More Auspicious Shores chronicles the migration of Afro-Barbadians to Liberia. In 1865, 346 Afro-Barbadians fled a failed post-emancipation Caribbean for the independent black republic of Liberia. They saw Liberia as a means of achieving their post-emancipation goals and promoting a pan-Africanist agenda while simultaneously fulfilling their 'civilizing' and 'Christianizing' duties. Through a close examination of the Afro-Barbadians, Caree A. Banton provides a transatlantic approach to understanding the political and sociocultural consequences of their migration and settlement in Africa. Banton reveals how, as former British subjects, Afro-Barbadians navigated an inherent tension between ideas of pan-Africanism and colonial superiority. Upon their arrival in Liberia, an English imperial identity distinguished the Barbadians from African Americans and secured them privileges in the Republic's hierarchy above the other group. By fracturing assumptions of a homogeneous black identity, Banton ultimately demonstrates how Afro-Barbadian settlement in Liberia influenced ideas of blackness in the Atlantic World.

Caree Banton is an Associate Professor of African Diaspora History and the Director of the African and African American Studies Program at the University of Arkansas. Banton earned a BPA in Public Administration and BA in History from Grambling State University in 2005. She received a MA in Development Studies from the University of Ghana in July 2012 and completed her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University in June 2013. Her research focuses on movements towards freedom, particularly around abolition, emancipation, and colonization.
Much of her work also explores ideas of citizenship, nationhood, and race in the 19th century. Her research has been supported by a number of fellowships, including the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, the Lapidus Center Fellowship at the Schomburg Center, and the Nancy Weiss Malkiel Fellowship.