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Acknowledgments According to the Haya in Tanzania, “Many hands make light work.” More people, institutions, and funding agencies on three continents than I could possibly name have supported me over the past ten years as I researched and wrote my dissertation and subsequently my first book. While the work was never “light,” it would have exceeded my capacity without the support of so “many hands.” I am most grateful to Steven Feierman and David Schoenbrun for the shaping of my dissertation, which provided the archives of linguistic data and the testing ground for the comparative method of historical linguistics used in this study. First, as my adviser Steven took on the challenge of training a young head-strong Africanist whose research interests extended into the African Diaspora—before the African Diaspora and the Atlantic World were popular fields of historical inquiry, particularly among Africanists. Steve not only trained me in asking new and interesting questions on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraged my use of interdisciplinary sources and methods and desire to write to a broader audience, and strongly encouraged—i.e., forced—me to think about my own future when political instability persisted in Sierra Leone whose pre-colonial history was initially the subject of my dissertation . Steve had the vision and David Schoenbrun helped me to work out the details. David’s passion for historical linguistics has always been infectious . And his willingness to share and teach what he knows in tutoring sessions in Gainesville, FL, Athens, GA, and Evanston, IL, has influenced countless graduate students, some of whom were not his advisees. Lastly, David has probably read more drafts of this project than anyone else. For his patience and willingness to give feedback promptly, I am also eternally grateful . Any remaining errors are truly my own. During my fieldwork, countless people in Guinea, Conakry, Kamsar, Kukuba, Monchon, Binari, and Kawass; and in France, Paris and Aix-en-Provence, supported my research. Appendix 1 lists the names of all of the farmers in the aforementioned villages whom I interviewed. A list will never be enough for me to repay the generosity of these elders and their families in telling me their xiv Acknowledgments stories, opening their homes, fields, and granaries to me, and making me an honored part of their families. Several colleagues in Conakry, Djibril Tamsir Niane, at the University of Conakry, Ishmael Barry and Aboubacar Toure, and in Boké, Sory Kaba (formerly the archivist of the regional archives in Boké), deserve special mention for their support throughout my research. My fieldwork would also have been literally impossible without my research assistant Mohammed Camara, who handled the logistics of our travel between the four coastal villages throughout the rainy/rice cultivation season, made it possible for me to negotiate the uncomfortable terrain of being a young, (then) unmarried woman living and traveling without male relatives in a conservative Muslim society, and transcribed scores of tapes. I will never be able to repay Mohammed or his family. My fieldwork would have been less pleasant without Guinean families who adopted me: Dr. and Mme. Ibrahima Bah-Laliya,Dr.andMme.AbdulRadiya-Bah,andMr.AlhassaneTangue-Bah in Conakry and Dr. and Mme. Camara in Kamsar, and American missionaries and linguists specializing in the (Baga) Sitem language, Marty and Tina Ganong (of Kawass), who befriended me. Last but not least, researching and writing the dissertation would not have been possible without funding from Annenberg Pre-Dissertation and Mellon Dissertation Fellowships (University of Pennsylvania), a Fulbright-Hays dissertation research fellowship, a travel grant from Bremer Stiftung für Geschichte, and a dissertation-writing fellowship from Oberlin College Departments of History and African-American Studies. A number of people have played critical roles in the reconceptualization of this project as a book. My mentors at Carnegie Mellon, Tera Hunter (now at Princeton) and Joe Trotter have selflessly nurtured me through this process, supported me as I made difficult decisions about the book, and read draft after draft. It is humbling how much time and energy they have both invested in my family and me, my book, and my career. Judith Byfield (formerly the series editor for Indiana University Press’s Blacks in the Diaspora series) played a critical role in convincing me that the series would be the vehicle for my book to reach audiences interested in African, African-American, and African Diaspora history and in getting the manuscript under contract. My colleagues who specialize in the Rio Nunez region...

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