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Although Sierra Leone has a rich history before contact with Europeans, this collection focuses primarily on the British administration of Sierra Leone, 1791-1833. In 1787, a group of over 400 free "blacks" from England, some destitute sailors from India, and some white women moved to Sierra Leone and founded a colony, with support from the Crown. The colony did not succeed, but interest in the project did not disappear. In 1791, a new British organization called the Sierra Leone Company wanted both to provide free blacks with land in Africa and to establish a profitable trade in African goods.
Some of the Africans and descendants of Africans had become free during the American Revolution and moved to London. In 1792 Lt. John Clarkson, a representative of the Sierra Leone Company, brought 1,100 former slaves from Nova Scotia, where they had settled after the British evacuated New York City following the American victory, to Sierra Leone in 1792. Together, they founded Freetown, and were soon joined by some Maroons from Jamaica in 1800. The colony was not a financial success, and the Sierra Leone Company transferred it to the British Government in 1808. The British government had outlawed the slave trade in 1807, and they used Sierra Leone as a naval outpost for antislavery patrols. Captain Edward Columbine became Governor in 1808. Liberated Africans continued to come to Sierra Leone, numbering over 85,000 by 1864. The British and the Nova Scotians turned Freetown into a Christian community, which they accomplished through missionary work and schools. Still, a large Muslim population remained. This created a Western-educated elite in Sierra Leone, and many of these people and their descendents became a vital part of the region's economy, religion, and civic life.
Historical material taken from:
Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Accessed at http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-55344/Sierra-Leone, Sept. 25, 2006.
Fyfe, Christopher. A History of Sierra Leone. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th Ed., 2001-2005. Accessed at http://www.bartleby.com/65/si/SierraLe.html, Sept. 25, 2006.
The collection consists of items related to the British administration of Sierra Leone, including public and private papers of British officials in the colony of Sierra Leone, 1792-1825. The journal (March-August 1792) of Lt. John Clarkson, R.N. (1763-1828), brother of the more famous abolitionist Thomas Clarkson and first governor of the Freetown settlement in Sierra Leone, and the papers of Captain Edward Columbine (d. 1811), Governor of Sierra Leone from 1808-1811, document the establishment and administration of the colony as well as the British attempt to suppress the West African slave trade. Geographic and ethnological descriptions of Sierra Leone and neighboring territories are provided in the reports kept by British envoys to the indigenous officials, 1802-1806. The collection also includes the journal of Lt. George William Courtney, whose ship patrolled the West African coast from December 1823 to June 1825 seizing illegal slave vessels.
Access restrictions -- Available without restriction.
Use restrictions -- Available without restriction.
Sierra Leone collection, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago
Released on 2020-03-18.
Released on 2020-03-18.