Interracial Sex as Taboo: The New Imperialism, Christian Victorian Values, Nationalism, and the Legacies of Intimacy in the Colony of Sierra Leone, 1861–1914

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the dynamics of interracial sexual relationships in the Colony of Sierra Leone during the era of the new imperialism between 1870 and 1914. Although British anxieties about interracial sexual relationships and mixed-race progeny were evident before the era of the new imperialism, it was in the late nineteenth century that British imperial and colonial authorities created more rigid racial hierarchies that hardened the delineations between colonisers, intermediary proxy groups, and the colonised. However, it was not only Europeans who disapproved of interracial sex during the new imperialism, and the adoption of a Victorian sexual ethos and cultural nationalism among the Creole population contributed to their social disapproval of interracial sex. These attitudes had an impact on race relations that resulted in the clandestine nature of interracial sex in colonial Sierra Leone from the late nineteenth century and the shame attached to mixed-race ancestry in colonial society. This article examines the shifting attitudes of social disapproval towards interracial sexual relationships displayed by both Europeans and Creoles in colonial Sierra Leone and analyses the impact these attitudes had on the dynamics of interracial sexual relationships and on the mixed-race heritage of the Creole ethnic group during the era of the new imperialism.