History of Sierra Leone
Encyclopedia
The history of Sierra Leone began when the lands became inhabited at least 2,500 years ago. Sierra Leone played a significant part in modern African political liberty and nationalism, and became an independent nation in 1961. It began as a colony of freed American slaves on March 11, 1792, Blacks
voted for the first time in elections, as did women.
Archaeological finds show that Sierra Leone
has been inhabited continuously for at least 2,500 years, populated by successive movements from other parts of Africa. The use of iron
was introduced to Sierra Leone by the 9th century, and by AD 1000 agriculture
was being practiced by coastal tribes. Sierra Leone's dense tropical rainforest partly isolated it from other precolonial African cultures and from the spread of Islam.
European contacts with Sierra Leone were among the first in West Africa
. In 1462 Portuguese explorer Pedro da Cintra mapped the hills surrounding what is now Freetown Harbour, naming the oddly shaped formation Serra Lyoa (Lion Mountains).
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
north of the Freetown estuary to the Little Scarcies
, Temne
at the mouth of the Scarcies and also inland, and Limba farther up the Scarcies.
In the hilly savannah
north of all of these were Susu
and Fula
. The Susu traded regularly with the coastal peoples along river valley routes, bringing salt, clothes woven by the Fula, good quality iron work, and some gold.
When Europeans first arrived at Sierra Leone, slavery among the African peoples of the area was rare. Historian Walter Rodney
has searched the reports of the early Portuguese travelers to the area and found mention in them of only one, quite particular, kind of slavery among the Africans. Rodney says that the Portuguese reports generally were detailed and thorough, especially concerning trade, and that it is unlikely, if slavery had been an important local institution, that the reports would have been so silent about it. The one particular type of slavery that they did mention was this:
If the Africans were not much interested in acquiring slaves, the Portuguese — as well as the Dutch, French, and English who arrived later — certainly were. Initially their method was to cruise the coast, conducting quick kidnapping raids when opportunities presented themselves. Soon, however, they found local actors willing to partner with them in these vicious but profitable affairs: some chiefs were willing to part with a few of the less desirable members of their tribes for a price; others went into the war business — a bevy of battle captives could be sold for a fortune in European rum, cloth, beads, copper, or muskets.
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, chief William Cleveland 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 practise of using slaves for labour to develop:
There are possible additional reasons for the adoption of slavery by the locals to meet their labour requirements:
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, West Indies, and Brazil
. The local slavery has been described, for example, 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, 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; Abraham describes a typical variety:
Some observers consider the term "slave" to be more misleading than informative in 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) were domestic slaves. He also says that "Singulary 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 European apologist for the slave trade estimated the annual total exported from between the Rio Nunez (110 km north of Sierra Leone) and the Sherbro as 3,000.
The transatlantic slave trade was banned by the British in 1807, but illegal slave trading continued for several decades after that.
language group, were a warrior people, well-armed and well-organized, who lived east and possibly somewhat north of present-day Sierra Leone, occupying a belt north of the coastal peoples. Sometime in the early 16th century they began moving south.
According to some Mane who spoke to a Portuguese (Dornelas) in the late 16th century, their travels had begun as a result of their Chief's, a woman named Macario, having been expelled from the imperial city in Mandimansa, their homeland.
Their first arrival at the coast was east of Sierra Leone, at least as far away as the Cess River and likely farther. They advanced up the coast toward Sierra Leone, conquering as they went. They incorporated large numbers of the people they conquered into their army, with the result that by the time they reached Sierra Leone, the rank and file of their army consisted mostly of coastal peoples; the Mane were its commanding group.
The Mane used small bows
, which enabled Manes to reuse their enemies' arrows against them, while the enemy could make no use of the Manes' short arrows. Rodney describes the rest of their equipment thus:
By 1545 they had reached Cape Mount, not far from the south-eastern corner of present-day Sierra Leone. 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 ethnogeography of Sierra Leone is largely a reflection of this momentous two decades. The degree to which the Mane supplanted the original inhabitants varied from place to place. Thus in the present-day Temne we have a people who partly withstood the Mane onslaught: they 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. In their oral tradition the Mende still describe themselves as being a mixture of two peoples: they say that their original members were hunters and fishers who populated the area sparsely in small peaceful settlements; they say that their leaders came later, in a recent historical period, bringing with them the arts of war, and also building larger, more permanent villages. This history receives support from the facts that their population consists of two different racial types, and their language and culture show signs of a layering of two different forms: they have both matrilineal and patrilineal inheritance, for instance.
The Mane invasions militarised Sierra Leone. The Sapes had been un-warlike, but after the invasions, right until the late 19th century, bows, shield
s, 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 12 to 20 feet (4 to 7 m) 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 virtually 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. Little says 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 were perfectly capable of finding reasons of their own to fight: territorial and political ambitions were present. It is well to remember that we are speaking of a period of some 350 years, and the motivations may have changed over time.
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 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. 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 even 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 we know) 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.
The impact of the Mane invasions on the Sapes was obviously considerable, in that they lost their political autonomy. There were other effects as well: Their trade with the interior was interrupted. 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.
waned and, in Sierra Leone, the most significant European group became the British. By, at latest, 1628, they had a "factory" (their name for a trading post
) in the vicinity of Sherbro Island
, which is about 50 km south-east down the coast from present-day Freetown
. One commodity they got was camwood
, a hard timber, from which also could be obtained a red dye. It was at that time still easily accessible from the coast. Also, elephants still lived on Sherbro Island. The Portuguese missionary, Baltasar Barreira
, left Sierra Leone in 1610. Jesuits, and later in the century, Capuchin
s, continued the mission. By 1700 it had closed, although priests occasionally still visited.
A company called the Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa
received a charter from Charles II of England
in 1663 and subsequently built a fort in the Sherbro and on Tasso Island in the Freetown estuary. They were plundered by the Dutch
in 1664, the French in 1704, and pirates in 1719 and 1720. After the Dutch raid, the Tasso Island fort was moved to 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 report, for instance, from 1714, of a king seizing Company goods in retaliation for a breach of protocol
.
Local Afro-Portuguese often acted as middlemen, the Europeans advancing them goods and they trading them to the local people, most often for ivory. In 1728 an overly aggressive Company 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. The French wrecked it again in 1779.
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 Bulom 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 (he may however 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 actually have still considered himself a Mani — in fact Temne chiefs to this day are called by Mani-derived titles — but his people were Temne. The Bureh king in place in 1690 was called Bai Tura — "Bai" is 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 woman 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 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. The Muslim Fula at first cohabited peaceably with the Susu
, Yalunka
, and non-Muslim Fula already at Futa Jalon, but around 1725 embarked on a war of domination over them. As a result many Susu and Yalunka migrated.
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 now are. Some Susu moved as far south as the Temne town of Port Loko, only 60 km upriver from the Atlantic. Eventually a Muslim Susu family called Senko supplanted the town's Temne rulers. Other Susu moved westward from Futa Jalon, eventually dominating the Baga
, Bulom, and Temne north of the Scarcies River.
As for the Yalunka in Futa Jalon, they at 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 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 Futa Jalon. A Fula called Fula Mansa (Mansa = King) became ruler of the Yoni
country 100 km east of present-day Freetown. Some of his Temne subjects there 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 slave
s in North America were brought from Sierra Leone to the Sea Islands
off the coast of the southern United States. During the 18th century there was a thriving trade bringing slaves from Sierra Leone to the plantation
s of South Carolina
and Georgia
where their rice-farming skills made them particularly valuable.
Britain and British seafarers – including Sir Francis Drake, John Hawkins
, Frobisher and Captain Brown — played a major role in the transatlantic trade in captured Africans between 1530 and 1810. Treaty of Utrecht
of 1713, which ended the Spanish War of Succession (1701–1714), had an additional clause (the Asiento
) that granted Britain (among other things) the exclusive rights over the shipment of captured Africans across the Atlantic. Over 10 million captured Africans were shipped to the Caribbean Islands and the Americas
and many more died during the raids, the long marches to the coast and on the infamous middle passage
due to the inhumane conditions in slave ships. Britain outlawed the slave trade on 29 March 1807 with the Slave Trade Act 1807 and the British Navy operating from Freetown took active measures to stop the Atlantic slave trade.
The area, said to have previously been a slave market, was first settled in 1787 by 400 formerly enslaved Black Britons sent from London
, England
, under the auspices of the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor
, an organisation set up by the British
abolitionist, Granville Sharp
. They established the 'Province of Freedom' or Granville Town on land purchased from local Koya Temne subchief King Tom and regent Naimbana, 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. Disputes soon broke out, and King Tom's successor, King Jimmy, burnt the settlement to the ground 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 on 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
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The basis for the Freetown Colony began in 1791, when Thomas Peters, an African American who had served in the Black Pioneers
, travelled to England to report the grievances of the black population. Peters met with the directors of the Sierra Leone Company
, and it was there 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 at Sierra Leone; the London-based and newly created Sierra Leone Company had decided to create a new colony but before Peter's 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. About 1,196 of these former American slaves (who were mainly from Virginia
and South Carolina
originally) sailed in 15 ships and arrived in St. George Bay between February 26-March 9. 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. The women remained in the ships while the Settler men worked tirelessly to clear the land. Clarkson told the men to clear the land until they reached a large cotton tree. The Settler men toiled and many were scratched and hurt by the shrubbery and bush. After the 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 March 11, 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. Eventually John Clarkson would be sworn in as 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 August 24, 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 between 300-400 houses with architecture resembling that of the American South with 3–4 feet stone foundations with wooden superstructures. Eventually this style of housing (brought by the Nova Scotians) would be the model for the 'bod oses' of their Creole descendants.
In 1800, the Nova Scotians rebelled and it was the arrival of the 500 Jamaican Maroons which caused the rebellion to be suppressed. Thirty-four Nova Scotians were banished and sent to either the Sherbro or a penal colony at Gore. Some of these of the Nova Scotians were eventually allowed back into Freetown. After the Maroons captured the rebels, they were granted the land of the Nova Scotian rebels. Eventually the Maroons had their own district at Maroon Town.
The Maroons were a free community of blacks from Trelawny Parish who had been resettled in Nova Scotia after surrendering to the British government. They petitioned the British government for settlement elsewhere due to the climate in Nova Scotia.
After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the British Naval Squadron was stationed in Freetown to intercept and seize slave ships participating in the illegal slave trade. The slaves that were held on these vessels were released into Freetown and were called 'Captured negroes', 'Recaptives' or 'Liberated Africans'.
In 1800 Sierra Leone was still only a small colony extending a few miles (a few kilometres) 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, treaty making, and military expeditions. Trade was the driving force; the treaties and military expeditions were undertaken primarily to promote and increase it.
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-chifdom 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 Karl 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. These excursions were typical of those that continued 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 later. 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 on 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.
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 expressed as being between sovereign powers contracting with each other; there was no subordination. Only a handful of Chiefs had signed treaties of cession, and in some of those cases it is doubtful whether they had understood the terms. In remote areas no treaties had been obtained at all.
Strictly speaking, a Protectorate does not exist unless the people in it have agreed to be protected. The Sierra Leone Protectorate was more in the nature of a unilateral acquisition of territory by Britain.
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; 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 5s to 10s was to be levied annually on every dwelling in the Protectorate. To the chiefs, these reductions in their power and prestige were unbearable. When, in 1898, attempts were made to actually collect the tax, they rose up, first in the north, led by a dominant Temne chief called Bai Bureh, and then in Mende country to the south. The two struggles took on quite different characteristics.
Bai 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 the British resumed the slow process of eliminating the African's stockades. When most of these defences had been eliminated, Bureh was captured or surrendered (accounts differ) in November.
The Mende war 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 in 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
, fought on in the extreme east of the Protectorate until August 1899.
The two risings together are referred to as the Hut Tax War of 1898
. The principals, Bai Bureh, Nyagua and Be Sherbro (Gbana Lewis), were exiled to the Gold Coast on 30 July 1899; a large number of their subordinates were executed.
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. Prominent among the Creoles demanding change were the bourgiose 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. For instance, Sierra Leone developed an active trade union
movement whose strikes were often accompanied by sympathetic rioting among the general population.
