National Provisional Ruling Council

Sierra Leone first became inhabited by indigenous African peoples at least 2,500 years ago. The Limba were the first tribe known to inhabit Sierra Leone. The dense tropical rainforest partially isolated the region from other West African cultures, and it became a refuge for peoples escaping violence. Sierra Leone was named by Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra, who mapped the region in 1462. The Freetown estuary provided a good natural harbour for ships to shelter and replenish drinking water, and gained more international attention as coastal and trans-Atlantic trade supplanted trans-Saharan trade.

In the mid-16th century, the Mane people invaded, subjugated nearly all of the indigenous coastal peoples, and militarised Sierra Leone. The Mane soon blended with the local populations and the various chiefdoms and kingdoms remained in a continual state of conflict, with many captives sold to European slave-traders. The Atlantic slave trade had a significant impact on Sierra Leone, as this trade flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries, and later as a centre of anti-slavery efforts when the trade was abolished in 1807. British abolitionists had organised a colony for Black Loyalists at Freetown, and this became the capital of British West Africa. A naval squadron was based there to intercept slave ships, and the colony quickly grew as Liberated Africans were released, joined by Afro-Caribbean and African soldiers who had fought for Britain in the American Revolutionary War. The descendants of the black settlers were collectively referred to as the Creoles or Krios.

During the colonial era, the British and Creoles increased their control over the surrounding area, securing peace so that commerce would not be interrupted, suppressing slave-trading and inter-chiefdom war. In 1895, Britain drew borders for Sierra Leone which they declared to be their protectorate, leading to armed resistance and the Hut Tax War of 1898. Thereafter, there was dissent and reforms as the Creoles sought political rights, trade unions formed against colonial employers, and peasants sought greater justice from their chiefs.

Sierra Leone has played a significant part in modern African political liberty and nationalism. In the 1950s, a new constitution united the Crown Colony and Protectorate, which had previously been governed separately. Sierra Leone gained independence from the United Kingdom on 27 April 1961 and became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Ethnic and linguistic divisions remain an obstacle to national unity, with the Mende, Temne and Creoles as rival power blocs. Roughly half of the years since independence have been marked by autocratic governments or civil war.

Early history

Archaeological finds show that Sierra Leone has been inhabited continuously for at least 2,500 years, populated by successive movements of peoples from other parts of Africa. The use of iron was introduced to Sierra Leone by the 9th century, and by the end of the 10th century agriculture was being practiced by coastal tribes.

Sierra Leone's dense tropical rainforest partially isolated the land from other African cultures and from the spread of Islam. This made it a refuge for people escaping subjugation by the Sahelian kingdoms, violence and jihads.

European contacts with Sierra Leone were among the first in West Africa. In 1462, Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra mapped the hills surrounding what is now Freetown Harbour, naming the oddly shaped formation ''Serra Lyoa'' (Lioness Mountain).

At this time the country was inhabited by numerous politically independent native groups. Several different languages were spoken, but there was similarity of religion. In the coastal rainforest belt there were Bulom-speakers between the Sherbro and Freetown estuaries, Loko-speakers north of the Freetown estuary to the Little Scarcies River, Temne-speakers found at the mouth of the Scarcies River, and Limba-speakers farther up the Scarcies. In the hilly savannah north of all of these lands were the Susu and Fula tribes. The Susu traded regularly with the coastal peoples along river valley routes, bringing salt, clothes woven by the Fula, iron work, and gold.

European contact (15th century)

Portuguese ships began visiting Sierra Leone regularly in the late 15th century, and for a while they maintained a fort on the north shore of the Freetown estuary. This estuary is one of the largest natural deep-water harbours in the world, and one of the few good harbours on West Africa's surf-battered "Windward Shore" (Liberia to Senegal). It soon became a favourite destination of European mariners, to shelter and replenish drinking water. Some of the Portuguese sailors stayed permanently, trading and intermarrying with the local people.

Slavery

Slavery, and in particular the Atlantic slave trade, had a great effect on the region—socially, economically and politically—from the late 15th to the mid-19th centuries.

There had been lucrative trans-Saharan trade of slaves in West Africa from the 6th century. At its peak (c. 1350) the Mali Empire surrounded the region of modern-day Sierra Leone and Liberia, though the slave trade may not have significantly penetrated the coastal rainforest. The peoples who migrated into Sierra Leone from this time would have had greater contact with the indigenous slave trade, either practicing it or escaping it.

When Europeans first arrived at Sierra Leone, slavery among the African peoples of the area was believed to be rare. According to historian Walter Rodney, the Portuguese mariners kept detailed reports, and so it is likely if slavery had been an important local institution that the reports would have described it. There was mention of a very particular kind of slavery in the region, which was:

According to Rodney, such a person would likely have retained some rights and had some opportunity to rise in status as time passed.

The European colonization of the Americas soon led to labor demands from nascent colonies; this led Europeans to seek a supply of slaves to transport to the Americas. Initially, European slavers launched raids on coastal villages to abduct Africans and sell them into slavery. However, they soon established economic alliances with local leaders, as many chiefs were willing to sell undesirable members of their tribe to Europeans. Other African chiefs launched raids on rival tribes in order to sell captives of such raids into slavery.

