Freetown History
Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, has a population of 2.5 million people (2002 estimate), up from approximately 1 million a decade ago as a result of huge immigration to the city during the country’s civil conflict. This coastal city is located on the northern extremity of the Western Province, four miles from the Sierra Leone River estuary.
It has a tropical climate, with average temperatures of 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) and annual rainfall of 150 inches (381 cm).
Freetown’s population was originally made up of emancipated slaves, Maroons, Nova Scotians, and liberated Africans, but it has since expanded to include many more ethnic groups from the provinces as well as foreigners.
In 1779, two Scandinavians, Carl Bernhard Wadström and Anders Johansen, proposed the construction of a haven for liberated African slaves in Freetown.
However, Granville Sharp, an English philanthropist and abolitionist, was the first to carry out such a scheme when he put roughly 400 freed slaves on the site where Freetown currently stands.
Hunger, disease, and violence plagued the settlers, and the settlement came close to extinction. In 1791, Wadström and Johansen chose to collaborate with the British-owned Sierra Leone Society and participated in the organization’s second attempt to build a viable community in Freetown.
The two Scandinavians drew the town layout for the second try and assessed the cost of the houses to be erected.
In September 1794, a French naval fleet attacked and destroyed the Freetown settlement. After being repaired, it was assaulted again in 1801 and 1802 by neighboring Temne, who were allied with some rebel Nova Scotians.
During the peak of the transatlantic slave trade, ships plying the west coast of Africa saw Freetown as an easy target due to its superb natural harbor.
After making the slave trade illegal in 1807, the British Parliament named the Sierra Leone peninsula (Freetown and its surroundings) a British Crown Colony the following year.
The British naval squadron utilized Freetown as a base for operations against slave ships, as well as the location of the British Mixed Commission Courts.
The Vice-Admiralty Court was established at Freetown in 1808 to try the captains of slave ships captured by a British naval squadron patrolling Africa’s west coast. The squadron’s actions were impeded since it could not lawfully inspect foreign ships for slaves unless authorized by a treaty with the foreign countries involved.
Nonetheless, it was successful in freeing numerous slaves from many nations’ slave ships and settling recaptives in the colony. During the second part of the nineteenth century, Freetown was dubbed the “Athens of West Africa” because to its highly westernized structures, services, businesses, educational institutions, and civic culture.
And in both World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945), Freetown was utilized as a major naval base by the British.
The glorious image of Freetown was drastically altered in January 1999 when a contingent of rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which had engaged in a protracted civil war with various Sierra Leonean civilian and military regimes for eight years, attacked the city.
More than 5,000 people were killed in the attack, around 7,000 new refugees were registered in neighboring Guinea, and tens of thousands were blocked from crossing into Guinea and Liberia by forces from the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOMOG) regional governments and RUF rebels. The killing, looting, and arson destroyed an estimated 65-85% of the capital.
Also Read: Origins And Incredible History Of Sierra Leone, 1787–1808
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