Sundry letters from Z. Macauley, T. Ludlam, & others to T.P.T.

Indigenous Cultures and Christian Conversion in Ghana and Sierra Leone, 1700–1850 was curated in association with the Bodleian Library. 

This collection contains records compiled by the United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG), a UK-based Anglican missionary organisation that operates globally. From the eighteenth to the early twentieth century the USPG went by the name of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). 

This collection contains letters and supplementary material compiled by the organisation’s West African branches during the period 1700–1850. It includes the papers of Thomas Perronet Thompson, the first governor of the Colony of Sierra Leone, and those of Rev. Phillip Quaque, the first African to be ordained a minister of the Church of England. The collection contains a variety of sources that evidence the continuation of the slave trade. There is also material on the influential Rio Pongas mission conducted by the West Indian Church. The documents in this collection grant insights into the nature of British colonialism, the process of Christian conversion, and the functioning of the slave trade in West Africa.

The son of a wealthy Hull banker, Thompson served in the army and navy. Partly as a result of his connection with William Wilberforce, the influential anti-slavery campaigner, he was appointed governor of the colony in Sierra Leone in 1808, the year after the abolition of the slave trade across the British empire. Thompson's zeal in enforcing the new law appears to have contributed to the termination of this appointment.