This early slaving was essentially an export business. The use of slaves as labourers by the local Africans appears to have developed only later. It may first have occurred under coastal chiefs in the late 18th century:

For example, in the late 18th century, William Cleveland, a Scottish leader in Africa had a large "slave town" on the mainland opposite the Banana Islands, whose inhabitants "were employed in cultivating extensive rice fields, described as being some of the largest in Africa at the time".
The existence of an indigenous slave town was recorded by an English traveler in 1823. Known in the Fula language as a ''rounde'', it was connected with the Sulima Susu's capital city, Falaba. Its inhabitants worked at farming.

Rodney has postulated two means by which slaving for export could have caused a local practice of using slaves for labour to develop:
#Not all war captives offered for sale would have been bought by the Portuguese, so their captors had to find something else to do with them. Rodney believes that executing them was rare and that they would have been used for local labour.
#There is a time lag between the time a slave is captured and the time he or she is sold. Thus there would often have been a pool of slaves awaiting sale, who would have been put to work.

There are possible additional reasons for the adoption of slavery by the locals to meet their labour requirements:
#The Europeans provided an example for imitation.
#Once slaving in any form is accepted, it may smash a moral barrier to exploitation and make its adoption in other forms seem a relatively minor matter.
#Export slaving entailed the construction of a coercive apparatus which could have been subsequently turned to other ends, such as policing a captive labour force.
#The sale of local produce (e.g., palm kernels) to Europeans opened a new sphere of economic activity. In particular, it created an increased demand for agricultural labour. Slavery was a way of mobilising an agricultural work force.

This local African slavery was much less harsh and brutal than the slavery practiced by Europeans on, for example, the plantations of the United States, the West Indies, and Brazil. The local slavery has been described by anthropologist M. McCulloch:

Slaves were sometimes sent on errands outside the kingdoms of their masters and returned voluntarily.
Speaking specifically of the era around 1700, historian Christopher Fyfe relates that, "Slaves not taken in war were usually criminals. In coastal areas, at least, it was rare for anyone to be sold without being charged with a crime."

Voluntary dependence reminiscent of that described in the early Portuguese documents mentioned at the beginning of this section was still present in the 19th century. It was called pawning; Arthur Abraham describes a typical variety:

Some observers consider the term "slave" to be more misleading than informative when describing the local practice. Abraham says that in most cases, "subject, servant, client, serf, pawn, dependent, or retainer" would be more accurate.
Domestic slavery was abolished in Sierra Leone in 1928. McCulloch reports that at that time, amongst Sierra Leone's largest present-day ethnolinguistic group, the Mende, who then had about 560,000 people, about 15 per cent of the population (i.e., 84,000 people) were domestic slaves. He also says that "singularly little change followed the 1928 decree; a fair number of slaves returned to their original homes, but the great majority remained in the villages in which their former masters had placed them or their parents."

Export slavery remained a major business in Sierra Leone from the late 15th century to the mid-19th century. According to Fyfe, "it was estimated in 1789 that 74,000 slaves were exported annually from West Africa, about 38,000 by British firms." In 1788, a proslavery European named Matthews estimated the annual total exported from between the Nunez River (110 km north of Sierra Leone) and the Sherbro as 3,000. Participation in the Atlantic slave trade was gradually outlawed by various Western nations, beginning with the United States and Britain in 1808.

Mane invasions (16th century)

The Mane invasions of the mid-16th century had a profound impact on Sierra Leone. The Mane (also called Mani) were members of the Mande language group. A warrior people, well-armed and well-organized, they lived east and somewhat north of present-day Sierra Leone. Sometime in the early 16th century they began moving south. According to some Mane who spoke to a Portuguese writer (Dornelas) in the late 16th century, their travels had begun as a result of the expulsion of their chief from the imperial city of Mandimansa, their homeland.

There are conflicting accounts among historians of how these invasions happened. Some historians place their first arrival at the coast east of Sierra Leone, at least as far as the River Cess and likely farther. They advanced northwest along the coast toward Sierra Leone, conquering as they went. Others contend that they arrived on the coast near Sherbro Island. They incorporated large numbers of the people they conquered into their army, with the result that the rank and file consisted mostly of coastal peoples, while the Mane were its commanding group.

By 1545, the Mane had reached Cape Mount. Their conquest of Sierra Leone occupied the ensuing 15 to 20 years, and resulted in the subjugation of all or nearly all of the indigenous coastal peoples—who were known collectively as the Sapes—as far north as the Scarcies. The present demographics of Sierra Leone is largely a reflection of these two decades. The degree to which the Mane supplanted the original inhabitants varied from place to place. The Temne partly withstood the Mane onslaught, and kept their language, but became ruled by a line of Mane kings. The present-day Loko and Mende are the result of a more complete submersion of the original culture: their languages are similar, and both essentially Mande. This is likely due to conquest by the Mane invaders.

Aftermath

The Mane invasions militarised Sierra Leone. The Sapes had been un-warlike, but after the invasions, right until the late 19th century, bows, shields, and knives of the Mane type had become ubiquitous in Sierra Leone, as had the Mane battle technique of using squadrons of archers fighting in formation, carrying the large-style shields.
Villages became fortified. The usual method of erecting two or three concentric palisades, each 4–7 metres (12–20 ft) high, created a formidable obstacle to attackers—especially since, as some of the English observed in the 19th century, the thigh-thick logs planted into the earth to make the palisades often took root at the bottom and grew foliage at the top, so that the defenders occupied a living wall of wood. A British officer who observed one of these fortifications around the time of the 1898 Hut Tax war ended his description of it thus:

He also said that English artillery could not penetrate all three fences.
At that time, at least among the Mende, "a typical settlement consisted of walled towns and open villages or towns surrounding it."

