HISTORY OF SIERRA LEONE

Slavery and freedom: 17th - 19th century

The Sierra Leone river, with a natural harbour at its mouth where Freetown now stands, is one of the places where slaving ships of the European nations regularly put in to trade with local rulers for their transatlantic cargo. But it is also the site selected by a British abolitionist, Granville Sharp, for a practical experiment in philanthropy.

In the 1780s the number of freed slaves in London is growing, as a result of actions such as Sharp's in the 1772 case ofJames Somerset. The question is where they should best live and be employed. Sharp's answer is that they should settle in the continent from which they or their ancestors came.

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