Besides the colonial employers, one of the main targets of popular hostility was 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 corvee labour for the colonialists; in return the colonialists 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. Of course, from the chiefs' point of view, the dilemma of an honourable ruler faced with British ultimatum
s can not have been easy.
Throughout the 20th century, there were numerous riots directed against tribal chiefs. These culminated in the Protectorate-wide riots of 1955-1956, which were suppressed only by a considerable slaughter of peasants by the army. After those riots reforms were introduced: the forced labour system was completely abolished and reductions were made in the powers of the chiefs.
One notable event during the 20th century was the giving of a monopoly on mineral mining to the De Beers-run Sierra Leone Selection Trust
in 1935, which was scheduled to last for 99 years. The 1951 constitution provided a framework for decolonization
. Local ministerial responsibility was introduced in 1953, when Sir Milton Margai
was appointed Chief Minister. He became Prime Minister after successful completion of constitutional talks in London in 1960.
In April 1961, Sierra Leone became politically independent of Great Britain. It retained a parliamentary system of government and was a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations
. The Sierra Leone People's Party
(SLPP), led by Sir Milton Margai
were victorious in the first general election
under universal adult franchise in May 1962. Upon Sir Milton's death in 1964, his half-brother, Sir Albert Margai
, succeeded him as Prime Minister. Sir Albert attempted to establish a single-party state
but met fierce resistance from the opposition All People's Congress
(APC) and ultimately abandoned the idea.
In closely contested elections
in March 1967, the APC won a plurality of the parliamentary seats. Accordingly, the Governor General (representing the British Monarch) Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston
declared Siaka Stevens
– APC leader and Mayor of Freetown – as the new Prime Minister. Within a few hours, Stevens and Lightfoot-Boston were placed under house arrest by Brigadier David Lansana
, the Commander of the Sierra Leone Military Forces (SLMF), on grounds that the determination of office should await the election of the tribal representatives to the house. A group of senior military officers overrode this action by seizing control of the government on 23 March, arresting Brigadier Lansana, and suspending the constitution. The group constituted itself as the National Reformation Council
(NRC) with Brigadier Andrew Juxon-Smith
as its chairman. The NRC in turn was overthrown in April 1968 by a "sergeants' revolt", the Anti-Corruption Revolutionary Movement. NRC members were imprisoned, army and police officers were deposed, the democratic constitution was restored, and power was handed back to Stevens, who at last assumed the office of Prime Minister.
After the return to civilian rule by-elections were held beginning in the fall of 1968 and an all-APC cabinet was appointed. Tranquility was not completely restored: in November 1968 a state of emergency was declared after provincial disturbances, and in March 1971 the government survived an unsuccessful military coup. In April 1971 a republican constitution was adopted under which Stevens became President. In 1972 by-elections the opposition SLPP complained of intimidation and procedural obstruction by the APC and militia. These problems became so severe that it boycotted the 1973 general election
; as a result the APC won 84 of the 85 elected seats. In July 1974, the government uncovered an alleged military coup plot. As in 1971, the leaders of were tried and executed. In 1977, student demonstrations against the government disrupted Sierra Leone politics. A general election
was called later that year in which corruption was again endemic; the APC won 74 seats and the SLPP 15.
. Following enactment of the 1978 constitution, SLPP members of parliament joined the APC.
The first elections
under the new one-party constitution took place on 1 May 1982. Elections in about two-thirds of the constituencies were contested. Because of irregularities, the government cancelled elections in 13 constituencies. By-elections took place on 4 June 1982. The new cabinet appointed after the election was balanced ethnically between Temnes and Mendes
. It included as the new Finance Minister Salia Jusu-Sheriff
, a former leader of the SLPP who returned to that party in late 1981. His accession to the cabinet was viewed by many as a step toward making the APC a true national party.
Siaka P. Stevens, who had been head of state of Sierra Leone for 18 years, retired from that position in November 1985, although he continued his role as chairman of the ruling APC party. In August 1985 the APC named military commander Maj. Gen. Joseph Saidu Momoh
, Stevens' own choice, as the party candidate to succeed Stevens. Momoh was elected President in a referendum
on 1 October 1985. A formal inauguration was held in January 1986, and new parliamentary elections were held in May 1986.
in September; it became effective on 1 October 1991. The rebel war in the eastern part of the country, led by Capt. Foday Sankoh
and his Revolutionary United Front
(RUF), posed an increasing burden on the country.
There was great suspicion that president Momoh was not serious about his promise of political reform, as APC rule continued to be increasingly marked by abuses of power. The APC was also alleged to have been hoarding arms and planning a violent campaign against the opposition parties ahead of multi-party general elections scheduled for late 1992. Several senior government officials in the APC administration like Dr. Salia Jusu Sheriff, Dr. Abass Bundu, J.B. Dauda and Dr. Sama Banya resigned from the APC government respectively to resuscitate the previously disbanded SLPP. While other senior government officials like Thaimu Bangura
, Edward Kargbo
and Desmond Luke
resigned from the APC and formed their own respective political parties to challenge the ruling APC.
On 29 April 1992 a group of seven young military officers, led by 25-year-old Capt. Valentine Strasser
, launched a military coup, which sent Momoh into exile in Guinea
and established the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) with Strasser as President. They were 25 year-old Captain Valentine Strasser
, Sergeant
Solomon Musa
, Brigadier-General Julius Maada Bio
, Lieutenant Colonel
Tom Nyuma
, Colonel
Yahya Kanu
, Lieutenant Colonel Komba Mondeh
, and Captain Samuel Komba Kambo
. But he was ousted in January 1996 and replaced by his defence minister Brig. Gen. Julius Maada Bio
. Promises of a return to civilian rule were fulfilled by Bio, who handed power over to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), after the conclusion of elections in early 1996.
Kabbah's government reached a cease-fire in the war with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which had launched its first attacks in 1991; rebel terror attacks continued, however, apparently aided by Liberia.
Bio reinstated the Constitution and called for general elections. In the second round of presidential elections in early 1996, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
, an ethnic Mandingo
and the candidate of the SLPP), won 59% of the vote, over John Karefa-Smart
, an ethnic Sherbro
and the candidate of the United National People's Party
(UNPP) who won 41%. Bio fulfilled his promise of a return to civilian rule, and handed power to Kabbah. President Tejan Kabbah's SLPP also won a majority of the seats in Parliament.
For years Sierra Leonean soldiers in the lower ranks were not paid a good salary and they were denied privileges and benefits. Soldiers were killed in action and no provision was made for their families. Major Johnny Paul Koroma
, an army officer who hailed from the Limba ethnic group, was allegedly involved in an attempt to overthrow the government of President Kabbah. He was arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned at Freetown's Pademba Road Prison
. On May 25, 1997, a group of seventeen junior army officers, loyal to Major Koroma, formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council
(AFRC) led by Corporal Tamba Gborie and Sergent Alex Tamba Brima
, both ethnic Kono. They launched a military coup which sent President Kabbah into exile in Guinea
.
Corporal Tamba Gborie quickly went to the headquarters of radio station SLBS FM 99.9 in Freetown to announce the coup and to alert all soldiers to report for guard duty. The AFRC released Koroma from prison and installed him as their chairman and Head of State, with Corporal Tamba Gborie as deputy in command of the AFRC. Koroma suspended the constitution, banned demonstrations, shut down all private radio stations in the country and invited the RUF to join the new junta government, with its leader Foday Sankoh as the Vice-Chairman of the new AFRC-RUF coalition junta government. Within days, Freetown was overwhelmed by the presence of the RUF combatants who came to the city in their thousands. The Kamajors
, a group of traditional fighters mostly from the Mende
ethnic group under the command of deputy [Defence Minister Samuel Hinga Norman
, remained loyal to President Kabbah. The Kamajors defended Bo, the country's second largest city, from the Junta and continue their attack against the AFRC and RUF in south-eastern Sierra Leone
The AFRC, led by Maj. Koroma, overthrew President Kabbah on 25 May 1997, and invited the RUF to join the government. After ten months in office the junta was ousted by the Nigeria
-led ECOMOG forces, and the democratically elected government of President Kabbah was reinstated in March 1998. Following the reinstatement of Kabbah's government, hundreds of civilians who had been accused of helping the AFRC government were illegally detained. Courts martial were held for soldiers accused of assisting the AFRC government. 24 of these were found guilty and were executed without appeal in October 1998. On 6 January 1999 another unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government by the AFRC resulted in massive loss of life and destruction of property in Freetown and its environs. An estimated 3,000 people were killed, women and girls were raped, children were abducted and subsequently conscripted, limbs were amputated, and much of the property in and around Freetownwas destroyed.
In October the United Nations agreed to send peacekeepers to help restore order and disarm the rebels. The first of the 6,000-member force began arriving in December, and the Security Council voted in February 2000, to increase the UN force to 11,000 (and subsequently to 13,000). In May, when nearly all Nigerian forces had left and UN forces were attempting to disarm the RUF in eastern Sierra Leone, Sankoh's forces clashed with the UN troops, and some 500 peacekeepers were taken hostage as the peace accord effectively collapsed.
An 800-member British force entered the country to secure west Freetown and evacuate Europeans; some also acted in support of the forces (including Koroma's AFRC group) fighting the RUF. After Sankoh was captured in Freetown, the hostages were gradually released by the RUF, but clashes between the UN forces and the RUF continued, and in July the West Side Boys (part of the AFRC) clashed with the peacekeepers. In the same month the UN Security Council placed a ban on the sale of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone in an attempt to undermine the funding of the RUF. In late August, Issa Sesay became head of the RUF; also, British troops training the Sierra Leone army were taken hostage by the West Side Boys, but were freed by a British raid in September.
General elections scheduled for early 2001 were postponed in February 2001, due to the insecurity caused by the civil war. In May 2001 sanctions were imposed on Liberia because of its support for the rebels, and UN peacekeepers began to make headway in disarming the various factions. Although disarmament of rebel and pro-government militias proceeded slowly and fighting continued to occur, by January 2002 most of the estimated 45,000 fighters had surrendered their weapons. In a ceremony that month, government and rebel leaders declared the civil war to have ended; an estimated 50,000 persons died in the conflict.
. The officers were Colonel
Yahya Kanu
, an ethnic Temne; the ethnic Mendes Captain Solomon A. J. Musa; Captain Julius Maada Bio
, and Lieutenant
Sahr Sandy; ethnic Konos Captain Samuel Komba Kambo
and Captain Komba Mondeh
; the Creole Captain Valentine E. M. Strasser; and the ethnic Kissi
Second Lieutenant
Tom Nyuma
. Sandy was said to have insisted to his colleagues on the second day of the action that theirs would no longer be a revolt over pay but a revolution to overthrow the APC and the system of one-party politics. Sandy was the only soldier killed during the coup, allegedly by his adoptive uncle, APC member Colonel S.I.M. Turay. Turay was declared wanted for the murder of Sandy by the NPRC junta, but managed to escape to Guinea, where he joined the exiled president. Colonel Yahya Kanu was the very popular commander of the fearless Tiger Battalion which was at the forefront in the war against the RUF under president Momoh.
The officers established the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC). Kanu was not declared head of the new junta. In an interview with the BBC Focus on Africa program, he even refused to acknowledge that the revolt was a coup by his men, yet he was seen as the de facto leader of the NPRC.
Later, however, Kanu was arrested and imprisoned by his junior officers, who accused him of trying to negotiate a compromise with the toppled APC administration. Kanu's arrest divided the army into two rival groups, namely, his Tiger Battalion and Tom Nyuma's Cobra Battalion and their respective supporters.
On April 29, 1992, Valentine Strasser took over as leader and chairman of the NPRC and Head of State of Sierra Leone. Strasser became the youngest Head of State in the world, just three days after his 27th birthday. 25 year-old S.A.J. Musa, a close friend of Strasser and an officer in Kanu's feared Tiger Battalion, was named Vice-Chairman of the NPRC. Many Sierra Leoneans nationwide rushed into the streets to celebrate the NPRC's takeover from the dictatorial 23-year APC regime, which they perceived as corrupt.
