Abstract This article examines the formation of interracial social events such as dances and balls that fostered sexual relationships and the social practices of Europeans bequeathing inheritances to their mixed-race progeny in the Colony of Sierra Leone between 1806 and 1888. The practice of interracial sexual relationships in colonial Sierra Leone during the early to middle nineteenth century reveals the complexities of interracial sexual relationships across empire where raced and gendered hierarchies were reinforced but also undermined by these relationships. Although an abolitionist colony, the bequeathment of inheritances and interracial balls in colonial Sierra Leone paralleled social practices in coastal West Africa but also closely mirrored these social practices in plantation economies such as in the British Caribbean and parts of the southern United States. This article assesses the importance of social practices in transgressing racial and social boundaries and underpinning sexual encounters between colonial women and European men across the Atlantic World and empire.
Nigel Browne-Davies (Wed,) studied this question.