After the invasions, the Mane sub-chiefs among whom the country had been divided began fighting among themselves. This pattern of activity became permanent: even after the Mane had blended with the indigenous population—a process which was completed in the early 17th century—the various kingdoms in Sierra Leone remained in a fairly continual state of flux and conflict.
Rodney believes that a desire to take prisoners to sell as slaves to the Europeans was a major motivation to this fighting, and may even have been a driving force behind the original Mane invasions. Historian Kenneth Little concludes that the principal objective in the local wars, at least among the Mende, was plunder, not the acquisition of territory. Abraham cautions that slave trading should not be exaggerated as a cause: the Africans had their own reasons to fight, with territorial and political ambitions present. Motivations likely changed over time during the 350-year period.

The wars themselves were not exceptionally deadly. Set-piece battles were rare, and the fortified towns so strong that their capture was seldom attempted. Often the fighting consisted of small ambushes.

In these years, the political system was such that each large village along with its satellite villages and settlements would be headed by a chief. The chief would have a private army of warriors. Sometimes several chiefs would group themselves into a confederacy, acknowledging one of themselves as king (or high chief). Each paid the king fealty. If one were attacked, the king would come to his aid, and the king could adjudicate local disputes.

Despite their many political divisions, the people of the country were united by cultural similarity. One component of this was the Poro, an organisation common to many different kingdoms and ethnolinguistic groups. The Mende claim to be its originators, and there is nothing to contradict this. Possibly they imported it. The Temne claim to have imported it from the Sherbro or Bulom. The Dutch geographer Olfert Dapper knew of it in the 17th century. It is often described as a "secret society", and this is partly true: its rites are closed to non-members, and what happens in the "Poro bush" is never disclosed. However, its membership is very broad: among the Mende, almost all men, and some women, are initiates. In recent years it has not (as far as is known) had a central organisation: autonomous chapters exist for each chiefdom or village. However, it is said that in pre-Protectorate days there was a "Grand Poro" with cross-chiefdom powers of making war and peace. It is widely agreed that it has a restraining influence on the powers of the chiefs. Headed by a fearsome principal spirit, the ''Gbeni'', it plays a major role in the rite of passage of males from puberty to manhood. It imparts some education. In some areas, it had supervisory powers over trade, and the banking system, which used iron bars as a medium of exchange. It is not the only important society in Sierra Leone: the ''Sande'' is a female-only analogue of it; there is also the ''Humoi'' which regulates sex, and the ''Njayei'' and the ''Wunde''. The ''Kpa'' is a healing-arts collegium.

Besides the political impact, there were economic effects as well: trade with the interior was interrupted, and thousands were sold as slaves to the Europeans. In industry, a flourishing tradition in fine ivory carving was ended; however, improved ironworking techniques were introduced.

1600–1787

By the 17th century, Portuguese colonialism in West Africa began to wane, and in Sierra Leone other European colonial powers such as the English and Dutch began to supplant their influence in the region. In 1628, a group of English merchants had established a factory in the vicinity of Sherbro Island, about 50 km (30 mi) south-east from present-day Freetown. In addition to ivory and slaves, the merchants at the factory also traded in camwood, a type of hard timber. The Portuguese missionary Baltasar Barreira ministered in Sierra Leone until 1610. Jesuits, and later in the century, Capuchins, continued the mission. By 1700 it had closed, although priests occasionally visited.

In 1663, the Royal African Company (RAC) was granted a royal charter from Charles II of England and soon established a factory on Sherbro Island and Tasso Island. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War, both factories were sacked by a Dutch Navy force in 1664. The factory was rebuilt, though it was sacked again by the French Navy during the War of the Spanish Succession in 1704 and pirates in 1719 and 1720. After the Dutch raid on the RAC factory at Tasso Island, it was relocated to the nearby Bunce Island, which was more defensible.

The Europeans made payments, called ''Cole'', for rent, tribute, and trading rights, to the king of an area. At this time the local military advantage was still on the side of the Africans, and there is a 1714 report of a king seizing RAC goods in retaliation for a breach of protocol.
Local Afro-Portuguese merchants often acted as middlemen, the Europeans advancing them goods to trade to the local people, most often for ivory. In 1728, an overly aggressive RAC governor united the Africans and Afro-Portuguese in hostility to him; they burnt down the Bunce Island fort and it was not rebuilt until about 1750. During the time that the Royal African Company was operating, the firm of Grant, and Oswald provisioned the trading stations. When the RAC abandoned Bunce Island, Sargent and his partners purchased its factory in 1748, repaired it, and used it to trade in timber. They expanded to Batts, Bobs, Tasso, and Tumbu Islands and along the banks of the river, eventually becoming involved in the slave trade. The French sacked it again in 1779, during the American Revolutionary War.