The NPRC junta immediately suspended the 1991 Constitution, declared a state of emergency
, banned all political parties, limited freedom of speech
and freedom of the press
, and enacted a rule-by-decree policy, in which soldiers were granted unlimited powers of administrative detention without charge or trial, and challenges against such detentions in court were precluded. The NPRC junta maintained relations with ECOWAS and strengthened support for Sierra Leone-based ECOMOG troops fighting in Liberia.
In his first speech as head of state, Strasser reassured the world of meeting his country's obligations to her creditors, and making a commitment to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to accelerate the economic reform process started by Momoh's government in 1989 aimed at stabilizing the severely crippled economy. Shortly after that, Strasser negotiated a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) with these two institutions. The junta formed the Supreme Council of State (SCS), made up only of members of the NPRC — the six surviving leaders mentioned above — chaired by Strasser himself. They also appointed an advisory council of retired senior civil servants and academics, chaired by a retired UN administrator Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. These men were all regarded as untainted by the 23 years of alleged APC mismanagement, corruption and abuse of power.
In December 1992, an alleged coup attempt against the NPRC administration of Strasser, aimed at freeing the detained Colonel Yayah Kanu, was foiled. Sgt. Lamin Bangura (an ethnic Temne) and some junior army officers of the Tiger Battalion were identified as being behind the alleged plot. It led to the execution of seventeen Sierra Leone soldiers, including Sgt. Bangura and Yayah Kanu, and some senior members of the overthrown APC government who had been in detention at the Pa Demba Road prison. These included the notorious Inspector General of Police James Bambay Kamara, key former APC ministers, senior party members and thugs. By mid 1993 Captain Strasser announced a plan to hand over the government to civilian rule by 1996. Dr. James Jonah, who was by then Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, was appointed by the NPRC junta as the chairman of the new Interim National Electoral Commission (INEC), which was in charge of the demarcation of electoral boundaries and voter registration. In 1994 the NPRC junta proposed a change in the age restriction in the 1991 Sierra Leone constitution which stated only Sierra Leoneans over the age of 40 are eligible for the presidency, thus excluding Strasser and others in the NPRC.
The NPRC proved to be nearly as ineffectual as the Momoh-led APC government in repelling the RUF. More and more of the country fell to RUF fighters, and by 1995 they held much of the diamond-rich Eastern Province and were at the edge of Freetown. In response, the NPRC hired several hundred mercenaries from the private firm Executive Outcomes
. Within a month they had driven RUF fighters back to enclaves along Sierra Leone’s borders, and cleared the RUF from the Kono diamond producing areas of Sierra Leone. However, Captains Tom Nyuma (Secretary of State East) and Komba Mondeh (Secretary of State Defence), who were regarded outside Freetown as the only "fighters" in the NPRC who dared to lead the troops to attack RUF strongholds in the east and south, were widely credited with these successes against the RUF.
During this time corruption had erupted within the senior ranks of both the NPRC and the military, and the junta had become divided between SAJ Musa, on the one side, against Nyuma and Mondeh, on the other. SAJ Musa had become very popular in Freetown for fighting grafts and enforcing strict discipline in the public service and his last-Saturday-of-the-month city cleaning exercises. Nyuma, nicknamed "The Ranger", was seen across the country as the daredevil of the NPRC and the "protector of the East." There was great suspicion among the SCS members that SAJ Musa was planning a coup to topple his friend Strasser, whom he accused of being subservient to the wishes of Nyuma and Mondeh.
On 5 July 1995, under pressure from Nyuma, Captain Strasser dismissed SAJ Musa as deputy chairman of the NPRC and appointed an ally of Tom Nyuma, the Secretary of State for Information and Broadcasting Captain Julius Maada Bio, to the position. Musa was arrested by soldiers led by Nyuma's men, and was briefly placed under house arrest in Freetown before being sent on to exile in the UK. Senior NPRC members, including Bio (who by now had promoted himself to Brigadier), Nyuma and Mondeh (both promoted to Colonel), were becoming increasingly unhappy with (still-Captain) Strasser's handling of the preparation for the pending elections, the peace negotiation with the RUF, and the transition to democratic civilian rule.
In January 1996, after nearly four years in power, Captain V.E.M. Strasser was ousted in a bloodless "palace" coup led by his NPRC deputy Brigadier General Julius Maada Bio with the support of several senior NPRC members including both Tom Nyuma and Komba Mondeh. Bio claimed that Strasser was attempting to unilaterally amend the age restriction in the constitution in order to perpetuate his hold on power.
The 1999 Lomé Accord called for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to provide a forum for both victims and perpetrators of human rights violations during the conflict to tell their stories and facilitate genuine reconciliation. Subsequently, the Sierra Leonean Government and the UN agreed to set up the Special Court for Sierra Leone to try those who "bear the greatest responsibility for the commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes and serious violations of international humanitarian law, as well as crimes under relevant Sierra Leonean law within the territory of Sierra Leone since 30 November 1996." Both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court began operating in the summer of 2002. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Final Report to the government in October 2004. In June 2005, the Government of Sierra Leone issued a White Paper on the Commission’s final report which accepted some but not all of the Commission's recommendations. Members of civil society groups dismissed the government’s response as too vague and continued to criticize the government for its failure to follow up on the report’s recommendations.
In March 2003 the Special Court for Sierra Leone issued its first indictments. Foday Sankoh, already in custody, was indicted, along with notorious RUF field commander Sam "Mosquito" Bockarie, Johnny Paul Koroma, and Hinga Norman, the Minister of Interior and former head of the Civil Defense Force, among several others. Norman was arrested when the indictments were announced, while Bockarie and Koroma remained in hiding. On 5 May 2003 Bockarie was killed in Liberia, allegedly on orders from President Charles Taylor, who feared Bockarie’s testimony before the Special Court. Johnny Paul Koroma was also rumoured to have been killed, though his death remains unconfirmed. Two of the accused, Foday Sankoh and Hinga Norman, have died while incarcerated. On 25 March 2006, with the election of Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo permitted transfer of Charles Taylor, who had been living in exile in the Nigerian coastal town of Calobar, to Sierra Leone for prosecution. Two days later, Taylor attempted to flee Nigeria, but he was apprehended by Nigerian authorities and transferred to Freetown under UN guard.
Elections held on 11 August 2007 had a good turnout and were initially judged by official observers to be "free, fair and credible".
There is an increase in the number of drug cartels, many from Colombia
, who are starting to use Sierra Leone as a base to ship drugs on to Europe. It is feared that this may lead to increased corruption and violence and may turn the country, like neighbouring Guinea-Bissau
, into a narco state. In 2008, an aircraft carrying almost 700 kg of cocaine was caught at Freetown’s airport and 19 people, including customs officials, were arrested, and the minister for transport is still suspended.
David Junior Rogers
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
voted for the first time in elections, as did women.
Early history
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
has been inhabited continuously for at least 2,500 years, populated by successive movements from other parts of Africa. The use of iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
was introduced to Sierra Leone by the 9th century, and by AD 1000 agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
was being practiced by coastal tribes. Sierra Leone's dense tropical rainforest partly isolated it from other precolonial African cultures and from the spread of Islam.
European contacts with Sierra Leone were among the first in West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
. In 1462 Portuguese explorer Pedro da Cintra mapped the hills surrounding what is now Freetown Harbour, naming the oddly shaped formation Serra Lyoa (Lion Mountains).
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
Freetown
Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean located in the Western Area of the country, and had a city proper population of 772,873 at the 2004 census. The city is the economic, financial, and cultural center of...
estuaries, Loko
Loko language
The Loko language is a Mande language spoken in Sierra Leone by the Loko people, who live primarily in the Northern Province.-External links:* from Ethnologue...
north of the Freetown estuary to the Little Scarcies
Little Scarcies River
The Little Scarcies River is a river in west Africa that begins in Guinea and flows into Sierra Leone, after which it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. It is surrounded by extensive marshlands . The river is also known as the Kaba River....
, Temne
Temne language
Temne is a language of the Atlantic subfamily of Niger–Congo languages spoken in Sierra Leone by about 2 million first speakers. One of the country's most widely spoken languages, it is spoken by 30% of the country’s population...
at the mouth of the Scarcies and also inland, and Limba farther up the Scarcies.
In the hilly savannah
Savannah
Savannah or savanna is a type of grassland.It can also mean:-People:* Savannah King, a Canadian freestyle swimmer* Savannah Outen, a singer who gained popularity on You Tube...
north of all of these were Susu
Susu people
The Soso are a major Mande ethnic group living primarily in Guinea. Smaller communities are also located in the neighboring countries of Sierra Leone, Senegal and Mali. The Susu are descendants of the thirteenth century Mali Empire...
and Fula
Fula people
Fula people or Fulani or Fulbe are an ethnic group spread over many countries, predominantly in West Africa, but found also in Central Africa and Sudanese North Africa...
. The Susu traded regularly with the coastal peoples along river valley routes, bringing salt, clothes woven by the Fula, good quality iron work, and some gold.
European contact and slavery (15th century)
Portuguese ships began visiting regularly in the late 15th century, and for a while they maintained a fort on the north shore of the Freetown estuary. The estuary is one of the few good harbours on West Africa's surf-pounded "Windward Shore" (Liberia to Senegal), and also has a good watering spot; it soon became a favourite destination of European mariners. Some of the Portuguese stayed permanently, trading and intermarrying with the local people.When Europeans first arrived at Sierra Leone, slavery among the African peoples of the area was rare. Historian Walter Rodney
Walter Rodney
Walter Rodney was a prominent Guyanese historian and political activist, who was assassinated in Guyana in 1980.-Career:...
has searched the reports of the early Portuguese travelers to the area and found mention in them of only one, quite particular, kind of slavery among the Africans. Rodney says that the Portuguese reports generally were detailed and thorough, especially concerning trade, and that it is unlikely, if slavery had been an important local institution, that the reports would have been so silent about it. The one particular type of slavery that they did mention was this:
- a person in trouble in one kingdom could go to another and place himself under the protection of its king, whereupon he became a "slave" of that king, obliged to provide free labour and liable for sale. (Such a person would likely have retained some rights and had some opportunity to rise in status as time passed.)
If the Africans were not much interested in acquiring slaves, the Portuguese — as well as the Dutch, French, and English who arrived later — certainly were. Initially their method was to cruise the coast, conducting quick kidnapping raids when opportunities presented themselves. Soon, however, they found local actors willing to partner with them in these vicious but profitable affairs: some chiefs were willing to part with a few of the less desirable members of their tribes for a price; others went into the war business — a bevy of battle captives could be sold for a fortune in European rum, cloth, beads, copper, or muskets.
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:
The slave owners were originally white and foreigners, but the late eighteenth century saw the emergence of powerful slave-trading chiefs, who were said to own large numbers of 'domestic slaves'."
For example in the late 18th century, chief William Cleveland had a large "slave town" on the mainland opposite the Banana Islands
Banana Islands
The Banana Islands lie south west of the Freetown Peninsula in Sierra Leone. The two main islands, Dublin Island and Ricketts Island, are linked by a causeway. Dublin Island is known for its beaches while Ricketts Island is best known for its forests...
, 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
Falaba
Falaba is a former town in the Solima area, Koinadugu District of the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. The population of Falaba is largely from the Mandingo and Kuranko ethnic groups. The village is largely muslim.-History:...
; its inhabitants worked at farming.
Rodney has postulated two means by which slaving for export could have caused a local practise of using slaves for labour to develop:
- a) Not all war captives offered for sale would have been bought by the Portuguese; e.g., weak or sick looking individuals would not be bought. Their captors would therefore have had to find something else to do with them. Rodney believes that executing them was rare and that usually they would have been used for local labour.
- b) There is a time lag between the time a slave is captured and the time he or she is bought. Thus there would often have been a pool of slaves awaiting sale; and while they waited they 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 taken up 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 up a new sphere of economic activity; in particular it crated 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, West Indies, and Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. The local slavery has been described, for example, by anthropologist M. McCulloch:
[S]laves were housed close to the fresh tracts of land they cleared for their masters. They were considered part of the household of their owner, and enjoyed limited rights. It was not customary to sell them except for a serious offense, such as adultery with the wife of a freeman. Small plots of land were given to them for their own use, and they might retain the proceeds of crops they grew on these plots; by this means it was possible for a slave to become the owner of another slave. Sometimes a slave married into the household of his master and rose to a position of trust; there is an instance of a slave taking charge of a chiefdom during the minority of the heir. Descendants of slaves were often practically indistinguishable from freemen.
