Introduction

Summary

The Introduction traverses the early history of the Sierra Leone colony from its founding in 1787 to 1808. Rather than re-rehearse the colony’s early history at length, the emphasis is here placed on the origins and cultures of Sierra Leone’s colonists in the years prior to the arrival of the first Liberated Africans. Within the historiography on Sierra Leone there exists a dichotomy between the first three waves of immigrants from London, Nova Scotia, and Jamaica, referred to collectively as “settlers” and the later involuntary arrival of Liberated Africans. The standard interpretation of nineteenth-century Sierra Leone is that the three cohorts of voluntary migrants formed a cohesive society into which Liberated Africans were “incorporated” or “absorbed.” This Introduction argues that this common narrative of Liberated African incorporation and socialization into a pre-existing settler society is untenable, given the preponderance of emancipated Africans arriving on an annual basis and the nature of their interaction with Settlers.