William Webster and Richardson

If, as printer of the True Briton, Richardson took considerable risks to support the Duke of Wharton's campaign against Walpole's government, his work for the improvident clergyman William Webster (1689–1758) reveals again how seriously he regarded the press as a medium equivalent to the pulpit in promulgating the business of the state church.

As we shall see while tracing his own interventions in this journal, besides his genuine concern for poor clergymen, it is not unlikely that Richardson valued the ample opportunity this journal provided him as a developing writer and a means of advertising his publications.

Webster himself confessed that he was seduced by Richardson's fictional female voice: “while you are alive you can, whenever you please, make any body Cry, or Laugh; and when you Die, you’ll make Every body Cry whether you write, or not.” A few years after this remark, while undergoing bankruptcy and failing to get relief from the archbishops and bishops, Webster wrote A Plain Narrative of Facts, or, the Author's Case Fairly and Candidly Stated, By Way of Appeal to the Publick. After profuse thanks to a parishioner for his financial support, Webster singles out

The True Briton. No. 21. Monday, August 12. 1723. [A. Z.]

Vol. 1, pp. 178–185.

THE great Care which the Parliament hath taken for the Publick Welfare, is evident thro’ the whole Course of their Proceedings; but their [sic] is no greater instance of their Zeal, than the Act which pass’d the last Sessions to oblige the Female Part of this Kingdom to take the Oaths.

OUR wise Administration justly call’d to mind the fatal instance of a certain Island, where the Women murder’d the Men, and therefore, thought it prudent and necessary, for the security of our happy Establishment, to oblige them to take those Oaths which are the Bulwarks of the Protestant Succession.

THERE is another Reason which might be of some Weight on this Occasion; which is, That many Great Men are influenc’d by the Ladies in all Matters whatsoever, and therefore, it is certainly most proper to try their Loyalty in the strictest Manner we can.

I COULD have wish’d the little Ebony Doctor would have thought proper to imploy his Pen at this Juncture, to shew the Nature of Oaths; for the Ladies, I fear, will generally take them without understanding any of them, except the Abjuration, which is conceived in plain and easy Terms. I dare say the Bishops will supply his Defect, and will not decline giving any scrupulous Conscience all possible Satisfaction.

IT is said, That since the supposed Riot at Cripplegate a certain Eminent and Honest Lawyer has represented to his Friends, that it would be proper this Law should be extended to the Women; and that it should be Felony for Twelve Females to meet together, and not disperse on the Reading of the Proclamation; but it is hoped, that a certain Lady not far from St. James's will have Interest enough to prevent this Attempt, which would intirely destroy her Assemblée.

WHATEVER secret Methods the Ladies have of concealing their Sex, and creeping into Power, are unknown; yet it is certain, That there has scarce been an Age formerly, but Old Women have sate in the Cabinet, as M — rs; in Westminster-Hall as J—es, and in the H—se of L—ds as B—ps. [180] The Little Ebony Doctor at present bears that Character among the rational Part of Mankind.

Often when people think of Sierra Leone and mining, the first thought that comes to mind is conflict or blood diamonds. But there is much more than diamonds. The focus has been on diamond mining and the relationship with the warring factions of the large-scale Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone (RUF/SL) “blood diamond” war, 1991–2001, and its aftermath (Abdullah 2004; Fanthorpe and Maconachie 2010; Fanthorpe 2001; Jackson 2006; King 2007; Rashid 2004; Richards 2005). Researchers have analyzed the blood diamond war using a variety of conceptual frameworks such as the political economy (Hirsch 2001), the role of disenfranchised rural and urban youth, the so-called lumpen, as illegal diamond miners, and subsequently fighters in the RUF/SL war (Rashid 2004) greed, grievance, and governance (e.g., Bøås 2014; Frost 2012; Peters 2011). Others have written about the marginalization of youth within a gerontocratic system of traditional governance (Richards 2002) and the resource curse and actor– network theory (Wilson 2013). However, other minerals also played a role early on in Sierra Leone's global incorporation process and this continues today. Some minerals like iron ore and gold were mined by local people using artisanal methods of extraction for centuries (Goucher 1981; Wilson and Marmo 1958). I go beyond diamonds to address conflicts in other mineral extraction environments and in particular to highlight persistent low-level and smaller-scale conflicts that periodically turn violent.

