Wedderburn’s final pamphlet, Address to the Lord Brougham and Vaux, contributed to the early nineteenth-century political “war of representation” about whether Black people in the West Indies would be willing to work for wages after emancipation. Although seeming to reiterate the proslavery claim that enslaved people in the West Indies had better living conditions than European wage laborers, Wedderburn’s vision of dwelling on the land outlined a nuanced, speculative decolonial future. The Conclusion finally argues that narratives of the Romantic revolutionary age should include Black abolitionist geographies, a revolution cultivated on common land with pigs, pumpkins, and yams.

This chapter explores one of the drastic effects of Sierra Leone’s Sexual Offences Act (SOA) by analysing the cases of young men and boys imprisoned for sleeping with their girlfriends. Within Pademba Road, Freetown’s central prison, young men face extreme punishment meant to sever pre-prison ties. SOA sentences result in isolation and separation from the outside world and other prisoners. LB and Larry, the cases analysed in this chapter, employ different tactics to survive, partially adapting as docile prisoners, partially engaging in resistance tactics. The chapter highlights the informal power structures within the prison, where ‘red bands’ hold sway, often surpassing the authority of guards. The text also points out the unpredictability and resource challenges within Sierra Leone’s criminal justice system, impacting marginalised individuals. The chapter portrays young men navigating the SOA’s consequences, challenging the legal system’s effectiveness, and raising questions about its impact on relationships and intimacy.

Language plays a pivotal role in shaping social norms regarding interpersonal violence in Sierra Leone. Language is a structure of meaning that shapes perception of self and others. Linguistic practices are rooted in inferences contributing to understanding connections, including causality. Linguistic categories reflect and are influenced by social categories, making language an arena of political struggle. Terminologies for violence have evolved over time, influenced by historical forces, public discourse, and legal reforms. While legal discourse tends to cluster, local perceptions differentiate between ‘normal and acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ forms, considering intent, outcome, and potential for reconciliation. Men and women both engage in violence but in different ways, influenced by specific language and metaphorical expressions. Language shapes the moral economy of relationships, bridging community perceptions, state discourses, and external influences. Studying interpersonal violence within its cultural and linguistic context can therefore provide deep understanding.

This chapter explores the enforcement and impact of laws governing violence in relationships involving minors, particularly sexual offences, in Sierra Leone. It reveals the challenges arising from the disconnect between legal regulations and real-life experiences. Sierra Leone’s criminal justice system abstracts complex social and emotional factors, reducing individuals to victim and perpetrator roles. Age, a critical element, differs in interpretation – numerical in the law, social in society. Critics contend that these laws excessively criminalise consensual relationships, resulting in the incarceration of young men and stigmatisation of young women. The laws can also be used to dissolve relationships between affluent young women and economically disadvantaged young men. Moreover, they discourage the reporting of sexual violence cases, fearing retaliation or social stigma. This study advocates a nuanced approach to tackling intricate societal problems, emphasising the need to grasp the practical consequences of laws and policies, and thereby bridge the divide between legal intentions and societal outcomes.

As he rose to leadership of the Spencean Philanthropists in 1817, Robert Wedderburn wrote and published six issues of Axe Laid to the Root, an inexpensive weekly periodical for working-class readers. Axe Laid to the Root instructed its white audience about the radical potential of African-Jamaican land and food-based liberation. The provision grounds, plots set apart from the plantation for enslaved people to grow their own food, were a source of resistance to plantation capitalism, providing food sovereignty and communal identity. The ecological knowledge of the Jamaican Maroons was another source of resistance to plantation economies. Finally, Wedderburn’s writing in “cheap” periodicals aspired to cultivate a transatlantic alliance between the English lower classes, the colonized Irish, and free and enslaved people in Jamaica. The chapter concludes by discussing George Cruikshank’s The New Union Club, which features Wedderburn as a central figure within abolitionist circles.

This urban ethnography of violence in intimate relationships in Sierra Leone reveals its multifaceted nature, gender dynamics, and the complex interplay of domestic, community, and state interventions. It challenges victim–perpetrator narratives by highlighting relationship violence’s complexities, such as its use for expressing love or punishment. The study contextualises violence within Sierra Leone’s historical and geopolitical framework, emphasising the interaction of structural violence with local contexts. It examines women’s agency in relation to violence and the co-existence of love and violence in the society’s moral economy. Gendered aspects of violence show differences in how men and women perceive and enact violence. The study analyses community and family mediations of violence and discusses how especially men face barriers towards state reporting. State laws greatly impact sexual relationships involving minors, shaping young people’s lives, household formation, education, and social relations. In challenging conventional perspectives, the book provides valuable insights for policy-makers and scholars.

This chapter explores the complex interplay between love, desire, responsibility, and violence in intimate relationships, focussing on Sierra Leone. It emphasises the need to examine the acceptance of violence without excusing it, advocating for a local, phenomenological perspective. It highlights gendered expectations and experiences of violence, acknowledging the impact of historical, sociocultural, political, economic, and legal factors on agency. In Freetown, violence is not seen as separate from love but can co-exist within relationships. Within a moral economy of relationships, careful distinctions are made between acceptable forms of violence to protect and sustain relationships and unacceptable forms that rupture and destroy. External observers frequently misconstrue these dynamics, perceiving them as excessively violent and uncritical. Considering embedded agency and intersectional factors is crucial when addressing relationship violence and developing effective policies. Intimate violence is a multifaceted, dynamic phenomenon that necessitates nuanced understanding of meaning-making and experience.