Slaves were sometimes sent on errands outside the kingdoms of their masters and returned voluntarily.
Speaking specifically of the era around 1700, 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; Abraham describes a typical variety:
A freeman heavily in debt, and facing the threat of the punishment of being sold, would approach a wealthier man or chief with a plea to pay of his debts ‘while I sit on your lap’. Or he could give a son or some other dependent of his ‘to be for you’, the wealthy man or chief. This in effect meant that the person so pawned was automatically reduced to a position of dependence, and if he was never redeemed, he or his children eventually became part of the master's extended family. By this time, the children were practically indistinguishable from the real children of the master, since they grew up regarding one another as brothers.
Some observers consider the term "slave" to be more misleading than informative in 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
Mende people
The Mende people are one of the two largest and most dominant ethnic group in Sierra Leone, along with the Temne. The Mende make up 30% of Sierra Leone's total population or 1,932,015 members...
, who then had about 560,000 people, about 15 per cent of the population (i.e. 84,000) were domestic slaves. He also says that "Singulary 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 European apologist for the slave trade estimated the annual total exported from between the Rio Nunez (110 km north of Sierra Leone) and the Sherbro as 3,000.
The transatlantic slave trade was banned by the British in 1807, but illegal slave trading continued for several decades after that.
Mane invasions (16th century)
In the mid 16th century occurred events of profound importance in the modern history of Sierra Leone: these were the Mane invasions. The Mane (also called Mani), southern members of the MandeMande languages
The Mande languages are spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé people and include Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Bissa, Dioula, Kagoro, Bozo, Mende, Susu, Yacouba, Vai, and Ligbi...
language group, were a warrior people, well-armed and well-organized, who lived east and possibly somewhat north of present-day Sierra Leone, occupying a belt north of the coastal peoples. Sometime in the early 16th century they began moving south.
According to some Mane who spoke to a Portuguese (Dornelas) in the late 16th century, their travels had begun as a result of their Chief's, a woman named Macario, having been expelled from the imperial city in Mandimansa, their homeland.
Their first arrival at the coast was east of Sierra Leone, at least as far away as the Cess River and likely farther. They advanced up the coast toward Sierra Leone, conquering as they went. They incorporated large numbers of the people they conquered into their army, with the result that by the time they reached Sierra Leone, the rank and file of their army consisted mostly of coastal peoples; the Mane were its commanding group.
The Mane used small bows
Bow (weapon)
The bow and arrow is a projectile weapon system that predates recorded history and is common to most cultures.-Description:A bow is a flexible arc that shoots aerodynamic projectiles by means of elastic energy. Essentially, the bow is a form of spring powered by a string or cord...
, which enabled Manes to reuse their enemies' arrows against them, while the enemy could make no use of the Manes' short arrows. Rodney describes the rest of their equipment thus:
The rest of their arms consisted of large shields made of reeds, long enough to give complete cover to the user, two knives, one of which was tied to the left arm, and two quivers for their arrows. Their clothes consisted of loose cotton shirts with wide necks and ample sleeves reaching down to their knees to become tights. One striking feature of their appearance was the abundance of feathers stuck in their shirts and their red caps.
By 1545 they had reached Cape Mount, not far from the south-eastern corner of present-day Sierra Leone. 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 ethnogeography of Sierra Leone is largely a reflection of this momentous two decades. The degree to which the Mane supplanted the original inhabitants varied from place to place. Thus in the present-day Temne we have a people who partly withstood the Mane onslaught: they kept their language, but became ruled by a line of Mane kings. The present-day Loko and Mende
Mende people
The Mende people are one of the two largest and most dominant ethnic group in Sierra Leone, along with the Temne. The Mende make up 30% of Sierra Leone's total population or 1,932,015 members...
are the result of a more complete submersion of the original culture: their languages are similar, and both essentially Mande. In their oral tradition the Mende still describe themselves as being a mixture of two peoples: they say that their original members were hunters and fishers who populated the area sparsely in small peaceful settlements; they say that their leaders came later, in a recent historical period, bringing with them the arts of war, and also building larger, more permanent villages. This history receives support from the facts that their population consists of two different racial types, and their language and culture show signs of a layering of two different forms: they have both matrilineal and patrilineal inheritance, for instance.
The Mane invasions militarised Sierra Leone. The Sapes had been un-warlike, but after the invasions, right until the late 19th century, bows, shield
Shield
A shield is a type of personal armor, meant to intercept attacks, either by stopping projectiles such as arrows or redirecting a hit from a sword, mace or battle axe to the side of the shield-bearer....
s, 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 12 to 20 feet (4 to 7 m) 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 virtually 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:
No one who has not seen these fences can realize the immense strength of them. The outer fence at Hahu I measured in several places, and found it to be from 2 to 3 feet thick, and most of the logs, or rather trees, of which it was formed, had taken root and were throwing out leaves and shoots.
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. Little says 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 were perfectly capable of finding reasons of their own to fight: territorial and political ambitions were present. It is well to remember that we are speaking of a period of some 350 years, and the motivations may have changed over time.
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 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. 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
Poro
The Poro, or Purrah or Purroh, is a secret society of Sierra Leone and Liberia.-Structure:Only males are admitted to its ranks, but two other affiliated and secret associations exist, the Yassi and the Bundu, the first of which is nominally reserved for females, but members of the Poro are admitted...
, an organisation common to many different kingdoms and even 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 we know) 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.
The impact of the Mane invasions on the Sapes was obviously considerable, in that they lost their political autonomy. There were other effects as well: Their trade with the interior was interrupted. 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
In the 17th century Portuguese imperialismImperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
waned and, in Sierra Leone, the most significant European group became the British. By, at latest, 1628, they had a "factory" (their name for a trading post
Trading post
A trading post was a place or establishment in historic Northern America where the trading of goods took place. The preferred travel route to a trading post or between trading posts, was known as a trade route....
) in the vicinity of Sherbro Island
Sherbro Island
Sherbro Island, is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, located in Bonthe District off the Southern Province of Sierra Leone. The Sherbro make up by far the largest ethnic group in the island....
, which is about 50 km south-east down the coast from present-day Freetown
Freetown
Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean located in the Western Area of the country, and had a city proper population of 772,873 at the 2004 census. The city is the economic, financial, and cultural center of...
. One commodity they got was camwood
Camwood
Camwood , also known as African sandalwood, is a shrubby, hard-wooded African tree. Its wood is commonly used to make a red dye. The earliest dye wood was from West Africa...
, a hard timber, from which also could be obtained a red dye. It was at that time still easily accessible from the coast. Also, elephants still lived on Sherbro Island. The Portuguese missionary, Baltasar Barreira
Baltasar Barreira
Baltasar Barreira , born at Lisbon, was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary to Africa.-Missions:He was in Angola, for 13 years, founding a school in Luanda in 1587. Later in life he went to West Africa, reaching the Cape Verde Islands in 1604...
, left Sierra Leone in 1610. Jesuits, and later in the century, Capuchin
Order of Friars Minor Capuchin
The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin is an Order of friars in the Catholic Church, among the chief offshoots of the Franciscans. The worldwide head of the Order, called the Minister General, is currently Father Mauro Jöhri.-Origins :...
s, continued the mission. By 1700 it had closed, although priests occasionally still visited.
Royal African Company
The Royal African Company was a slaving company set up by the Stuart family and London merchants once the former retook the English throne in the English Restoration of 1660...
received a charter from Charles II of England
Charles II of England
Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...
in 1663 and subsequently built a fort in the Sherbro and on Tasso Island in the Freetown estuary. They were plundered by the Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
in 1664, the French in 1704, and pirates in 1719 and 1720. After the Dutch raid, the Tasso Island fort was moved to nearby Bunce Island
Bunce Island
Bunce Island is the site of an 18th century British slave castle in the Republic of Sierra Leone in West Africa....
which was more defensible.
The Europeans made payments, called Cole
Cole
-Places:Antarctic*Cole Peninsula, a peninsula on the continent of AntarcticaCanada*Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, a community of Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia**Cole Harbour**Cole Harbour , Nova ScotiaEngland*Cole, SomersetPoland...
, 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 report, for instance, from 1714, of a king seizing Company goods in retaliation for a breach of protocol
Protocol (diplomacy)
In international politics, protocol is the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state.A protocol is a rule which guides how an activity should be performed, especially in the field of diplomacy. In diplomatic services and governmental fields of endeavor protocols are often unwritten guidelines...
.
Local Afro-Portuguese often acted as middlemen, the Europeans advancing them goods and they trading them to the local people, most often for ivory. In 1728 an overly aggressive Company 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. The French wrecked it again in 1779.
During the 17th century the Temne ethnolinguistic group was expanding. Around 1600 a Mani
Mani people
The Maniq are an ethnic group of Thailand. They are the only Negrito group in Thailand and speak Maniq , a Mon–Khmer language in the Aslian language group...
still ruled the Loko
Loko people
The Loko are one of the indigenous ethnic groups in Sierra Leone. They speak a Mande language that is also called Loko. The majority of the Loko people live in or around the capital city of Freetown and in the Northern Province of the country, particularly in Port Loko District. The Loko were among...
kingdom (the area north of Port Loko
Port Loko
Port Loko is the capital and second largest city of Port Loko District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. The city lies about , as the crow flies, north-east of the nation's capital Freetown and had a population of 21,961 in the 2004 census Port Loko lies on Banka Soka River, which flows...
Creek) and another ruled the upper part of the south shore of the Freetown estuary. The north shore of the estuary was under a Bulom 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 (he may however 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
Rokel River
The Rokel River is the largest river in the Republic of Sierra Leone in West Africa. It flows south-west from the Loma Mountains about 240 miles and, together with a smaller, parallel stream called Port at Pepel, feeds into the giant estuary known as the Sierra Leone River or "Freetown harbor", the...
and Port Loko Creek. (The king may actually have still considered himself a Mani — in fact Temne chiefs to this day are called by Mani-derived titles — but his people were Temne. The Bureh king in place in 1690 was called Bai Tura — "Bai" is 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 woman 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
Fula people
Fula people or Fulani or Fulbe are an ethnic group spread over many countries, predominantly in West Africa, but found also in Central Africa and Sudanese North Africa...
from the Upper Niger
Niger River
The Niger River is the principal river of western Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea...
and Senegal
Sénégal River
The Sénégal River is a long river in West Africa that forms the border between Senegal and Mauritania.The Sénégal's headwaters are the Semefé and Bafing rivers which both originate in Guinea; they form a small part of the Guinean-Malian border before coming together at Bafoulabé in Mali...
rivers moved into an area called 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. The Muslim Fula at first cohabited peaceably with the Susu
Susu
Susu may refer to:* The Ganges and Indus River Dolphin* The Susu or Soussou, an ethnic group in Guinea* The Susu language, language spoken by this ethnic group* The Sosso Empire, a twelfth-century Takrur kingdom of West Africa...
, Yalunka
Yalunka people
The Yalunka are a Mande people who were one of the original inhabitants of the Futa Jallon , a mountainous region in Guinea, West Africa and they are a branch of the Mandinka people of West Africa. Today, the Yalunka are concentrated mostly in Guinea and Sierra Leone...
, and non-Muslim Fula already at Futa Jalon, but around 1725 embarked on a war of domination over them. As a result many Susu and Yalunka migrated.
Susu — some already converted to Islam — came south into Sierra Leone, in turn displacing Limba
Limba people (Sierra Leone)
The Limba people is a major ethnic group in the Republic of Sierra Leone. They form the third largest ethnic group in the country, about 8.5% of Sierra Leone's total population ....
from north-west Sierra Leone and driving them into north-central Sierra Leone where they now are. Some Susu moved as far south as the Temne town of Port Loko, only 60 km upriver from the Atlantic. Eventually a Muslim Susu family called Senko supplanted the town's Temne rulers. Other Susu moved westward from Futa Jalon, eventually dominating the Baga
Baga people
The Baga people live in the coastal area of Guinea. They can be subdivided into five groups of which Landouma is the largest, accounting for fifty percent of all ethnic Bagas. Apart from the various Baga languages, most of the Baga also speak the Mande language Susu, the regional trade language...