Indigenous Artisanal Mining

Seventy percent of the Sierra Leone landmass contains mineral-rich basement rocks of the West African craton and supracrustal greenstone formations. A dense drainage network eroded and deposited alluvial deposits of minerals from the underlying rocks.

Introduction

As a globally shared world literature, the crime fiction genre, following Beecroft's model, constitutes an ecology of co-existing works that connect national literatures to a global world literature system. The genre sprawls over time periods and spills over its generic borders to connect to other ecologies, depending on how crime fiction is defined. Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, for example, can be seen as crime fiction, as can the oral folklore tales of the world about life, death, justice systems and punishment, or religious and mythological writings encompassing crimes. The multifaceted crime fiction genre is well-known for representing its own sociopolitical context and posing social critique through its narratives. Often it serves as a gateway within scholarly research to topics such as ethnicity, gender, or class, and in relation to the nation-state, views on crimes, and injustice. As a whole, crime fiction is a globally circulated national literature, born out of modernity, with roots in urbanization and technological changes. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the genre evolved into a highly successful entertainment industry on the international book market, governed by multimedia conglomerates. The literature's geographical belongings often serve as a marketing strategy and tool for organizing foreign novels, for example, as Swedish Crime Fiction, Scandinavian Crime Fiction, or Nordic Noir.

In crime fiction, place holds a key position as it connects the narratives to claims of national belonging. Place gives crime stories a scenic framing and, in doing so, these stories become ambassadors for their countries of origin or particular cities like Beijing, Cairo, London, Los Angeles, or Milan. Crime narratives must be located somewhere in a particular city, jurisdiction, state, or country. These geographical places function as backdrops for the story, even when the local settings in the narratives stretch out far beyond national borders and into the global. Thus, recent crime fiction studies argue for readings that look beyond the novels’ national traditions, to focus instead on ideas about global injustice that transgress national borders. As such, the classic “scene of the crime” in these narratives becomes a means to examine how a crime in a very particular local milieu intersects with, and has implications for, a wider set of global issues and efforts to police crime at a global rather than at a merely national or local level.

During the first two decades of his career, Richardson's role as printer was hardly limited to setting the type for the periodicals that were issued from his shop. Perhaps the most glaring evidence of his intervention in producing text is the fact that both The True Briton and The Weekly Miscellany just happen to have letters supposedly from women who protested the legal restraints against their participation in the public sphere. Neither the Duke of Wharton, the owner of The True Briton, nor William Webster, the desperately impecunious producer of The Weekly Miscellany, launched their journals with the objective of advancing radical views about political equality for women. But almost inadvertently, this middle-aged, rotund printer at Salisbury Court was quietly feminizing journalism.

As an outlier in what was perceived to be a corrupt, predatory political world, Richardson readily assumed a female role as victim and the subversive strategy of passive resistance. The Non-juror TB females voiced dilemmas over being required to swear oaths of loyalty to a government that their consciences could not support:

This oath of obedience to government authority also includes the dilemma concerning marriage vows and the legal dominance of husbands over wives, as Sarah Chapone argues:

The stories of turmoil discussed here reflect the convoluted and culturally complex relationships developed over the years among landlord-indigene communities, strangers including companies, and the state in mining spaces. Caught between a rock and a hard place are chiefs as traditional governance leaders and government officials of a peripheral country. In colonial history, chiefs are largely accused of oppression, authoritarianism, terrorism, slave trading, and sustaining a gerontocracy that exploits and marginalizes youth. These behaviors were justification to establish a Protectorate under the supervision of Great Britain according to District Commissioner Thomas Alldridge who signed several treaties with chiefs. The creation of the Frontier Police Force in 1893 to enforce this policy was no less ruthless. The force was so feared that locals sometimes abandoned their farms and hid in the forests to escape the intimidation and brutality. The subsequent Protectorate Ordinance established state dominance over the chieftaincy governance which has been in place since. Chiefs govern within the framework of the state and in many ways are caught between their traditional roles and the state's expectations of their leadership (Abraham 2003; Alldridge 1910; Conteh 2013; Fyfe 1962; Peters 2011).

Specific to development projects, chiefs are caught between the forces of tradition and modernity. They both benefit from and object to the actions of development projects like mining. Chiefs frequently protest and petition the national government as we have seen in earlier examples discussed (Akiwumi 2018). Nevertheless, discord arises between them and their subjects, particularly young people who see chiefs as complicit in projects. A farmer impacted by a large land development project summarized the view of chiefs as a party to long-term leases from a landlord-indigenes perspective: