Sierra Leone

From the Mende, Temne, and Sherbro of the Rice Coast through Bunce Island and the Atlantic slave trade to Freetown's 'Province of Freedom', the Krio, the Hut Tax War, independence, and a brutal civil war survived.

Sierra Leone takes its name from the Portuguese Serra Lyoa, the 'Lion Mountains' that ring the great natural harbour of Freetown, charted in the fifteenth century. Its coast was home to the Sherbro, Temne, Mende, and other peoples, reshaped in the sixteenth century by the Mane incursions, and from the late seventeenth century it became a notorious hub of the transatlantic slave trade, above all at Bunce Island. In a remarkable reversal, the Sierra Leone peninsula became a haven for freed and formerly enslaved people: the 'Province of Freedom' of 1787, then Freetown, settled by London's Black Poor, Nova Scotian settlers, and Jamaican Maroons. As a British Crown Colony from 1808 it served as the base for the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, whose courts emancipated more than 80,000 'Liberated Africans' who, with the earlier settlers, formed the Krio community. Britain declared an inland Protectorate in 1896, provoking the 1898 Hut Tax War led by Bai Bureh. Sierra Leone won independence from the United Kingdom on 27 April 1961 under Sir Milton Margai, slid into one-party rule under Siaka Stevens, and endured a devastating civil war (1991–2002) fuelled by 'blood diamonds', followed by the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic and a long recovery.