pscanlan@fas.harvard.edu

I study the history of the British empire, with a particular interest in the histories of slavery, emancipation and humanitarianism. My current book project, MacCarthy's Skull: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Sierra Leone, is a social and material history of the implementation of British laws against the slave trade. The book opens with the founding of the British colony at Sierra Leone in 1792, and concludes in 1824 with the death of Charles MacCarthy, Governor of Sierra Leone, during the first war between Britain and Asante. After the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, administrators and merchants in Sierra Leone invented new legal and military instruments to interdict slave ships, and new systems of surveillance and control to claim the labour of the tens of thousands of people freed from the Middle Passage by Royal Navy vessels and settled in the colony. MacCarthy's Skull shows how, in practice, the end of the slave trade gave moral prestige to colonial rule and imperial expansion in West Africa.

I am also working on a history of English literacy in the British empire. During the nineteenth century, the ability to read and write English became an important metric for measuring the 'improvement' of both Britons and colonial subjects. Knowledge of English underwrote the British empire, from anti-slavery campaigns to the common law to immunisation drives to public works projects. Increasing and measuring literacy were among the most fundamental responsibilities of officials throughout the empire. I hope to offer a perspective on the day-to-day work of imperial and colonial governance, and on the history of economic development in Britain and its empire.

I grew up in Montréal, Québec. I received a B.A. (Hons.) in History from McGill University in 2008, and a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University in 2013.

For further information and links to select publications, please see my curriculum vitae. You can also see a brief discussion of my work in this video, part of a series made to promote JSTOR's collection of nineteenth-century British pamphlets.