Origin of African Countries: Sierra Leone

Archaeology findings show that Sierra Leone has been inhabited for thousands of years. Traditional historiography has customarily presented it as a people by successive waves of invaders; but the language pattern suggests that the coastal Bulom (Sherbro), Temne, and Limba have been in continuous settled occupation for a long time, with sporadic immigration from inland Mende-speaking people including Vai, Loko and Mende. The name Sierra Leone dates back to 1462, when a Portuguese explorer sailed down the coast of West Africa. There seems some dispute whether it was the shape or climatic conditions that influenced Pedro da Cintra to come up with “Sierra Lyoa” meaning Lion Mountains. Some say the coastal regions looked like “lion’s teeth”. Others suggest he thought the thunderstorms over the mountainous peninsula sounded like the roar of a lion. Sixteenth century English sailors called it Sierra Leoa which evolved in the 17th Century to Sierra Leone. In 1787, British philanthropists founded the “Province of Freedom” which later became Freetown, a British crown colony and the principal base for the suppression of the slave trade. In 1787 several freed black settlers originating from England, Nova Scotia, and Jamaica all arrived in the area. Utilizing some English government funding, The Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, an abolitionist group which included Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, and Granville Sharp, established the colony with the settlement of 411 London blacks on the Sierra Leone peninsula in what is now modern-day Freetown in May of 1787. That settlement was named Granville Town after Granville Sharp. Sharp also wrote a constitution based on the British legal tradition and on a framework of Christian principles. Two further waves of settlers came in 1792 and 1800 this included 1,200 blacks from Nova Scotia, and 550 Maroons who had been exiled from Jamaica following the 1795 Maroon War. The first settlers faced both environmental and political problems. Diseases and food crop scarcity along with conflicts with indigenous local African communities whose land they had settled on made survival difficult. In 1790 Granville Town was razed to the ground by indigenous people in retaliation for the burning of a native settlement. Though Granville Town was rebuilt by St. George’s Bay Company (later re-named Sierra Leone Company), it was again attacked by the French navy in 1794. Internal settler issues and conflicts also undermined the colony’s stability. The Sierra Leone Company control of food, seeds and other vital supplies and its decision to charge one shilling per acre for land caused the Nova Scotian settlers to rise up in rebellion in 1800. Although this rebellion was eventually put down by British naval forces, the company agreed to limit settlement to the blacks already in the colony. New conflicts with indigenous people over disputed land clams prompted attacks on the colony by the Koya Temne between 1801 and 1807. Sierra Leone became a crown (British) colony in 1808. From that point virtually all of the new settlers were “re-captives,” slaves rescued from slave ships and emancipated by the Royal Navy. Sierra Leone became a base for the navy’s operation and the number of re-captives soon outstripped the number of original freed slave settlers. These re-captives eventually blended into the community, created by the first three waves of freed slave settlers. They formed a unique Krio culture and language with Christianity as its base. By the 1830s Sierra Leone became an important site of missionary activity and education. Freetown, the colonial capital, was known as “Athens of West Africa.” Also by that period, commerce replaced agriculture as the principal source of revenue in the colony. Sierra Leone achieved independence on the 27th of April 1961. The country attained republican status on the 19th April 1971. Since independence many changes have been experienced politically and economically and in the social society of Sierra Leone. Sources : https://www.visitsierraleone.org/background-information/history/ and

Founding of Sierra Leone, 1787