This thesis investigates the efforts of the West Indian Church to establish and run a fascinating Mission in an area of West Africa already influenced by Islam or traditional religion. It focuses mainly on the Pongas Mission’s efforts to spread the Gospel but also discusses its missionary hierarchy during the formative years in the Pongas Country between 1855 and 1863, and the period between 1863 and 1873, when efforts were made to consolidate the Mission under black control and supervision. Between 1873 and 1900 when more Sierra Leonean assistants were hired, relations between them and African-descended West Indian missionaries, as well as between these missionaries and their Eurafrican host chiefs, deteriorated. More efforts were made to consolidate the Pongas Mission amidst greater financial difficulties and increased French influence and restrictive measures against it between 1860 and 1935. These followed an earlier prejudiced policy in the mission that was strongly influenced by the hierarchical nature of nineteenth-century Barbadian society, which was abandoned only after successive deaths and resignations of white superintendents and the demonstrated ability of black pastors to independently run the Mission. Instrumentalism aided the conversion process and the increased flow of converts threatened both the traditional belief systems and social order of the Pongas Country, resulting in confrontation between the Mission and traditional religion worshippers, while the lack of more legitimate trade in the Pongas Country and allegations of black missionaries’ illicit sexual relations and illegal trading caused the downfall of John Henry A. Duport, the Mission’s first black Head Missionary. In the late 1800s, efforts to establish a self-supporting, self-generating, and self-propagating church together with initiatives toward African agency in the Pongas Country failed. However, it was French activities and eventual consolidation of their interests in the Pongas Country from 1890 and their demand that Mission schools teach in French, together with successful recruiting of Mission students by the Roman Catholics and Muslim clerics in Guinea, that finally crippled it. Thus, by 1935 when the Gambia-Pongas Bishopric was established in the hope of rescuing the Mission, this gender-biased Christian enterprise in West Africa was already a spent force.

It was paramount for the English-speaking Caribbean to host a successful 2007 Cricket World Cup and field an outstanding West Indian cricket team for the international sporting mega-event. For CARICOM and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), there were two principle goals – first, to exhibit regional Caribbean identity, and second, to be triumphant under the leadership of the West Indian cricket team’s captain, Trinidadian Brian Lara. Identities are multifaceted and intricate, negotiated and renegotiated, based on a history of economic, political and cultural forces. This thesis interrogates Caribbean identity through textual analysis of the broadcast of the opening ceremony and regional newspaper coverage of the spectacle as well as ensuing events that were held in eight of the Caribbean countries from 11 March to 28 April 2007. The thesis questions whether this mega-event served as a catalyst toward Caribbean identity construction.

This thesis investigates the efforts of the West Indian Church to establish and run a fascinating Mission in an area of West Africa already influenced by Islam or traditional religion. It focuses mainly on the Pongas Mission’s efforts to spread the Gospel but also discusses its missionary hierarchy during the formative years in the Pongas Country between 1855 and 1863, and the period between 1863 and 1873, when efforts were made to consolidate the Mission under black control and supervision. Between 1873 and 1900 when more Sierra Leonean assistants were hired, relations between them and African-descended West Indian missionaries, as well as between these missionaries and their Eurafrican host chiefs, deteriorated. More efforts were made to consolidate the Pongas Mission amidst greater financial difficulties and increased French influence and restrictive measures against it between 1860 and 1935. These followed an earlier prejudiced policy in the mission that was strongly influenced by the hierarchical nature of nineteenth-century Barbadian society, which was abandoned only after successive deaths and resignations of white superintendents and the demonstrated ability of black pastors to independently run the Mission. Instrumentalism aided the conversion process and the increased flow of converts threatened both the traditional belief systems and social order of the Pongas Country, resulting in confrontation between the Mission and traditional religion worshippers, while the lack of more legitimate trade in the Pongas Country and allegations of black missionaries’ illicit sexual relations and illegal trading caused the downfall of John Henry A. Duport, the Mission’s first black Head Missionary. In the late 1800s, efforts to establish a self-supporting, self-generating, and self-propagating church together with initiatives toward African agency in the Pongas Country failed. However, it was French activities and eventual consolidation of their interests in the Pongas Country from 1890 and their demand that Mission schools teach in French, together with successful recruiting of Mission students by the Roman Catholics and Muslim clerics in Guinea, that finally crippled it. Thus, by 1935 when the Gambia-Pongas Bishopric was established in the hope of rescuing the Mission, this gender-biased Christian enterprise in West Africa was already a spent force.

The most influential communities in modern Caribbean history have been the enslaved Africans and their descendant populations. As such, historical archaeology in the Caribbean has often focused on black lifeways under British, Dutch, and Spanish colonial powers. The utilization of various research strategies have included but not restricted to ethnoarchaeology, historical documents, material culture, oral history sources, settlement patterns, stable isotopic study, and burial practices. As one of the first historical faunal studies of the French Antilles, my work attempts to provide a contribution to the study of slave foodways. This dissertation examines the interrelationship between foodways and identity formation during the early modern French transatlantic expansion. My material evidence, exemplified via faunal remains, was retrieved from the slave village at Habitation La Mahaudière, once a prosperous sugar plantation in Guadeloupe established during the mid-18th century, whose domestic occupation spanned over 150 years and is currently a well-preserved archaeological site that offers the potential for understanding diachronic social and cultural processes of the French plantation system. My zooarchaeological results in combination with primary and secondary sources that discuss colonial subsistence practices will assist in establishing how slave foodways and French Antillean identity is created by and shaped one another. / text

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of French, Classics, and Italian, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Apr. 1, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 238-244). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-231), discography (leaves 231-232), and filmography (leaf 232).

Inaug.-Diss.--Ruprecht-Karl-Universität, Heidelberg. / Bibliography: p. 254-270.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1912. / "Printed from type, 600 copies, July, 1912." Bibliography: p. 341-364.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Halle-Wittenberg, 1936. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.