How Brits Manipulated Enslavement Narratives for Their Enrichment

“Account of two eighteenth-century princes from East Africa, their travels, and their encounters with the British Empire and slavery. In 1716 two princes from Mpfumo—what is today Maputo, the capital of Mozambique—boarded a ship licensed by the East India Company bound for England. Instead, their perfidious captain sold them into slavery in Jamaica. After two years of pleading their case, the princes—known in the historical record as Prince James and Prince John—convinced a lawyer to purchase them, free them, and travel with them to London. The lawyer perished when a hurricane wrecked their ship, but the princes survived and arrived in England in 1720. Even though the East India Company had initially thought that the princes might assist in their aspirations to develop a trade for gold in East Africa and for enslaved labor in Madagascar, its interest waned. The princes would need to look elsewhere to return home. It was at this point that members of the Royal African Company and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge took up their cause, in the hope that profit and perhaps Christian souls would follow. John would make it home, but tragically, James would end his own life just before the ship sailed for Africa…” This is a very dramatic blurb. One of the reasons British history includes many such neatly narrated stories is because British ghostwriters tended to fabricate such accounts to serve unique profiteering purposes. In my forthcoming re-attribution series, I explain how travelogues such as “William Dampier’s” New Voyage Round the World (1703) were ghostwritten (in the case of “Dampier” by Peter Shaw (1694-1763), who probably also fabricated this two-princes story) for lawyers representing investors in shipping voyages, wherein “exploration” was used as an excuse to hide the slave-trade, or piracy (perhaps relabeled as privateering) or other corruptions and manipulations. It is likely there was no “lawyer” or a second brother, and other claims in this narrative should be questioned. The Brits even forged documents related to such voyages that they popularized in books about such adventures. So, taking on researching this specific story is a tough undertaking indeed. This is why it is troubling that this blurb does not mention the sources that first described these events.
So, I turned to the “Notes” section at the end of the book to figure this out. The 3rd note for this preface confirms some of my suspicions: “I am engaging a small piece of ‘critical fabulation’ through the use of ‘restrained imagination.’ The archive that tells the princes’ story often excludes details about them, treating them as objects.” The problem is that by turning facts such as that at 10pm Prince James “hanged himself in his garters” into a full narrative with vivid details serves the same function as “Dampier’s” dramatic propagandistic narrative: it gives life to what might have been a false, or fictitious minor point. After the details are added, it is like planting a false-memory of this history being a vivid truth in the readers’ minds. One source mentioned is the Royal African Company minutes, which were manipulated by ghostwriters with a profiteering agenda. The one early book mentioned is “Thomas Bray’s” Missionalia: Or, A Collection of Missionary Pieces Relating to the Conversaion of the Heathens; Both the African Negroes and American Indians (1727). This was obviously another one of Shaw’s projects. Europeans “won” the colonizing and enslaving war with propaganda such as this, instead of by fighting military battles that its tiny naval forces could not have possibly won. It is important to re-examine the fictions the Brits told about themselves, but it is also important to avoid trusting their sources while trying to re-evaluate their claims. Though the confession that some of the text is what the author imagined and not what the sources said is a good sign that signals most of this book is probably based on the sources, even if they are embellished.
“…Blurs the boundaries between the Atlantic and Indian ocean worlds; reveals the intertwined networks, powerful individuals, and unstable knowledge that guided British attempts at imperial expansion; and illuminates the power of African polities, which decided who lived and who died on their coasts. Lindsay O’Neill is Associate Professor (Teaching) of History at the University of Southern California…”
This book opens with a useful map of the described journey. Most of the book is handled with a fitting degree of details that summarize relevant court cases, quote passages from documents, and explain the history behind the narrative. This is a good book to read through for researchers in this field, and for graduate students who are studying related topics.
—Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Fall 2024: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-fall-2024

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I had hoped that this book would inform me about specific cases of the experiences of the slave trade, but this turned out to be a story about 2 brothers who never really came alive to me. I have to admit I grudgingly finished this book. 2 stars

The Two Princes of Mpfumo was a very interesting book. I enjoy books that further educate me and provide a good story, this book did not disappoint. It is a well researched story of not only the two princes but also of the time and included many interesting facts about the Royal African Trading Company, slavery, Madagascar and more. I would highly recommend this book if you are interested in past relations between England and African tribes.

A pretty amazing and well researched book. Approximately 200 pages, including 52 pages of notes.

Two "princes" went from Southern Africa (on the east side of the continent) to Madagascar to Jamaica to UK and then back to Africa with a stop in Brazil ... and this happened from about 1716 to 1723. To have unraveled this story is pretty amazing.

There is a lot of interesting history in this book, like how the trading companies manipulated wording in the contracts and would turn a blind eye to slave trading. And how the princes also (likely) turned a blind eye during transport. And how the princes handled themselves and lived in London.

The British did their best to teach the princes to read and write and become civilized and Christian.

Debating between 4 and 5 stars. Deciding to round up to 5 stars, because I felt that I learned somethings about this time period that I'd either missed or hadn't fully realized. The Two Princes of Mpfumo was quite interesting and worth reading, especially if you like non-fiction/history.

Honestly ... I didn't read the notes.

Many thanks to NetGalley and University of Pennsylvania Press for the opportunity to read the advance read copy of The Two Princes of Mpfumo in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication date is Feb 13, 2025.

As a resident of East Africa this was such an interesting historical account! As a slave narrative it was hard to read but so necessary. Though we do not know the real names of the two prince's it is good to at least have their story retold in honour of their struggle and others like them.

I had never heard about this before and was excited to learn about something that I never heard of before. I was engaged with the story being told and thought the overall concept was well done. It felt like it was researched well and glad I was able to learn about this. Lindsay O'Neill has a strong writing style and hope to read more from the author.