Bunce Island

Bunce Island
National Monument in Sierra Leone
Monument type	Historical monument
location	Sierra Leone River
Geographic coordinates :	8 ° 34 '11.5 " N , 13 ° 2' 25" W Coordinates: 8 ° 34 '11.5 " N , 13 ° 2' 25" W.
Emergence	1670
Recognized ; by the Monuments and Relics Commission	1949
Sponsorship	Monuments and Relics Commission
Website	Website

Bunce Island (sometimes also spelled Bence , Bense or Bance Island ) is an island in the Sierra Leone River in the confluence of the Rokel and Port Loko Creek about 30 kilometers upstream from Freetown , the capital of Sierra Leone . The island measures only 600 meters by 100 meters. It is known for its slave fortress , which was built in 1670 by a British slave trading company.

Bunce Island is proposed for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List .

history

Due to its strategically important location, the island was fought over by British and French troops for a long time . In the 18th century it was one of the largest British slave trade fortresses on West Africa's Rice Coast and 50,000 slaves passed it.

Initially, Bunce Island was administered by the Gambia Adventurers and the Royal African Company of England. The latter was supported by the British government. The island was not commercially successful at the time, but served as a symbol of British influence in the area. These problems intensified in 1728 when the fortress was raided by Jose Lopez da Moura , an Afro-Portuguese competitor in the slave trade . The island remained deserted until the mid-1940s.

Bunce Island 1726 at the time of the Royal African Company (not to scale)

Bunce Island was later operated successfully by the London companies Grant, Oswald & Company and John & Alexander Anderson. In the second half of the 18th century, many prisoners were transferred from the island to British and French controlled islands in the West Indies . But Bunce Island is best known as the primary supplier of slaves to the hugely successful rice industry of the North American colonies of South Carolina and Georgia that was developing at the time. African rice farmers were abducted from the inland and sold on Bunce Island or one of the many outfactories (trading posts) along the coast before being shipped. The island's manager in Charleston, Henry Laurens , was later a well-known leader in the American Revolutionary War .

A little later, in 1807, the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed by the British Parliament . Bunce Island was no longer used for the slave trade, cotton was planted, a sawmill and a trading post were established. However, these ventures turned out to be unsuccessful and in 1840 the island was abandoned.

After the end of the slave trade

With the aim of educating the population about the history of the country, Bunce Island was declared a protected historical site in 1949. Until a visit by a group of Gullah , an African-American population group on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia , as part of a historic " homecoming " trip to Sierra Leone in 1989, little happened. A short time later, the US National Park Service announced a program to preserve the island, which, however, did not materialize due to the turmoil of the civil war in Sierra Leone. Two more Gullah homecomings and historical visits to Bunce Island took place in 1997 and 2005.

Today the island is lined with ruins. The walls of the building of the slave traders and their African prisoners still exist, as do the remains of two watchtowers, a fortification with space for eight cannons and a magazine for gunpowder. There are also British cannons, some of which bear the royal mark of George III, tombstones of slave traders, captains of slave ships and African workers on the island.

Three American scholars have done extensive research on Bunce Island. The anthropologist Joseph Opala investigated the connection between Bunce Island and the Gullah and organized the well-publicized Gullah homecomings, which were featured in the documentaries "Family Across the Sea" (1990), "The Language You Cry In" (1997) and "Priscilla's Homecoming" (in progress). The historian David Hancock describes the time of Grant, Oswald & Company in detail in his book "Citizens of the World" (1997). Archaeologist Christopher DeCorse and his team performed a thorough inventory of the ruins on Bunce Island and prepared a report for the Sierra Leone government.

Bunce Island is a National Monument under the protection of the Monuments and Relics Commission , a branch of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture of Sierra Leone. Attempts are made to preserve the fortress as a souvenir of the past and to attract tourists, especially African Americans with strong ties to Bunce Island. Although other slave forts like Goree in Senegal and Elmina in Ghana are more popular tourist attractions for African Americans, these are more related to the West Indies than to North America. Bunce Island has been named the Most Significant Historic Site in Africa for the United States .

Extensive maintenance, refurbishment and maintenance work has been taking place since 2019, especially on the North Bastion and Curtain Walls as well as on the Bance House .

construction

Bance House (2015)

Fortification with cannons (2015)

Historically on the island there was the fortress in the north and a village (Adam's Town) with a street, 25 houses on each side, cemetery and pavilions as well as foreman's house in the south and a well in between, two kilns in the west, a landing bridge north of it and the Slave trading center in the east. The fortress consisted of nine main elements:

In the northwest downriver is the fortress with loopholes later ursürnglich 16, eight guns. This is flanked by two bastions , on each of which a flag was hoisted.
In the center of the complex was the Bance (Island) House . It was a two-story West Indian farmhouse style building. Administration rooms were on the ground floor, residential units on the first floor.
Beyond that, to the northeast, was the slave yard for the men. Up to 300 slaves were housed here in chains without protection from the weather.
Next to it, to the north, was the courtyard for women and children, which was smaller and offered a shelter with two rooms.
The gate tower in the south housed the main gate to the fort and a room for security guards on the 1st floor.
Next to it, to the east, was the retailer's residential wing. The merchandise was stored on the ground floor and living rooms were to be found on the first floor.
Then the east was the gunpowder - warehouse to find. It was in the basement with walls seven feet thick. Above it was a normal storage room. According to tradition, the slaves assumed that it was the prison of the fort.
The office tower in the northwest of the fortress was three-story. The higher the rank or responsibility, the higher the offices were.
In the east, the fortress was bordered by a garden in the form of a terrace . It was used for the leisure activities of the slave traders who are said to have rested here under orange trees .

literature

Joseph Opala: Bunce Island, A British Slave Castle in Sierra Leone - Historical Summary. James Madison University, Harrisonburg 2007; in: Christopher DeCorse: Bunce Island Cultural Resource Assessment and Management Plan. ( PDF; English )