During the 17th century the Temne ethnolinguistic group was expanding. Around 1600, a Mani still ruled the Loko kingdom (the area north of Port Loko Creek) and another ruled the upper part of the south shore of the Freetown estuary. The north shore of the estuary was under a Ballom king, and the area just east of Freetown on the peninsula was held by a non-Mani with a European name, Dom Phillip de Leon (who may have been a subordinate to his Mani neighbour). By the mid-17th century this situation had changed: Temne, not Bullom was spoken on the south shore, and ships stopping for water and firewood had to pay customs to the Temne king of Bureh who lived at Bagos town on the point between the Rokel River and Port Loko Creek. (The king may have considered himself a Mani—to this day, Temne chiefs have Mani-derived titles—but his people were Temne. The Bureh king in place in 1690 was called Bai Tura, ''Bai'' being a Mani form.) The Temne had thus expanded in a wedge toward the sea at Freetown, and now separated the Bulom to the north from the Mani and other Mande-speakers to the south and east.

In this period there are several reports of women occupying high positions. The king of the south shore used to leave one of his wives to rule when he was absent, and in the Sherbro there were female chiefs. In the early 18th century, a Bulom named Seniora Maria had her own town near Cape Sierra Leone.

During the 17th century, Muslim Fula from the Upper Niger and Senegal rivers moved into an area called Fouta Djallon (or Futa Jalon) in the mountainous region north of present-day Sierra Leone. They were to have an important impact on the peoples of Sierra Leone because they increased trade and also produced secondary population movements into Sierra Leone. Though the Muslim Fula first cohabited peaceably with the peoples already at Fouta Djallon, around 1725 they embarked on a war of domination, forcing the migration of many Susu, Yalunka, and non-Muslim Fula.

Susu—some already converted to Islam—came south into Sierra Leone, in turn displacing Limba from north-west Sierra Leone and driving them into north-central Sierra Leone where they continue to live. Some Susu moved as far south as the Temne town of Port Loko, only 60 km (37 mi) upriver from the Atlantic. Eventually a Muslim Susu family called Senko supplanted the town's Temne rulers. Other Susu moved westward from Fouta Djallon, eventually dominating the Baga, Bulom, and Temne north of the Scarcies River.

The Yalunka in Fouta Djallon first accepted Islam, then rejected it and were driven out. They went into north-central Sierra Leone and founded their capital at Falaba in the mountains near the source of the Rokel. It is still an important town, about 20 km (12 mi) south of the Guinea border. Other Yalunka went somewhat farther south and settled amongst the Koranko, Kissi, and Limba.

Besides these groups, who were more-or-less unwilling emigrants, a considerable variety of Muslim adventurers went forth from Fouta Djallon. A Fula called Fula Mansa (''mansa'' meaning ''king'') became ruler of the Yoni country 100 km (62 mi) east of present-day Freetown. Some of his Temne subjects fled south to the Banta country between the middle reaches of the Bagu and Jong rivers, where they became known as the Mabanta Temne.

In 1652, the first slaves from Sierra Leone were transported to North America; they were sold to white plantation owners in the Sea Islands off the coast of the American South. During the 18th century, numerous slaves from Bunce Island were transported to the Southern Colonies, due in part to the business relationship between American slave trader Henry Laurens and the London-based firm of Grant, Sargent, Oswald & Company, which oversaw a thriving slave trade from Bunce Island in Sierra Leone to North America.

The transatlantic slave trade continued to transport millions of enslaved Africans, including those from Sierra Leone, across the Atlantic during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries; ultimately, roughly 12.5 million slaves where brought to the Americas this way. However, the rise of abolitionist movements in the Western world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries led to various European and American governments passing legislation to abolish the slave trade. The slave trade in Sierra Leone underwent a marked decline during the 19th century, though domestic slavery would persist until the 20th century.

The Province of Freedom (1787–1789)

Conception of the Province of Freedom (1787)

In 1787, a plan was established to settle some of London's "Black Poor" in Sierra Leone in what was called the "Province of Freedom". This was organised by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, founded by British abolitionist Granville Sharp, which preferred it as a solution to continuing to financially support them in London. Many of the Black Poor were African Americans, who had been given their freedom after seeking refuge with the British Army during the American Revolution, but also included other West Indian, African and Asian inhabitants of London.

The Sierra Leone Resettlement Scheme was proposed by entomologist Henry Smeathman and drew interest from humanitarians like Granville Sharp saw it as a means of showing the pro-slavery lobby that black people could contribute towards the running of the new colony of Sierra Leone. Government officials soon became involved in the scheme as well, although their interest was spurred by the possibility of resettling a large group of poor citizens elsewhere. William Pitt the Younger, prime minister and leader of the Tory party, had an active interest in the Scheme, because he saw it as a means to repatriate the Black Poor to Africa, since "it was necessary they should be sent somewhere, and be no longer suffered to infest the streets of London".

Establishment, destruction and re-establishment (1789)

The area was first settled by 400 formerly enslaved Black Britons, who arrived off the coast of Sierra Leone on 15 May 1787, accompanied by some English tradesmen. They established the Province of Freedom or Granville Town on land purchased from local Koya Temne subchief King Tom and regent Naimbanna II, a purchase which the Europeans understood to cede the land to the new settlers "for ever". The established arrangement between Europeans and the Koya Temne did not include provisions for permanent settlement, and some historians question how well the Koya leaders understood the agreement. Half of the settlers in the new colony died within the first year. Several black settlers started working for local slave traders. The settlers that remained forcibly captured land from a local African chieftain, but he retaliated, attacking the settlement, which was reduced to a mere 64 settlers comprising 39 black men, 19 black women, and six white women. Black settlers were captured by unscrupulous traders and sold as slaves, and the remaining colonists were forced to arm themselves for their own protection. King Tom's successor King Jemmy attacked and burned the colony in 1789.

Alexander Falconbridge was sent to Sierra Leone in 1791 to collect the remaining Black Poor settlers, and they re-established Granville Town (later renamed Cline Town) near Fourah Bay. Although these 1787 settlers did not establish Freetown, which was founded in 1792, the bicentennial of Freetown was celebrated in 1987.

After establishing Granville Town, disease and hostility from the indigenous people eliminated the first group of colonists and destroyed their settlement. A second Granville Town was established by 64 remaining black and white 'Old settlers' under the leadership of St. George Bay Company leader, Alexander Falconbridge and the St. George Bay Company. This settlement was different from the Freetown settlement and colony founded in 1792 by Lt. John Clarkson and the Nova Scotian Settlers under the auspices of the Sierra Leone Company.

Freetown Colony (1792–1808)

Conception of the Freetown settlement (1791)

The basis for the Freetown Colony began in 1791 with Thomas Peters, an African American who had served in the Black Pioneers and settled in Nova Scotia as part of the Black Loyalist migration. Peters travelled to England in 1791 to report grievances of the Black Loyalists who had been given poor land and faced discrimination. Peters met with British abolitionists and the directors of the Sierra Leone Company. He learned of the company's plan for a new settlement at Sierra Leone. The directors were eager to allow the Nova Scotians to build a settlement there; the London-based and newly created Company had decided to create a new colony but before Peters' arrival had no colonists. Lieutenant John Clarkson was sent to Nova Scotia to register immigrants to take to Sierra Leone for the purpose of starting a new settlement. Clarkson worked with Peters to recruit 1,196 former American slaves from free African communities around Nova Scotia such as Birchtown. Most had escaped Virginia and South Carolina plantations. Some had been born in Africa before being enslaved and taken to America.

Settlement by Nova Scotians (1792)

The settlers sailed in 15 ships from Halifax, Nova Scotia and arrived in St. George Bay between 26 February and 9 March 1792. Sixty-four settlers died en route to Sierra Leone, and even Lieutenant Clarkson was ill during the voyage. Upon reaching Sierra Leone, Clarkson and some of the Nova Scotian 'captains' "despatched on shore to clear or make roadway for their landing". The Nova Scotians were to build Freetown on the former site of the first Granville Town which had become a "jungle" since its destruction in 1789. (Though they built Freetown on Granville Town's former site, their settlement was not a rebirth of Granville Town, which had been re-established at Fourah Bay in 1791 by the remaining Old Settlers.) Clarkson told the men to clear the land until they reached a large cotton tree. After this difficult work had been done and the land cleared, all the settlers, men and women, disembarked and marched towards the thick forest and to the cotton tree, and their preachers (all African Americans) began singing:

On 11 March 1792, Nathaniel Gilbert, a white preacher, prayed and preached a sermon under the large Cotton Tree, and Reverend David George preached the first recorded Baptist service in Africa. The land was dedicated and christened 'Free Town' according to the instructions of the Sierra Leone Company Directors. This was the first thanksgiving service in the newly christened Free Town and was the beginning of the political entity of Sierra Leone. Later, John Clarkson would be sworn in as the first governor of Sierra Leone. Small huts were erected before the rainy season. The Sierra Leone Company surveyors and the settlers built Freetown on the American grid pattern, with parallel streets and wide roads, with the largest being Water Street.

On 24 August 1792, the Black Poor or Old Settlers of the second Granville Town were incorporated into the new Sierra Leone Colony but remained at Granville Town. It survived being pillaged by the French in 1794, and was rebuilt by the Nova Scotian settlers. By 1798, Freetown had 300–400 houses with architecture resembling that of the American South, with 3- to 4-foot stone foundations and wooden superstructures. Eventually this style of housing (brought by the Nova Scotians) would be the model for the 'bod oses' of their Creole descendants.

Settlement by Jamaican Maroons (1800)

In 1800, the Nova Scotians rebelled and it was the arrival of over 500 Jamaican Maroons which caused the rebellion to be suppressed. Thirty-four Nova Scotians were banished and sent to either to Sherbro Island or a penal colony at Gore. Some of these were eventually allowed back into Freetown. Following their capture of the rebels, the Maroons were granted the land of the Nova Scotian rebels. Eventually the Jamaican Maroons in Sierra Leone had their own district at the newly named Maroon Town.

The Maroons were a free community of blacks from Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town) who had been resettled in Nova Scotia after surrendering to the British government followed the Second Maroon War of 1795–6. They had petitioned the British government for settlement elsewhere due to the climate in Nova Scotia.

Abolition and slaves-in-transit (1807 - 1830s)

Britain outlawed the slave trade throughout its empire on 29 March 1807 with the Slave Trade Act 1807, though the practice continued in the British Empire until it was finally abolished in the 1830s. The Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron operating from Freetown took active measures to intercept and seize ships participating in the illegal Atlantic slave trade. The slaves that were held on these vessels were released into Freetown and were initially called 'Captured negroes', 'Recaptives' or 'Liberated Africans'.

Formation of the Sierra Leone Creole ethnicity (1870 onwards)

The Sierra Leone Creole people () are descendants of the Black Poor, freed African Americans (Nova Scotian Black Loyalists), Afro-Caribbeans (Jamaican Maroons), and Liberated Africans who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. https://www.persee.fr/doc/cea_0008-0055_1991_num_31_121_2116 Journal of Sierra Leone Studies, Vol. 3; Edition 1, 2014 https://www.academia.edu/40720522/A_Precis_of_Sources_relating_to_genealogical_research_on_the_Sierra_Leone_Krio_people The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown., originally published by Longman & Dalhousie University Press (1976).

Colonial era (1808–1961)

Establishment of the British Crown Colony (1808)

In 1808, the British Crown Colony of Sierra Leone was founded, with Freetown serving as the capital of British West Africa. The city's population expanded rapidly with freed slaves, who established suburbs on the Freetown Peninsula. They were joined by West Indian and African soldiers who settled in Sierra Leone after fighting for Britain in the Napoleonic Wars.

Intervention and acquisition of the hinterland (1800s–1895)

In the early 1800s, Sierra Leone was a small colony extending a few kilometres (a few miles) up the peninsula from Freetown. The bulk of the territory that makes up present-day Sierra Leone was still the sovereign territory of indigenous peoples such as the Mende and Temne, and was little affected by the tiny population of the Colony. Over the course of the 19th century, that gradually changed: the British and Creoles in the Freetown area increased their involvement in—and their control over—the surrounding territory by engaging in trade, which was promoted and increased through treaty-making and military expeditions.

In their treaties with the native chiefs, the British were largely concerned with securing local peace so that commerce would not be interrupted. Typically, the British government agreed to pay a chief a stipend in return for a commitment from him to keep the peace with his neighbours; other specific commitments extracted from a chief might include keeping roads open, allowing the British to collect customs duties, and submitting disputes with his neighbours to British adjudication. In the decades following Britain's prohibition of the slave trade in 1807, the treaties sometimes also required chiefs to desist from slave-trading. Suppression of slave-trading and suppression of inter-chiefdom war went hand-in-hand because the trade thrived on the wars (and caused them). Thus, to the commercial reasons for pacification could be added anti-slavery ones.

When friendly persuasion failed to secure their interests, the British were not above (to borrow Carl von Clausewitz's phrase) "continuing diplomacy by other means". At least by the mid-1820s, the army and navy were going out from the Colony to attack chiefs whose behaviour did not conform to British dictates. In 1826, Governor Turner led troops to the Bum– Kittam area, captured two stockaded towns, burnt others, and declared a blockade on the coast as far as Cape Mount. This was partly an anti-slaving exercise and partly to punish the chief for refusing territory to the British. Later that year, acting-Governor Macaulay sent out an expedition which went up the Jong river and burned Commenda, a town belonging to a related chief. In 1829, the colonial authorities founded the Sierra Leone Police Corps. In 1890, this force was divided into the Civilian Police and the Frontier Police.

The British developed a modus operandi which characterised their interventions throughout the century: army or frontier police, with naval support if possible, would bombard a town and then usually torch it after the defenders had fled or been defeated. Where possible, local enemies of the party being attacked were invited by the British to accompany them as allies.

In the 1880s, Britain's intervention in the hinterland received added impetus because of the "Scramble for Africa": an intense competition between the European powers for territory in Africa. In this case, the rival was France. To forestall French incursion into what they had come to consider as their own sphere, the British government renewed efforts to finalise a boundary agreement with France and on 1 January 1890 instructed Governor Hay in Sierra Leone to get from chiefs in the boundary area friendship treaties containing a clause forbidding them to treat with another European power without British consent.

Consequently, in 1890 and 1891 Hay and two travelling commissioners, Garrett and Alldridge, went on extensive tours of what is now Sierra Leone obtaining treaties from chiefs. Most of these were not, however, treaties of cession; they were in the form of cooperative agreements between two sovereign powers.

In January 1895, a boundary agreement was signed in Paris, roughly fixing the line between French Guinea and Sierra Leone. The exact line was to be determined by surveyors. As Christopher Fyfe notes, "The delimitation was made almost entirely in geographical terms—rivers, watersheds, parallels—not political. Samu chiefdom, for instance, was divided; the people on the frontier had to opt for farms on one side or villages on the other."

More generally, the arbitrary lumping-together of disparate native peoples into geographical units decided by the colonial powers has been an ongoing source of trouble throughout Africa. These geographical units are now attempting to function as nations but are not naturally nations, being composed in many cases of peoples who are traditional enemies. In Sierra Leone, for example, the Mende, Temne and Creoles remain as rival power blocs between whom lines of fission easily emerge.

Establishment of the British Protectorate and further land acquisition (1895)

In August 1895, an Order-in-Council was issued in Britain authorising the Colony to make laws for the territory around it, extending out to the agreed-upon boundary (which corresponds closely to that of present-day Sierra Leone). On 31 August 1896, a Proclamation was issued in the Colony declaring that territory to be a British Protectorate. The Colony remained a distinct political entity; the Protectorate was governed from it.

Most of the chiefs whose territories the Protectorate subsumed did not enter into it voluntarily. Many had signed treaties of friendship with Britain, but these were often expressed as being between sovereign powers, with there was no subordination to the British. Only a handful of chiefs had signed treaties of cession, and in some cases it is unknown if the chiefs had understood the implications of the treaty. In more remote areas, no treaties had been signed at all. The creation of the Sierra Leone Protectorate was more in the nature of a unilateral acquisition of territory by the British.

Almost every chieftaincy in Sierra Leone responded to the British arrogation of power with armed resistance. The Protectorate Ordinances (passed in the Colony in 1896 and 1897) abolished the title of King and replaced it with "Paramount Chief". Chiefs and kings had formerly been selected by the leading members of their own communities; now all chiefs, even paramount ones, could be deposed or installed at the will of the Governor, and most of the judicial powers of the chiefs were removed and given to courts presided-over by British "District Commissioners". The Governor decreed that a house tax of 5''s'' to 10''s'' was to be levied annually on every dwelling in the Protectorate. To the chiefs, these reductions in their power and prestige were unbearable.

During these conflicts, British officers used the practice of cutting the hands of people to account for bullets spent, similar to what had occurred under the regime Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo Free State. British doctor, John Lancelot Todd, who had travelled to West Africa on an LSTM expedition together with Joseph Everett Dutton, wrote down the testimonies of British officers who had been involved in putting down rebellions in British Sierra Leone and had practiced cutting the hands of the people they shot. The exact number of living victims who ended up mutilated is unknown.

Hut Tax War of 1898

In 1898, two rebellions broke out against British colonial rule in Sierra Leone in response to the introduction of a new hut tax by Governor Frederic Cardew. On 1 January 1898, Cardew introduced the hut tax as a way to pay for the colonial administration's financial expenditures. However, the tax proved to be beyond the financial means of many in the colony, provoking discontent. In February 1898, an attempt by colonial officials to arrest Temne chief Bai Bureh led to him and rebels under his command to revolt against British rule. Bureh's forces launched attacks on British officials and Creole traders.

Despite the ongoing rebellion, Bureh dispatched two peace overtures to the British in April and June of that year, aided by the mediation of Limba chief Almamy Suluku. Cardew rejected both offers, as Bureh would not agree to surrender unconditionally. Bureh's forces conducted a disciplined and skillfully executed guerrilla campaign which caused the British considerable difficulty. Hostilities began in February; Bureh's harassing tactics confounded the British at first but by May they were gaining ground. The rainy season interrupted hostilities until October, when British colonial forces resumed the slow process of capturing rebel stockades. When most of these defences had been eliminated, Bureh was captured or surrendered (accounts differ) in November.

The second revolt in the southeast was a mass uprising, planned somehow to commence everywhere on 27 and 28 April, in which almost all "outsiders"—whether European or Creole—were seized and summarily executed. Although more fearsome than Bai Bureh's rising, it was amorphous, lacked a definite strategy, and was suppressed in most areas within two months. Some Mende rebels in the centre of the country were not beaten until November, however; and Mende king Nyagua's son Maghi, in alliance with some Kissi rebels, continued the revolt in the extreme east of the Protectorate until August 1899. The principal of the uprisings, Bureh, Nyagua and Kpana Lewis, were exiled to the Gold Coast on 30 July 1899. Nine months after the rebellion, the colonial government convicted and executed ninety-six rebels which had been found guilty of murder by hanging. In 1905, Bureh was allowed by the British to return to Sierra Leone, where he continued reassumed his chieftaincy at the settlement of Kasseh.

Creole dissent in the high colonial period (1898–1956)

Timeline of riot and resistance in the high colonial period

1884, Mechanics Alliance trade union is formed.

1885, Carpenters Defensive Union (trade union) formed.

1893, army barracks workers strike in Freetown; other workers stage sympathy strike. Governor Fleming swears-in 200 special constables to suppress it.

1919. Strike and riot. Railway and Public Works department strikes, in part "on account of the nonpayment of War Bonus gratuities to African workers, although these had been paid to other government employees, especially European personnel." Major riots occur in Freetown. The Creole intelligentsia remain neutral.

1920, Sierra Leone Railway Skilled Workmen Mutual Aid Union formed.

1923–1924. Moyamba riot.Kilson 111.

1925. The 1920 union is renamed the Railway Workers' Union.

1926. Strike and riot. Railway Workers' Union strikes 13 January to 26 February. Rioting erupts in Freetown. Creole intelligentsia supports the strikers. According to Wyse this is the first time workers and intelligentsia acted in harmony. The strike was viewed as a threat to stability by the government, and suppressed by troops and police.

1930. Kambia riot.

1930–1931. Haidara Kontorfilli rebellion, named after its charismatic Muslim leader. Wyse gives the causes as "heavy handedness of chiefly rule and the deteriorating social and economic conditions, as well as the erosive nature of colonial rule." Ended after Kontorfilli was killed in a confrontation with Royal West African Frontier Force troops.

1931. Pujehun riot.

1934. Kenema riot.

1938–39. Series of strikes and civil disobedience. WAYL blamed.

1939. Army mutiny. January, led by Creole gunner Emmanuel Cole.

1948. Riot at Baoma Chiefdom of Bo District. One hundred people committed for trial before supreme court for their part in it.

1950, October. African United Mine Workers' Union (Secretary-General was Siaka Stevens) strikes in Marampa and Pepel, Northern Province. Strikers riot and burn the house of the African personnel officer.

1950, 30 October, Kailahun. 5,000 people riot. Cause was a rumour that the Paramount Chief of Luawa Chiefdom would be upheld and reinstated by the government.

1951. Pujehun, South Eastern Province.


''3 March:''
Armed attack at night on chief's house repelled by police.


''15 March:''
Several villages refuse to pay house tax to government unless chief deposed. Intimidation practised on government sympathisers.


''2 June:''
About 300 "rioters" from outlying villages attack the town of Bandejuma. 101 people committed for Supreme Court trial. Others dealt with summarily.

1955, February. Freetown General Strike over rising cost-of-living and low pay. Lasted several days: looting, property damage, including residences of government ministers. Leader: Marcus Grant.

1955–56 riots. From the Northern province district of Kambia to the South-Eastern Pujehun district. "It involved 'many tens of thousands' of peasants and hinterland town dwellers."

In the early 19th century Freetown served as the residence of the British governor who also ruled the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and the Gambia settlements. Sierra Leone also served as the educational centre of British West Africa. Fourah Bay College, established in 1827, rapidly became a magnet for English-speaking Africans on the west coast. For more than a century, it was the only European-style university in western Sub-Saharan Africa.

After the Hut Tax War there was no more large-scale military resistance to colonialism. Resistance and dissent continued, but took other forms. Vocal political dissent came mainly from the Creoles, who had a sizeable middle and upper class of business-people and European-educated professionals such as doctors and lawyers. In the mid-19th century they had enjoyed a period of considerable political influence, but in the late 19th century the government became much less open to them.

They continued to press for political rights, however, and operated a variety of newspapers which governors considered troublesome and demagogic. In 1924, a new constitution was put in place, introducing elected representation (3 out of 22 members) for the first time, with the first elections held on 28 October. Prominent among the Creoles demanding change were the bourgeois nationalist H.C. Bankole-Bright, General Secretary of the Sierra Leone Branch of the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA), and the socialist I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, founder of the West African Youth League (WAYL).

African resistance was not limited to political discussion. Sierra Leone developed an active trade union movement whose strikes were often accompanied by sympathetic rioting among the general population.

Besides the colonial employers, popular hostility was targeted against the tribal chiefs who the British had transformed into functionaries in the colonial system of indirect rule. Their role was to provide policing, collect taxes, and obtain corvée labour (forced labour exacted from those unable to pay taxes) for the colonial government; in return, the government maintained them in a privileged position over the other Africans. Chiefs not willing to play this role were replaced by more compliant ones. According to Kilson, the attitude of the Africans toward their chiefs became ambivalent: frequently they respected the office but resented the exactions made by the individual occupying it. From the chiefs' point of view, the dilemma of an honourable ruler faced with British ultimatums cannot have been easy.

Throughout the 20th century, there were numerous riots directed against tribal chiefs. These culminated in the Freetown riot of 1955, which was suppressed by a combined force of police and Royal Sierra Leone Regiment troops. After those riots, reforms were introduced: the forced-labour system was completely abolished and reductions were made in the powers of the chiefs.

Sierra Leone remained divided into a Colony and a Protectorate, with separate and different political systems constitutionally defined for each. Antagonism between the two entities escalated to a heated debate in 1947, when proposals were introduced to provide for a single political system. Most of the proposals came from the Protectorate. The Krio, led by Isaac Wallace-Johnson, opposed the proposals, the main effect of which would have been to diminish their political power. It was due to the astute politics of Sir Milton Margai that the educated Protectorate elite was won over to join forces with the paramount chiefs in the face of Krio intransigence. Later, Margai used the same skills to win-over opposition leaders and moderate Krio elements for the achievement of independence.

In November 1951, Margai oversaw the drafting of a new constitution, which united the separate Colonial and Protectorate legislatures and provided a framework for decolonization.Advocate Nations of Africa: Sierra Leone
In 1953, Sierra Leone was granted local ministerial powers, and Margai was elected Chief Minister of Sierra Leone. The new constitution ensured Sierra Leone a parliamentary system within the Commonwealth of Nations. In May 1957, Sierra Leone held its first parliamentary election. The Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), which was then the most-popular political party in the colony of Sierra Leone, won the most seats in Parliament. Margai was also re-elected as Chief Minister by an overwhelming majority.

Sierra Leone in World War II

Throughout the war, Freetown served as a critical convoy station for Allied ships.

1960 Independence Conference

On 20 April 1960, Sir Milton Margai led the Sierra Leonean delegation in the negotiations for independence at the constitutional conferences held with Queen Elizabeth II and British Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod, at Lancaster House in London. All twenty-four members of the Sierra Leonean delegation were prominent and well-respected politicians including Sir Milton's younger brother lawyer Sir Albert Margai, trade unionist Siaka Stevens, SLPP-strongman Lamina Sankoh, Creole activist Isaac Wallace-Johnson, Paramount chief Ella Koblo Gulama