Abstract
Return is as much about the world to which you no longer belong as it is about the one in which you have yet to make a home.Saidiya HartmanAs World War I came to a close, “Black” men from Britain's overseas colonies and their white wives and lovers came to embody the fears and anxieties that gripped Britain's economically depressed port cities. Black men, most of whom were seamen, were accused of taking jobs from white British men and stealing their women. White women who partnered with Black men were cast as depraved and immoral traitors who selfishly prioritized their own sexual and material desires above the good of the nation. Working-class interracial couples became targets of abuse on the increasingly tense streets of Britain's port cities, and when a series of violent race riots erupted in the summer of 1919 they were largely blamed for their outbreak. White mobs, ranging in size from a few hundred into the thousands, indiscriminately attacked Black men, harassed and assaulted their white partners, and destroyed the multiracial settlements they called home. In the wake of the riots some of these couples attempted to leave their hostile environs for the British colonies, especially in West Africa and the West Indies, from where many of the men in question came. Their desire to take up residency overseas, however, led to the immediate implementation of a policy, hereafter called “the policy of prevention,“ specifically designed to keep European women married to working-class Black men out of the colonies. This was especially the case for British West Africa and marked an important shift from the prewar period, when colonial social conventions and their attendant racial taboos were the primary mechanisms that, at the very least, kept European women and Black men from openly liaising with one another. During the interwar period state power was also used to ensure that the West African colonies were kept free of such couples. While the origins of the policy of prevention are to be found in the immediate aftermath of the 1919 race riots, it continued to guide colonial authorities' decision-making processes throughout the interwar years. By and large it was West African seamen domiciled in Britain and married to white British women who sought joint repatriation as their economic positions worsened dining this time period.