Founding of Freetown
The settlement was promoted by British abolitionists, notably Granville Sharp, partly from principle and partly to remove London's visible population of destitute 'Black Poor'. The first landing was catastrophic: disease, the rainy season and conflict with the local Temne ruler destroyed most of the settlement within three years. It was refounded in 1792 by over a thousand Black Loyalists relocated from Nova Scotia, where the land and provisions promised for their wartime service to the Crown had not materialised, and reinforced later by Jamaican Maroons. After Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, Freetown became the base of the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron and the destination for Africans freed from intercepted slave ships. Tens of thousands were landed there over the following decades, from many different societies, and their descendants formed the Krio community — a distinct people defined by liberation rather than by common origin, occupying an intermediary position between the colonial administration and the interior peoples that shaped Sierra Leonean politics long after independence in 1961.
- Year: 1787 CE
- Category: Social
