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Sierra Leone.
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SIERRA LEONE (officially the Republic of Sierra Leone), is a country in West Africa. Area - 71 740 sq. km. Population - 5 363 669. Capital - Freetown. It is bordered by Guinea on the north, Liberia in the south-east, and the Atlantic Ocean in the south-west. . European contacts within Sierra Leone were among the first in West Africa. In 1462, Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra mapped the hills surrounding what is now Freetown Harbour, naming the shaped formation Serra da Leoa or "Serra Leoa" (Portuguese for Lioness Mountains). The Spanish rendering of this geographic formation is Sierra Leona, which later was adapted and, misspelled, became the country's current name. Soon after Sintra's expedition, Portuguese traders arrived at the harbour. By 1495 they had built a fortified trading post. The Dutch and French also set up trade here, and each nation used Sierra Leone as a trading point for slaves brought by African traders from interior areas. In 1562, the English initiated the Triangle Trade when Sir John Hawkins transported 300 enslaved Africans – acquired "by the sword and partly by other means" – to the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean, where he sold them. Following the American Revolutionary War, the British had evacuated thousands of freed African-American slaves and resettled them in Canadian and Caribbean colonies and London. Many struggled in their new lives. In 1787 the British Crown founded a settlement in Sierra Leone in what was called the "Province of Freedom". It intended to resettle some of the "Black Poor of London," mostly African Americans freed by the British during the war. About 400 blacks and 60 whites reached Sierra Leone on 15 May 1787. The group also included some West Indian, African people from London. After they established Granville Town, most of the first group of colonists died, due to disease and warfare with the indigenous African peoples (Temne and Mende), who resisted their encroachment. The 64 remaining colonists established a second Granville Town. Following the Revolution, more than 3,000 Black Loyalists had also been settled in Nova Scotia, where they were finally granted land. They founded Birchtown, Nova Scotia, but faced harsh winters and racial discrimination from nearby Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Thomas Peters pressed British authorities for relief and more aid; together with British abolitionist John Clarkson, the Sierra Leone Company was established to relocate Black Loyalists who wanted to take their chances in West Africa. In 1792 nearly 1200 persons from Nova Scotia crossed the Atlantic to build the second (and only permanent) Colony of Sierra Leone and the settlement of Freetown on 11 March 1792. In Sierra Leone they were called the Nova Scotian Settlers, the Nova Scotians, or the Settlers. On 1 January 1808, Thomas Ludlam, the Governor of the Sierra Leone Company and a leading abolitionist, surrendered the Company's charter. This ended its 16 years of running the Colony. The British Crown reorganised the Sierra Leone Company as the African Institution; it was directed to improve the local economy. Its members represented both British who hoped to inspire local entrepreneurs and those with interest in the Macauley & Babington Company, which held the (British) monopoly on Sierra Leone trade. In the early 19th century, Freetown served as the residence of the British colonial governor of the region, who also administered the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and the Gambia settlements. Sierra Leone developed as the educational centre of British West Africa. The British established Fourah Bay College here in 1827, which 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. Following the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, the UK decided that it needed to establish more dominion over the inland areas, to satisfy what was described by the European powers as "effective occupation" of territories. In 1896 it annexed these areas, declaring them the Sierra Leone Protectorate. With this change, the British began to expand their administration in the region, recruiting British citizens to posts, and pushing Krios out of positions in government and even the desirable residential areas in Freetown. In addition, the British annexation of the Protectorate interfered with the sovereignty of indigenous chiefs. They designated chiefs as units of local government, rather than dealing with them individually as had been previous practice. They did not maintain relationships even with longtime allies, such as Bai Bureh, chief of Kasseh, a community on the Small Scarcies River. He was later unfairly portrayed as a prime instigator of the Hut Tax war in 1898. In 1924, the UK government divided Sierra Leone into a Colony and a Protectorate, with separate and different political systems constitutionally defined for each. The Colony was Freetown and its coastal area; the Protectorate was defined as inland areas dominated by tribal chiefs. Antagonism between the two entities escalated to a heated debate in 1947, when proposals were introduced to provide for a single political system for both the Colony and the Protectorate. Most of the proposals came from leaders of the Protectorate, whose population far outnumbered that in the colony. The Creoles (Krios), led by Isaac Wallace-Johnson, opposed the proposals, as they would have resulted in reducing the political power of the Krios in the Colony. In 1951, the educated protectorate leaders from across different ethnic groups, including Sir Milton Margai, Lamina Sankoh, Siaka Stevens, Mohamed Sanusi Mustapha, John Karefa-Smart, Kande Bureh, Sir Albert Margai, Amadu Wurie and Sir Banja Tejan-Sie joined together united with the powerful paramount chiefs in the protectorate to form the Sierra Leone People's Party or SLPP as the party of the protectorate. The SLPP leadership, led by Sir Milton Margai, negotiated with the British and the educated Krio dominated colony based in Freetown to achieve independence . Due to the astute politics of Sir Milton Margai, an ethnic Mende, the educated Protectorate elite was won over to join forces with the paramount chiefs in the face of Krio intransigence. Later, Sir Milton used the same skills to win over opposition leaders and moderate Krio elements to achieve independence from the UK. In November 1951, Margai oversaw the drafting of a new constitution, which united the separate Colonial and Protectorate legislatures and – most importantly – provided a framework for decolonisation. In 1953, Sierra Leone was granted local ministerial powers, and Sir Milton Margai, was elected Chief Minister of Sierra Leone. The new constitution ensured Sierra Leone a parliamentary system within the Commonwealth of Nations. On 20 April 1960, Sir Milton Margai led a twenty four member Sierra Leonean delegation at constitutional conferences that were held with Queen Elizabeth II and British Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod in negotiations for independence held in London. On the conclusion of talks in London on 4 May 1960, the United Kingdom agreed to grant Sierra Leone Independence on 27 April 1961. Currency : Leone (SLL).
