archival, private and museum collections in Europe and the USA. To historians, these pieces of needlework are of interest because they were generated by a group of people for whom we do not usually have first-hand documentary material. Moreover, they represent the direct material traces of the activity of the girls who made them, and thus appear to offer the possibility of an emphatic insight into their experience.

However, these “textile documents” present serious problems of interpretation. What exactly can they be expected to tell the modern historian? In particular, how far, in fact, do they express the perspectives of the African girls who made them, as distinct from the European missionaries who directed their work? Careful source criticism and an examination of the purpose for which they were produced will help to clarify these issues.

Type
Critical Source Analysis
Information
History in Africa , Volume 37 , 2010 , pp. 189 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2010

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. I also want to express my thanks for the help given by Jamie Banks, Jan Carlos Breitinger, Alexander Brust, Amy Finkel, Paul Jenkins, Barbara Frey Naf, Bernhard Gardi, Robin Law, Christina Oikonomou, the staff of the Special Collections, library of the University of Birmingham, particularly Philippa Bassett and Ivana Frlan, the staff of the Special Collections of the SOAS library, particularly Lance Martin, and the staff of the Sierra Leone Archives. I am pleased to acknowledge the support given by the German Historical Institute London that has enabled me to do this research. Permission to reproduce photographs of the samplers was kindly given by the Church Mission Society, M. Finkel and Daughter, the Museum der Kulturen (Basel) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).

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