, Bulom, and Temne north of the Scarcies River.
As for the Yalunka in Futa Jalon, they at first accepted Islam, then rejected it and were driven out. They went into north-central Sierra Leone and founded their capital at Falaba
Falaba
Falaba is a former town in the Solima area, Koinadugu District of the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. The population of Falaba is largely from the Mandingo and Kuranko ethnic groups. The village is largely muslim.-History:...
in the mountains near the source of the Rokel. It is still an important town, about 20 km south of the Guinea border. Other Yalunka went somewhat farther south and settled amongst the Koranko, Kissi
Kissi people
Kissi people is an ethnic group living in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. They speak the Kissi language, which is a Niger–Congo language. They are well known for making baskets and weaving on vertical looms.-Economy:...
, and Limba.
Besides these groups, who were more-or-less unwilling emigrants, a considerable variety of Muslim adventurers went forth from Futa Jalon. A Fula called Fula Mansa (Mansa = King) became ruler of the Yoni
Yoni
Yoni is the Sanskrit word for the vagina. Its counterpart is the lingam as interpreted by some, the phallus.It is also the divine passage, womb or sacred temple...
country 100 km east of present-day Freetown. Some of his Temne subjects there fled south to the Banta
Banta
Banta is a lemon or orange-flavoured drink popular in India.It is available in a Codd-neck bottle, a heavy glass bottle in which a round marble seals the mouth of the bottle by the pressure of the contents, instead of a cap...
country between the middle reaches of the Bagu and Jong rivers, where they became known as the Mabanta Temne.
In 1652 the first slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
s in North America were brought from Sierra Leone to the Sea Islands
Sea Islands
The Sea Islands are a chain of tidal and barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean coast of the United States. They number over 100, and are located between the mouths of the Santee and St. Johns Rivers along the coast of the U.S...
off the coast of the southern United States. During the 18th century there was a thriving trade bringing slaves from Sierra Leone to the plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s of South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
and Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
where their rice-farming skills made them particularly valuable.
Britain and British seafarers – including Sir Francis Drake, John Hawkins
John Hawkins
Admiral Sir John Hawkins was an English shipbuilder, naval administrator and commander, merchant, navigator, and slave trader. As treasurer and controller of the Royal Navy, he rebuilt older ships and helped design the faster ships that withstood the Spanish Armada in 1588...
, Frobisher and Captain Brown — played a major role in the transatlantic trade in captured Africans between 1530 and 1810. Treaty of Utrecht
Treaty of Utrecht
The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed by the belligerents in the War of Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht in March and April 1713...
of 1713, which ended the Spanish War of Succession (1701–1714), had an additional clause (the Asiento
Asiento
The Asiento in the history of slavery refers to the permission given by the Spanish government to other countries to sell people as slaves to the Spanish colonies, between the years 1543 and 1834...
) that granted Britain (among other things) the exclusive rights over the shipment of captured Africans across the Atlantic. Over 10 million captured Africans were shipped to the Caribbean Islands and the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
and many more died during the raids, the long marches to the coast and on the infamous middle passage
Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of people from Africa were shipped to the New World, as part of the Atlantic slave trade...
due to the inhumane conditions in slave ships. Britain outlawed the slave trade on 29 March 1807 with the Slave Trade Act 1807 and the British Navy operating from Freetown took active measures to stop the Atlantic slave trade.
The Province of Freedom 1787-1789
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". A number of "Black Poor" arrived off the coast of Sierra Leone on 15 May 1787, accompanied by some English tradesmen. This was organized by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, composed of British philanthropists who 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 area, said to have previously been a slave market, was first settled in 1787 by 400 formerly enslaved Black Britons sent from London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, under the auspices of the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor
Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor
The Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor was a charitable organization founded in London in 1786 to provide sustenance for distressed people of African and Asian origin...
, an organisation set up by the British
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
abolitionist, Granville Sharp
Granville Sharp
Granville Sharp was one of the first English campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade. He also involved himself in trying to correct other social injustices. Sharp formulated the plan to settle blacks in Sierra Leone, and founded the St. George's Bay Company, a forerunner of the Sierra...
. They established the 'Province of Freedom' or Granville Town on land purchased from local Koya Temne subchief King Tom and regent Naimbana, 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. Disputes soon broke out, and King Tom's successor, King Jimmy, burnt the settlement to the ground 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 on renamed Cline Town
Cline Town, Sierra Leone
Cline Town, Sierra Leone, which used to be known as Granville Town, was established in 1787 by the London-based Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor. They arranged for the transport of London's so-called Black Poor to Sierra Leone where they were amongst its original settlers...
) near Fourah Bay
Fourah Bay
Fourah Bay is a neighborhood in the West End of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Fourah Bay is known for its rich culture and deeply religious muslim people. Fourah Bay is largely muslim and is home to Sierra Leone's biggest and West Africa's oldest university, the Fourah Bay College ) to which it gives its...
. 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 1792-1800
Black Pioneers
The Black Pioneers were an African American regiment established in May 1776 out of Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment. Famous American slaves such as Thomas Peters were Black Pioneers...
, travelled to England to report the grievances of the black population. Peters met with the directors of the Sierra Leone Company
Sierra Leone Company
The Sierra Leone Company was the corporate body involved in founding the second British colony in Africa in 1792 through the resettlement of black American ex-slaves who had initially been settled in Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War...
, and it was there 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 at Sierra Leone; the London-based and newly created Sierra Leone Company had decided to create a new colony but before Peter's 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. About 1,196 of these former American slaves (who were mainly from Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
originally) sailed in 15 ships and arrived in St. George Bay between February 26-March 9. 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. The women remained in the ships while the Settler men worked tirelessly to clear the land. Clarkson told the men to clear the land until they reached a large cotton tree. The Settler men toiled and many were scratched and hurt by the shrubbery and bush. After the 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:
- Awake and Sing Of Moses and the Lamb
- Wake! every heart and every tongue'
- To praise the Saviour's name
- The day of Jubilee is come;
- Return ye ransomed sinners home
On March 11, 1792, Nathaniel Gilbert, a white preacher, prayed and preached a sermon under the large Cotton Tree
Cotton Tree (Sierra Leone)
The Cotton Tree is an historic symbol of Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone. According to legend, the "Cotton Tree" gained importance in 1792 when a group of former African American slaves, who had gained their freedom by fighting for the British during the American War of Independence,...
, and Reverend David George
David George (Baptist)
David George was an African-American Baptist preacher and a Black Loyalist from the American South who escaped to British lines, accepted transport to Nova Scotia and eventually resettled in Freetown, Sierra Leone....
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. Eventually John Clarkson would be sworn in as 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 August 24, 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.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in 1794, and was rebuilt by the Nova Scotian settlers. By 1798, Freetown had between 300-400 houses with architecture resembling that of the American South with 3–4 feet stone foundations with wooden superstructures. Eventually this style of housing (brought by the Nova Scotians) would be the model for the 'bod oses' of their Creole descendants.
In 1800, the Nova Scotians rebelled and it was the arrival of the 500 Jamaican Maroons which caused the rebellion to be suppressed. Thirty-four Nova Scotians were banished and sent to either the Sherbro or a penal colony at Gore. Some of these of the Nova Scotians were eventually allowed back into Freetown. After the Maroons captured the rebels, they were granted the land of the Nova Scotian rebels. Eventually the Maroons had their own district at Maroon Town.
The Maroons were a free community of blacks from Trelawny Parish who had been resettled in Nova Scotia after surrendering to the British government. They petitioned the British government for settlement elsewhere due to the climate in Nova Scotia.
After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the British Naval Squadron was stationed in Freetown to intercept and seize slave ships participating in the illegal slave trade. The slaves that were held on these vessels were released into Freetown and were called 'Captured negroes', 'Recaptives' or 'Liberated Africans'.
Colonial era (1800 - 1961)
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
territory of indigenous peoples such as the Mende
Mende people
The Mende people are one of the two largest and most dominant ethnic group in Sierra Leone, along with the Temne. The Mende make up 30% of Sierra Leone's total population or 1,932,015 members...
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, treaty making, and military expeditions. Trade was the driving force; the treaties and military expeditions were undertaken primarily to promote and increase it.
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-chifdom 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 Karl 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. These excursions were typical of those that continued 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.
| Timeline of riot and resistance in the high colonial period |
|---|
1884. Mechanics Alliance, a trade union (possibly the first) is formed. 1885. Carpenters Defensive Union (trade union) formed. 1893. There is a strike of army barracks workers in Freetown. Other workers stage sympathy strike Sympathy strike Secondary action is industrial action by a trade union in support of a strike initiated by workers in another, separate enterprise... . Governor Fleming swears in 200 citizens as special constables and suppresses it. 1919. Strike and riot. Railway and Public Works department strikes, "inter alia, 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, September. Sierra Leone Railway Skilled Workmen Mutual Aid Union formed. 1923-1924. Moyamba riot. 1925. The 1920 union is renamed the Railway Workers' Union. 1926. Strike and riot. Railway Workers' Union strikes January 13 to February 26. 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 Moslem leader. Wyse gives the causes as "heavy handedness af chiefly rule and the deteriorating social and economic conditions, as well as the erosive nature of colonial rule." Ended after Kontorfilli was killed by British forces. 1931. Pujehun riot. 1934. Kenema riot. 1938-39. Series of strikes and civil disobedience Civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance... . W.A.Y.L. blamed. 1939, January. Army mutiny in Freetown over low wages. Led by a Creole gunner, Emmanuel Cole. 1948, November. 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 Siaka Stevens Siaka Probyn Stevens was the 3rd prime minister of Sierra Leone from 1967–1971 and the 1st president of Sierra Leone from 1971–1985. Stevens is generally criticised for dictatorial methods of government in which many of his political opponents were executed, as well as for mismanaging... ) 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 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 1880s, Britain's intervention in the hinterland received added impetus because of the "Scramble for Africa
Scramble for Africa
The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914...
": 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 later. 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 on 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.
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 expressed as being between sovereign powers contracting with each other; there was no subordination. Only a handful of Chiefs had signed treaties of cession, and in some of those cases it is doubtful whether they had understood the terms. In remote areas no treaties had been obtained at all.
Strictly speaking, a Protectorate does not exist unless the people in it have agreed to be protected. The Sierra Leone Protectorate was more in the nature of a unilateral acquisition of territory by Britain.
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; 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 5s to 10s was to be levied annually on every dwelling in the Protectorate. To the chiefs, these reductions in their power and prestige were unbearable. When, in 1898, attempts were made to actually collect the tax, they rose up, first in the north, led by a dominant Temne chief called Bai Bureh, and then in Mende country to the south. The two struggles took on quite different characteristics.
Bai Bureh
Bai Bureh
Bai Bureh was a Sierra Leonean ruler and military strategist who led the Temne and Loko uprising against British rule in 1898 in Northern Sierra Leone.-Early life:...
'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 the British resumed the slow process of eliminating the African's stockades. When most of these defences had been eliminated, Bureh was captured or surrendered (accounts differ) in November.
The Mende war 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 in two months. Some Mende rebels in the centre of the country were not beaten until November, however; and Mende king Nyagua's
Nyagua
Nyagua was a respected Mende chief from Sierra Leone. Despite his gestures of friendship to the British, he was killed in the advance of colonialism.-Early life and career:...
son Maghi, in alliance with some Kissi
Kissi people
Kissi people is an ethnic group living in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. They speak the Kissi language, which is a Niger–Congo language. They are well known for making baskets and weaving on vertical looms.-Economy:...
, fought on in the extreme east of the Protectorate until August 1899.
The two risings together are referred to as the Hut Tax War of 1898
Hut Tax War of 1898
The Hut Tax War of 1898 was a war of resistance to British colonialism in Sierra Leone.It was initiated by Temne chief Bai Bureh in 1898, and later involved other native peoples, including the Mende. The war was an attempt by the local African kingdoms to maintain their independence in the face of...
. The principals, Bai Bureh, Nyagua and Be Sherbro (Gbana Lewis), were exiled to the Gold Coast on 30 July 1899; a large number of their subordinates were executed.
In the early 19th century Freetown served as the residence of the British governor who also ruled the Gold Coast
Gold Coast (British colony)
The Gold Coast was a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957.-Overview:The first Europeans to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese in 1471. They encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial...
(now Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
) and the Gambia settlements. Sierra Leone also served as the educational centre of British West Africa. Fourah Bay College
Fourah Bay College
Fourah Bay College is the oldest university college in West Africa. It is located atop Mount Aureol in Freetown, Sierra Leone...
, 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
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...
.
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. Prominent among the Creoles demanding change were the bourgiose nationalist H.C. Bankole-Bright, General Secretary of the Sierra Leone Branch of the National Congress of British West Africa
National Congress of British West Africa
The National Congress of British West Africa , founded in 1920, was the earliest nationalist organization in West Africa, and one of the earliest formal organizations working toward African emancipation...
(NCBWA), and the socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, founder of the West African Youth League
West African Youth League
The West African Youth League was a political organisation founded by I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson in June 1935. The group was a major political force against the colonial government in West Africa, especially in the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone....
(WAYL).
African resistance was not limited to political discussion. For instance, Sierra Leone developed an active trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
movement whose strikes were often accompanied by sympathetic rioting among the general population.
Besides the colonial employers, one of the main targets of popular hostility was the tribal chiefs who the British had transformed into functionaries in the colonial system of indirect rule
Indirect rule
Indirect rule was a system of government that was developed in certain British colonial dependencies...
. Their role was to provide policing, collect taxes, and obtain corvee labour for the colonialists; in return the colonialists 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. Of course, from the chiefs' point of view, the dilemma of an honourable ruler faced with British ultimatum
Ultimatum
An ultimatum is a demand whose fulfillment is requested in a specified period of time and which is backed up by a threat to be followed through in case of noncompliance. An ultimatum is generally the final demand in a series of requests...
s can not have been easy.
Throughout the 20th century, there were numerous riots directed against tribal chiefs. These culminated in the Protectorate-wide riots of 1955-1956, which were suppressed only by a considerable slaughter of peasants by the army. After those riots reforms were introduced: the forced labour system was completely abolished and reductions were made in the powers of the chiefs.
One notable event during the 20th century was the giving of a monopoly on mineral mining to the De Beers-run Sierra Leone Selection Trust
Sierra Leone Selection Trust
The Sierra Leone Selection Trust was formed in 1934 following an agreement between the government of Sierra Leone and the Consolidated African Selection Trust Ltd . CAST was formed in 1924 and was part of a much larger mining finance house Selection Trust Ltd which had been founded in 1913 by...
in 1935, which was scheduled to last for 99 years. The 1951 constitution provided a framework for decolonization
Decolonization
Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the unequal relation of polities whereby one people or nation establishes and maintains dependent Territory over another...
. Local ministerial responsibility was introduced in 1953, when Sir Milton Margai
Milton Margai
Sir Milton Augustus Strieby Margai was a Sierra Leonean politician and the first prime minister of Sierra Leone...
was appointed Chief Minister. He became Prime Minister after successful completion of constitutional talks in London in 1960.
Early independence (1961 - 1978)
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
. The Sierra Leone People's Party
Sierra Leone People's Party
Sierra Leone People's Party is one of the two major political parties in Sierra Leone, along with the All People's Congress .-Formation:...
(SLPP), led by Sir Milton Margai
Milton Margai
Sir Milton Augustus Strieby Margai was a Sierra Leonean politician and the first prime minister of Sierra Leone...
were victorious in the first general election
Sierra Leonean general election, 1962
General elections were held in Sierra Leone in May 1962, just over a year after the country gained independence from the United Kingdom. The first to be held under universal suffrage, they were won by the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party, although his party received less votes than independent...
under universal adult franchise in May 1962. Upon Sir Milton's death in 1964, his half-brother, Sir Albert Margai
Albert Margai
Sir Albert Michael Margai was the second prime minister of Sierra Leone and the half-brother of Sir Milton Margai, the country's first Prime Minister...
, succeeded him as Prime Minister. Sir Albert attempted to establish a single-party state
Single-party state
A single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a type of party system government in which a single political party forms the government and no other parties are permitted to run candidates for election...
but met fierce resistance from the opposition All People's Congress
All People's Congress
The All People's Congress is one of the two major political parties in Sierra Leone, the other is the Sierra Leone People's Party . The party was founded in 1960 by Pa Mucktarru Kallay, Allieu Badarr Koroma,Alhaji Sheik Gibril Sesay C A Kamara-Taylor, S A T Koroma and Abu Bakarr S Bangura...
(APC) and ultimately abandoned the idea.
In closely contested elections
Sierra Leonean general election, 1967
General elections were held in Sierra Leone on 17 March 1967. They were won by the opposition All People's Congress, marking the first time that a ruling party had lost an election in sub-Saharan Africa...
in March 1967, the APC won a plurality of the parliamentary seats. Accordingly, the Governor General (representing the British Monarch) Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston
Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston
Sir Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston was a Sierra Leonean diplomat and politician. He was the first indigenous Governor-General of Sierra Leone...
declared Siaka Stevens
Siaka Stevens
Siaka Probyn Stevens was the 3rd prime minister of Sierra Leone from 1967–1971 and the 1st president of Sierra Leone from 1971–1985. Stevens is generally criticised for dictatorial methods of government in which many of his political opponents were executed, as well as for mismanaging...
– APC leader and Mayor of Freetown – as the new Prime Minister. Within a few hours, Stevens and Lightfoot-Boston were placed under house arrest by Brigadier David Lansana
David Lansana
Brigadier David Lansana was one of the very few Sierra Leoneans to be educated at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England during the colonial period. As Lieutenant David Lansana he was a frequent and popular visitor to the home of Sir Robert de Zouche Hall, Governor of Sierra Leone...
, the Commander of the Sierra Leone Military Forces (SLMF), on grounds that the determination of office should await the election of the tribal representatives to the house. A group of senior military officers overrode this action by seizing control of the government on 23 March, arresting Brigadier Lansana, and suspending the constitution. The group constituted itself as the National Reformation Council
National Reformation Council
The National Reformation Council, or NRC, was a group of senior military officers with Brigadier Andrew Juxon-Smith as its chairman, who seized control of the Sierra Leone government on March 23, 1968...
(NRC) with Brigadier Andrew Juxon-Smith
Andrew Juxon-Smith
Brigadier Andrew Terence Juxon-Smith was a politician and military official in Sierra Leone. He was briefly Chairman of the National Reformation Council and acting Governor-General, equivalent to head of the Sierra Leonean state...
as its chairman. The NRC in turn was overthrown in April 1968 by a "sergeants' revolt", the Anti-Corruption Revolutionary Movement. NRC members were imprisoned, army and police officers were deposed, the democratic constitution was restored, and power was handed back to Stevens, who at last assumed the office of Prime Minister.
After the return to civilian rule by-elections were held beginning in the fall of 1968 and an all-APC cabinet was appointed. Tranquility was not completely restored: in November 1968 a state of emergency was declared after provincial disturbances, and in March 1971 the government survived an unsuccessful military coup. In April 1971 a republican constitution was adopted under which Stevens became President. In 1972 by-elections the opposition SLPP complained of intimidation and procedural obstruction by the APC and militia. These problems became so severe that it boycotted the 1973 general election
Sierra Leonean general election, 1973
General elections were held in Sierra Leone on 15 May 1973. The result was a victory for the All People's Congress, which won 84 of the 85 elected seats. However, the main opposition, the Sierra Leone People's Party boycotted the election due to violence and alleged irregularities, and most APC...
; as a result the APC won 84 of the 85 elected seats. In July 1974, the government uncovered an alleged military coup plot. As in 1971, the leaders of were tried and executed. In 1977, student demonstrations against the government disrupted Sierra Leone politics. A general election
Sierra Leonean parliamentary election, 1977
Parliamentary elections were held in Sierra Leone on 6 May 1977. They were the last multi-party elections held in the country until 1996.-Background:...
was called later that year in which corruption was again endemic; the APC won 74 seats and the SLPP 15.
One-party constitution (1978-1990)
In 1978 Stevens' APC government won approval for the idea of one-party government (which the APC had once rejected) in a referendumSierra Leonean constitutional referendum, 1978
A constitutional referendum was held in Sierra Leone on 12 July 1978. The changes were aimed at turning the country into a presidential single-party state, with the All People's Congress as the sole legal party. The new constitution had been adopted by parliament in May, and was put to public...
. Following enactment of the 1978 constitution, SLPP members of parliament joined the APC.
The first elections
Sierra Leonean parliamentary election, 1982
Parliamentary elections were held in Sierra Leone on 1 May 1982. They were the first elections since the country had become a single-party state under the 1978 constitution, with the All People's Congress being the sole legal party.-Background:...
under the new one-party constitution took place on 1 May 1982. Elections in about two-thirds of the constituencies were contested. Because of irregularities, the government cancelled elections in 13 constituencies. By-elections took place on 4 June 1982. The new cabinet appointed after the election was balanced ethnically between Temnes and Mendes
Mende people
The Mende people are one of the two largest and most dominant ethnic group in Sierra Leone, along with the Temne. The Mende make up 30% of Sierra Leone's total population or 1,932,015 members...
. It included as the new Finance Minister Salia Jusu-Sheriff
Salia Jusu-Sheriff
Salia Jusu-Sheriff is a Sierra Leonean politician. He was the Vice President of Sierra Leone from 1987 to 1991. He used to be the leader of the SLPP party and was later to be Finance Minister....
, a former leader of the SLPP who returned to that party in late 1981. His accession to the cabinet was viewed by many as a step toward making the APC a true national party.
Siaka P. Stevens, who had been head of state of Sierra Leone for 18 years, retired from that position in November 1985, although he continued his role as chairman of the ruling APC party. In August 1985 the APC named military commander Maj. Gen. Joseph Saidu Momoh
Joseph Saidu Momoh
Major General Joseph Saidu Momoh was the President of Sierra Leone from November, 1985 to April 29, 1992.- Biography :...
, Stevens' own choice, as the party candidate to succeed Stevens. Momoh was elected President in a referendum
Sierra Leonean presidential election, 1985
A referendum to confirm the presidential candidate Joseph Saidu Momoh was held in Sierra Leone on 1 October 1985. The country was a single-party state under the All People's Congress at the time, and only one candidate from that party was allowed. A referendum to approve the sole candidate was...
on 1 October 1985. A formal inauguration was held in January 1986, and new parliamentary elections were held in May 1986.
Multi-party constitution and RUF rebellion (1990 to present)
Civil War
In October 1990 President Momoh set up a constitutional review commission to review the 1978 one-party constitution with a view to broadening the existing political process, guaranteeing fundamental human rights and the rule of law, and strengthening and consolidating the democratic foundation and structure of the nation. The commission, in its report presented January 1991, recommended re-establishment of a multi-party system of government. Based on that recommendation, a constitution was approved by Parliament in July 1991 and ratified by referendumSierra Leonean constitutional referendum, 1991
A referendum on a new constitution was held in Sierra Leone in August 1991. Voting was held over four days . The new constitution would restore multi-party politics, as the country had been a single-party state since the 1978 constitutional referendum.Of the approximately 2.5 million voters,...
in September; it became effective on 1 October 1991. The rebel war in the eastern part of the country, led by Capt. Foday Sankoh
Foday Sankoh
Foday Saybana Sankoh was the leader and founder of the Sierra Leone rebel group Revolutionary United Front in the 11-year-long Sierra Leone Civil War, starting in 1991 and ending in 2002...
and his Revolutionary United Front
Revolutionary United Front
The Revolutionary United Front was a rebel army that fought a failed eleven-year war in Sierra Leone, starting in 1991 and ending in 2002. It later developed into a political party, which existed until 2007...
(RUF), posed an increasing burden on the country.
There was great suspicion that president Momoh was not serious about his promise of political reform, as APC rule continued to be increasingly marked by abuses of power. The APC was also alleged to have been hoarding arms and planning a violent campaign against the opposition parties ahead of multi-party general elections scheduled for late 1992. Several senior government officials in the APC administration like Dr. Salia Jusu Sheriff, Dr. Abass Bundu, J.B. Dauda and Dr. Sama Banya resigned from the APC government respectively to resuscitate the previously disbanded SLPP. While other senior government officials like Thaimu Bangura
Thaimu Bangura
Thaimu Bangura was a politician from Sierra Leone. He was a government minister from 1980-82 and again from 1996-1999. From 1991-1999, Bangura was the National Leader of the People's Democratic Party of Sierra Leone as well as their presidential candidate in the 1996 elections...
, Edward Kargbo
Edward Kargbo
Edward Kargbo is a politician in Sierra Leone. He ran for President in 1996 but lost with 2.1% of the national vote.-References:...
and Desmond Luke
Desmond Luke
Desmond Edgar Fashole Luke is a former politician and lawyer in Sierra Leone. Luke had served as foreign minister , Minister of Health , and ambassador to the West Germany , France and the European Economic Community at various points in his political career...
resigned from the APC and formed their own respective political parties to challenge the ruling APC.
On 29 April 1992 a group of seven young military officers, led by 25-year-old Capt. Valentine Strasser
Valentine Strasser
Valentine Esegragbo Melvine Strasser served as head of state of Sierra Leone from 1992 to 1996. He had been a junior military officer but in 1992, he became the world's youngest Head of State when he seized power three days after his 25th birthday...
, launched a military coup, which sent Momoh into exile in Guinea
Guinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
and established the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) with Strasser as President. They were 25 year-old Captain Valentine Strasser
Valentine Strasser
Valentine Esegragbo Melvine Strasser served as head of state of Sierra Leone from 1992 to 1996. He had been a junior military officer but in 1992, he became the world's youngest Head of State when he seized power three days after his 25th birthday...
, Sergeant
Sergeant
Sergeant is a rank used in some form by most militaries, police forces, and other uniformed organizations around the world. Its origins are the Latin serviens, "one who serves", through the French term Sergent....
Solomon Musa
Solomon Musa
Solomon Anthony Joseph Musa, also known as SAJ Musa, was an important military and political figure in the Sierra Leone Civil War.-Overview:...
, Brigadier-General Julius Maada Bio
Julius Maada Bio
Brigadier Julius Maada Bio is a Sierra Leonean politician who was the military Head of State of Sierra Leone from January 16, 1996 to March 29, 1996 under the National Provisional Ruling Council military junta government....
, Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...
Tom Nyuma
Tom Nyuma
Tom Nyuma is a retired Sierra Leonean military commander and currently the chairman of Kailahun District council from the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party . He was elected as chairman of Kailahun District council on July 6, 2008 with 87% of the vote...
, Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
Yahya Kanu
Yahya Kanu
Colonel Yahya Kanu Kanu was a loyalist to president Joseph Saidu Momoh, and his position in the coup is unclear. He was first reported by Reuters to have led the coup, but that same day he went onto the BBC's Focus on Africa to deny that role, claiming instead that he was attempting to negotiate...
, Lieutenant Colonel Komba Mondeh
Komba Mondeh
Brigadier General Komba Mondeh Brigadier General Komba Mondeh Brigadier General Komba Mondeh (born on October 31, 1966 in Freetown, Sierra Leone] is a top ranking officer in the Sierra Leonean army. Mondeh was one of six young soldiers in the Sierra Leonean Army that ousted president Joseph Saidu...
, and Captain Samuel Komba Kambo
Samuel Komba Kambo
Samuel Komba Kambo Is a retired captain in the The Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces. Kambo was one of six young soldiers in the Sierra Leonean Army that ousted president Joseph Saidu Momoh and the All People's Congress government on April 29, 1992...
. But he was ousted in January 1996 and replaced by his defence minister Brig. Gen. Julius Maada Bio
Julius Maada Bio
Brigadier Julius Maada Bio is a Sierra Leonean politician who was the military Head of State of Sierra Leone from January 16, 1996 to March 29, 1996 under the National Provisional Ruling Council military junta government....
. Promises of a return to civilian rule were fulfilled by Bio, who handed power over to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), after the conclusion of elections in early 1996.
Kabbah's government reached a cease-fire in the war with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which had launched its first attacks in 1991; rebel terror attacks continued, however, apparently aided by Liberia.
Bio reinstated the Constitution and called for general elections. In the second round of presidential elections in early 1996, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah served as President of Sierra Leone from 1996 to 1997 and again from 1998 to 2007.He worked for the United Nations Development Programme and returned to Sierra Leone in 1992...
, an ethnic Mandingo
Mandingo people of Sierra Leone
The Mandinka people of Sierra Leone is a major ethnic group in Sierra Leone and they are the descendants of Mandinka settlers from Guinea who migrated to Sierra Leone between 1840 to about 1900...
and the candidate of the SLPP), won 59% of the vote, over John Karefa-Smart
John Karefa-Smart
Dr. John Albert Musselman Karefa-Smart was a politician from Sierra Leone and leader of the United National People's Party. He was an ordained Elder of the United Methodist Church.-Education:...
, an ethnic Sherbro
Sherbro people
The Sherbro people are a native people of Sierra Leone, who speak the Sherbro language; they make up 3% of Sierra Leone's population or about 201,000. They are also known as the Bullom people...
and the candidate of the United National People's Party
United National People's Party
The United National People's Party is a political party in Sierra Leone.In 1996, the UNPP received 21.6% of the votes in the parliamentary election, winning 17 of the 68 seats...
(UNPP) who won 41%. Bio fulfilled his promise of a return to civilian rule, and handed power to Kabbah. President Tejan Kabbah's SLPP also won a majority of the seats in Parliament.
For years Sierra Leonean soldiers in the lower ranks were not paid a good salary and they were denied privileges and benefits. Soldiers were killed in action and no provision was made for their families. Major Johnny Paul Koroma
Johnny Paul Koroma
Johnny Paul Koroma was the Head of State of Sierra Leone from May 1997 to February 1998.-Youth and Education :Koroma grew up in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. However, he was born in Tombodu, Kono District, in eastern Sierra Leone to Limba parents. He is from the same ethnic group as...
, an army officer who hailed from the Limba ethnic group, was allegedly involved in an attempt to overthrow the government of President Kabbah. He was arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned at Freetown's Pademba Road Prison
Freetown Central Prison
Freetown Central Prison is a prison on Pademba Road in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The prison was built to house 220 prisoners in the pre-independence era and now holds around 1,000 prisoners. Many prisoners were subject to prolonged stays in holding cells because of a massive backlog in court...
. On May 25, 1997, a group of seventeen junior army officers, loyal to Major Koroma, formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council
Armed Forces Revolutionary Council
The Armed Forces Revolutionary Council was a group of Sierra Leone soldiers that allied itself with the rebel Revolutionary United Front in the late 1990s. While the AFRC briefly controlled the country in 1998, it was driven from the capital by a coalition of West African troops...
(AFRC) led by Corporal Tamba Gborie and Sergent Alex Tamba Brima
Alex Tamba Brima
Alex Tamba Brima is a former Sierra Leonean military commander. He was one of a group of seventeen soldiers in the Sierra Leone Armed Forces who called themselves Armed Forces Revolutionary Council that succefully stage a coup that ousted president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in May 1997...
, both ethnic Kono. They launched a military coup which sent President Kabbah into exile in Guinea
Guinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
.
Corporal Tamba Gborie quickly went to the headquarters of radio station SLBS FM 99.9 in Freetown to announce the coup and to alert all soldiers to report for guard duty. The AFRC released Koroma from prison and installed him as their chairman and Head of State, with Corporal Tamba Gborie as deputy in command of the AFRC. Koroma suspended the constitution, banned demonstrations, shut down all private radio stations in the country and invited the RUF to join the new junta government, with its leader Foday Sankoh as the Vice-Chairman of the new AFRC-RUF coalition junta government. Within days, Freetown was overwhelmed by the presence of the RUF combatants who came to the city in their thousands. The Kamajors
Kamajors
The Kamajors are a group of traditional hunters from the Mende ethnic group in the south and east of Sierra Leone...
, a group of traditional fighters mostly from the Mende
Mende people
The Mende people are one of the two largest and most dominant ethnic group in Sierra Leone, along with the Temne. The Mende make up 30% of Sierra Leone's total population or 1,932,015 members...
ethnic group under the command of deputy [Defence Minister Samuel Hinga Norman
Samuel Hinga Norman
Samuel Hinga Norman was a Sierra Leonean politician from the Mende tribe. He was the founder and leader of the traditional Civil Defence Forces, commonly known as the Kamajors. The Kamajors fought under the supported the government of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah against the Revolutionary United Front,...
, remained loyal to President Kabbah. The Kamajors defended Bo, the country's second largest city, from the Junta and continue their attack against the AFRC and RUF in south-eastern Sierra Leone
The AFRC, led by Maj. Koroma, overthrew President Kabbah on 25 May 1997, and invited the RUF to join the government. After ten months in office the junta was ousted by the Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
-led ECOMOG forces, and the democratically elected government of President Kabbah was reinstated in March 1998. Following the reinstatement of Kabbah's government, hundreds of civilians who had been accused of helping the AFRC government were illegally detained. Courts martial were held for soldiers accused of assisting the AFRC government. 24 of these were found guilty and were executed without appeal in October 1998. On 6 January 1999 another unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government by the AFRC resulted in massive loss of life and destruction of property in Freetown and its environs. An estimated 3,000 people were killed, women and girls were raped, children were abducted and subsequently conscripted, limbs were amputated, and much of the property in and around Freetownwas destroyed.
An 800-member British force entered the country to secure west Freetown and evacuate Europeans; some also acted in support of the forces (including Koroma's AFRC group) fighting the RUF. After Sankoh was captured in Freetown, the hostages were gradually released by the RUF, but clashes between the UN forces and the RUF continued, and in July the West Side Boys (part of the AFRC) clashed with the peacekeepers. In the same month the UN Security Council placed a ban on the sale of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone in an attempt to undermine the funding of the RUF. In late August, Issa Sesay became head of the RUF; also, British troops training the Sierra Leone army were taken hostage by the West Side Boys, but were freed by a British raid in September.
General elections scheduled for early 2001 were postponed in February 2001, due to the insecurity caused by the civil war. In May 2001 sanctions were imposed on Liberia because of its support for the rebels, and UN peacekeepers began to make headway in disarming the various factions. Although disarmament of rebel and pro-government militias proceeded slowly and fighting continued to occur, by January 2002 most of the estimated 45,000 fighters had surrendered their weapons. In a ceremony that month, government and rebel leaders declared the civil war to have ended; an estimated 50,000 persons died in the conflict.
NPRC junta
On 29 April 1992, a group comprising a colonel and seven junior officers in the Sierra Leonean army, apparently frustrated by the government's failure to deal with the rebels and to pay salaries, launched a military coup which sent president Momoh into exile] in GuineaGuinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
. The officers were Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
Yahya Kanu
Yahya Kanu
Colonel Yahya Kanu Kanu was a loyalist to president Joseph Saidu Momoh, and his position in the coup is unclear. He was first reported by Reuters to have led the coup, but that same day he went onto the BBC's Focus on Africa to deny that role, claiming instead that he was attempting to negotiate...
, an ethnic Temne; the ethnic Mendes Captain Solomon A. J. Musa; Captain Julius Maada Bio
Julius Maada Bio
Brigadier Julius Maada Bio is a Sierra Leonean politician who was the military Head of State of Sierra Leone from January 16, 1996 to March 29, 1996 under the National Provisional Ruling Council military junta government....
, and Lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
Sahr Sandy; ethnic Konos Captain Samuel Komba Kambo
Samuel Komba Kambo
Samuel Komba Kambo Is a retired captain in the The Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces. Kambo was one of six young soldiers in the Sierra Leonean Army that ousted president Joseph Saidu Momoh and the All People's Congress government on April 29, 1992...
and Captain Komba Mondeh
Komba Mondeh
Brigadier General Komba Mondeh Brigadier General Komba Mondeh Brigadier General Komba Mondeh (born on October 31, 1966 in Freetown, Sierra Leone] is a top ranking officer in the Sierra Leonean army. Mondeh was one of six young soldiers in the Sierra Leonean Army that ousted president Joseph Saidu...
; the Creole Captain Valentine E. M. Strasser; and the ethnic Kissi
Kissi people
Kissi people is an ethnic group living in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. They speak the Kissi language, which is a Niger–Congo language. They are well known for making baskets and weaving on vertical looms.-Economy:...
Second Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.- United Kingdom and Commonwealth :The rank second lieutenant was introduced throughout the British Army in 1871 to replace the rank of ensign , although it had long been used in the Royal Artillery, Royal...
Tom Nyuma
Tom Nyuma
Tom Nyuma is a retired Sierra Leonean military commander and currently the chairman of Kailahun District council from the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party . He was elected as chairman of Kailahun District council on July 6, 2008 with 87% of the vote...
. Sandy was said to have insisted to his colleagues on the second day of the action that theirs would no longer be a revolt over pay but a revolution to overthrow the APC and the system of one-party politics. Sandy was the only soldier killed during the coup, allegedly by his adoptive uncle, APC member Colonel S.I.M. Turay. Turay was declared wanted for the murder of Sandy by the NPRC junta, but managed to escape to Guinea, where he joined the exiled president. Colonel Yahya Kanu was the very popular commander of the fearless Tiger Battalion which was at the forefront in the war against the RUF under president Momoh.
The officers established the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC). Kanu was not declared head of the new junta. In an interview with the BBC Focus on Africa program, he even refused to acknowledge that the revolt was a coup by his men, yet he was seen as the de facto leader of the NPRC.
Later, however, Kanu was arrested and imprisoned by his junior officers, who accused him of trying to negotiate a compromise with the toppled APC administration. Kanu's arrest divided the army into two rival groups, namely, his Tiger Battalion and Tom Nyuma's Cobra Battalion and their respective supporters.
On April 29, 1992, Valentine Strasser took over as leader and chairman of the NPRC and Head of State of Sierra Leone. Strasser became the youngest Head of State in the world, just three days after his 27th birthday. 25 year-old S.A.J. Musa, a close friend of Strasser and an officer in Kanu's feared Tiger Battalion, was named Vice-Chairman of the NPRC. Many Sierra Leoneans nationwide rushed into the streets to celebrate the NPRC's takeover from the dictatorial 23-year APC regime, which they perceived as corrupt.
The NPRC junta immediately suspended the 1991 Constitution, declared a state of emergency
State of emergency
A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...
, banned all political parties, limited freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
and freedom of the press
Freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
, and enacted a rule-by-decree policy, in which soldiers were granted unlimited powers of administrative detention without charge or trial, and challenges against such detentions in court were precluded. The NPRC junta maintained relations with ECOWAS and strengthened support for Sierra Leone-based ECOMOG troops fighting in Liberia.
In his first speech as head of state, Strasser reassured the world of meeting his country's obligations to her creditors, and making a commitment to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to accelerate the economic reform process started by Momoh's government in 1989 aimed at stabilizing the severely crippled economy. Shortly after that, Strasser negotiated a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) with these two institutions. The junta formed the Supreme Council of State (SCS), made up only of members of the NPRC — the six surviving leaders mentioned above — chaired by Strasser himself. They also appointed an advisory council of retired senior civil servants and academics, chaired by a retired UN administrator Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. These men were all regarded as untainted by the 23 years of alleged APC mismanagement, corruption and abuse of power.
In December 1992, an alleged coup attempt against the NPRC administration of Strasser, aimed at freeing the detained Colonel Yayah Kanu, was foiled. Sgt. Lamin Bangura (an ethnic Temne) and some junior army officers of the Tiger Battalion were identified as being behind the alleged plot. It led to the execution of seventeen Sierra Leone soldiers, including Sgt. Bangura and Yayah Kanu, and some senior members of the overthrown APC government who had been in detention at the Pa Demba Road prison. These included the notorious Inspector General of Police James Bambay Kamara, key former APC ministers, senior party members and thugs. By mid 1993 Captain Strasser announced a plan to hand over the government to civilian rule by 1996. Dr. James Jonah, who was by then Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, was appointed by the NPRC junta as the chairman of the new Interim National Electoral Commission (INEC), which was in charge of the demarcation of electoral boundaries and voter registration. In 1994 the NPRC junta proposed a change in the age restriction in the 1991 Sierra Leone constitution which stated only Sierra Leoneans over the age of 40 are eligible for the presidency, thus excluding Strasser and others in the NPRC.
The NPRC proved to be nearly as ineffectual as the Momoh-led APC government in repelling the RUF. More and more of the country fell to RUF fighters, and by 1995 they held much of the diamond-rich Eastern Province and were at the edge of Freetown. In response, the NPRC hired several hundred mercenaries from the private firm Executive Outcomes
Executive Outcomes
Executive Outcomes was a private military company founded in South Africa by former Lieutenant-Colonel of the South African Defence Force Eeben Barlow in 1989. It later became part of the South African-based holding company Strategic Resource Corporation....
. Within a month they had driven RUF fighters back to enclaves along Sierra Leone’s borders, and cleared the RUF from the Kono diamond producing areas of Sierra Leone. However, Captains Tom Nyuma (Secretary of State East) and Komba Mondeh (Secretary of State Defence), who were regarded outside Freetown as the only "fighters" in the NPRC who dared to lead the troops to attack RUF strongholds in the east and south, were widely credited with these successes against the RUF.
During this time corruption had erupted within the senior ranks of both the NPRC and the military, and the junta had become divided between SAJ Musa, on the one side, against Nyuma and Mondeh, on the other. SAJ Musa had become very popular in Freetown for fighting grafts and enforcing strict discipline in the public service and his last-Saturday-of-the-month city cleaning exercises. Nyuma, nicknamed "The Ranger", was seen across the country as the daredevil of the NPRC and the "protector of the East." There was great suspicion among the SCS members that SAJ Musa was planning a coup to topple his friend Strasser, whom he accused of being subservient to the wishes of Nyuma and Mondeh.
On 5 July 1995, under pressure from Nyuma, Captain Strasser dismissed SAJ Musa as deputy chairman of the NPRC and appointed an ally of Tom Nyuma, the Secretary of State for Information and Broadcasting Captain Julius Maada Bio, to the position. Musa was arrested by soldiers led by Nyuma's men, and was briefly placed under house arrest in Freetown before being sent on to exile in the UK. Senior NPRC members, including Bio (who by now had promoted himself to Brigadier), Nyuma and Mondeh (both promoted to Colonel), were becoming increasingly unhappy with (still-Captain) Strasser's handling of the preparation for the pending elections, the peace negotiation with the RUF, and the transition to democratic civilian rule.
In January 1996, after nearly four years in power, Captain V.E.M. Strasser was ousted in a bloodless "palace" coup led by his NPRC deputy Brigadier General Julius Maada Bio with the support of several senior NPRC members including both Tom Nyuma and Komba Mondeh. Bio claimed that Strasser was attempting to unilaterally amend the age restriction in the constitution in order to perpetuate his hold on power.
2002 to present
Elections were held in May 2002. President Kabbah was reelected, and his Sierra Leone People's Party won a majority of the parliamentary seats. In June 2003 the UN ban on the sale of Sierra Leone diamonds expired and was not renewed. The UN disarmament and rehabilitation program for Sierra Leone's fighters was completed in February 2004, by which time more 70,000 former combatants had been helped. UN forces returned primary responsibility for security in the area around the capital to Sierra Leone's police and armed forces in September 2004; it was the last part of the country to be turned over. Some UN peacekeepers remained to assist the Sierra Leone government until the end of 2005.The 1999 Lomé Accord called for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to provide a forum for both victims and perpetrators of human rights violations during the conflict to tell their stories and facilitate genuine reconciliation. Subsequently, the Sierra Leonean Government and the UN agreed to set up the Special Court for Sierra Leone to try those who "bear the greatest responsibility for the commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes and serious violations of international humanitarian law, as well as crimes under relevant Sierra Leonean law within the territory of Sierra Leone since 30 November 1996." Both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court began operating in the summer of 2002. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Final Report to the government in October 2004. In June 2005, the Government of Sierra Leone issued a White Paper on the Commission’s final report which accepted some but not all of the Commission's recommendations. Members of civil society groups dismissed the government’s response as too vague and continued to criticize the government for its failure to follow up on the report’s recommendations.
In March 2003 the Special Court for Sierra Leone issued its first indictments. Foday Sankoh, already in custody, was indicted, along with notorious RUF field commander Sam "Mosquito" Bockarie, Johnny Paul Koroma, and Hinga Norman, the Minister of Interior and former head of the Civil Defense Force, among several others. Norman was arrested when the indictments were announced, while Bockarie and Koroma remained in hiding. On 5 May 2003 Bockarie was killed in Liberia, allegedly on orders from President Charles Taylor, who feared Bockarie’s testimony before the Special Court. Johnny Paul Koroma was also rumoured to have been killed, though his death remains unconfirmed. Two of the accused, Foday Sankoh and Hinga Norman, have died while incarcerated. On 25 March 2006, with the election of Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo permitted transfer of Charles Taylor, who had been living in exile in the Nigerian coastal town of Calobar, to Sierra Leone for prosecution. Two days later, Taylor attempted to flee Nigeria, but he was apprehended by Nigerian authorities and transferred to Freetown under UN guard.
Elections held on 11 August 2007 had a good turnout and were initially judged by official observers to be "free, fair and credible".
There is an increase in the number of drug cartels, many from Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, who are starting to use Sierra Leone as a base to ship drugs on to Europe. It is feared that this may lead to increased corruption and violence and may turn the country, like neighbouring Guinea-Bissau
Guinea-Bissau
The Republic of Guinea-Bissau is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Senegal to the north, and Guinea to the south and east, with the Atlantic Ocean to its west....
, into a narco state. In 2008, an aircraft carrying almost 700 kg of cocaine was caught at Freetown’s airport and 19 people, including customs officials, were arrested, and the minister for transport is still suspended.
See also
- History of AfricaHistory of AfricaThe history of Africa begins with the prehistory of Africa and the emergence of Homo sapiens in East Africa, continuing into the present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states. Agriculture began about 10,000 BCE and metallurgy in about 4000 BCE. The history of early...
- History of West AfricaHistory of West AfricaThe partial history of West Africa can be divided into five major periods:#Its prehistory, in which the first human settlers arrived, agriculture developed, and contact made with the Mediterranean civilizations to the north....
- List of colonial heads of Sierra Leone
- List of Governors-General of Sierra Leone
- List of heads of government of Sierra Leone
- President of Sierra LeonePresident of Sierra LeoneThe President of the Republic of Sierra Leone is the head of state and the head of government of Sierra Leone, as well as the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces...
- Politics of Sierra LeonePolitics of Sierra LeoneGovernment of Sierra Leone is the governing authority of the Republic of Sierra Leone, as established by the Sierra Leone Constitution. The Sierra Leone government is divided into three branches: the Executive Legislative and the Judiciary...
Sources
- Tratado breve dos Rios de Guine (1594) by Andre Alvares de Almada; J. Boulegue; P. E. H. Hair
- The Journal of African History, Vol. 26, No. 2/3 (1985), p. 275
- Arthur Abraham, Mende Government and Politics under Colonial Rule. Freetown, 1978.
- Martin Kilson. Political Change in a West African State: A Study of the Modernization Process in Sieera Leone. Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. ; 1966.
- Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone. London, 1962.
- Kenneth Little, The Mende of Sierra Leone. London, 1967.
- M. McCulloch, The Peoples of Sierra Leone Protectorate. London; n.d., but approximately 1964.
- Walter Rodney, "African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade". The Journal of African History, vol 7, num 3 (1966).
- Walter Rodney, "A Reconsideration of the Mane Invasions of Sierra Leone". The Journal of African History, vol 8, num 2 (1967).
- Akintola J.G. Wyse. H. C. Bankole-Bright and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1919-1958. Cambridge, 1950.
External links
- Sierra Leone: Information on the 1997 coup d'etat, ECOMOG harassment of civilians, and the current situation in Sierra Leone by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 5 January 2000
- Text of the 1999 Lomé Peace Accord
David Junior Rogers