Editing History of Sierra Leone (section)

==European contact (15th century)==
Portuguese ships began visiting Sierra Leone regularly in the late 15th century, and for a while they maintained a fort on the north shore of the [[Sierra Leone River|Freetown estuary]]. This estuary is one of the largest natural deep-water harbours in the world, and one of the few good harbours on West Africa's surf-battered "Windward Shore" (Liberia to Senegal). It soon became a favourite destination of European mariners, to shelter and replenish drinking water. Some of the Portuguese sailors stayed permanently, trading and intermarrying with the local people.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Johnston |first=Harry |author-link=Harry Johnston |date=June 1912 |title=The Portuguese Colonies |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PZk6AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA500 |magazine=[[The Nineteenth Century (periodical)|The Nineteenth Century and After]] |volume=71 |access-date=28 February 2022}}</ref>

===Slavery===
Slavery, and in particular the [[Atlantic slave trade]], had a great effect on the region—socially, economically and politically—from the late 15th to the mid-19th centuries.

There had been lucrative [[trans-Saharan trade]] of slaves in West Africa from the 6th century. At its peak (c. 1350) the [[Mali Empire]] surrounded the region of modern-day Sierra Leone and Liberia, though the slave trade may not have significantly penetrated the coastal rainforest. The peoples who migrated into Sierra Leone from this time would have had greater contact with the indigenous slave trade, either practicing it or escaping it.

When Europeans first arrived at Sierra Leone, slavery among the African peoples of the area was believed to be rare. According to historian [[Walter Rodney]], the Portuguese mariners kept detailed reports, and so it is likely if slavery had been an important local institution that the reports would have described it. There was mention of a very particular kind of slavery in the region, which was: 
{{blockquote|a person in trouble in one kingdom could go to another and place himself under the protection of its king, whereupon he became a "slave" of that king, obliged to provide free labour and liable for sale.<ref>Rodney, "Slavery"</ref>}}
According to Rodney, such a person would likely have retained some rights and had some opportunity to rise in status as time passed.

The [[European colonization of the Americas]] soon led to labor demands from nascent colonies; this led Europeans to seek a supply of slaves to transport to the Americas. Initially, European slavers launched raids on coastal villages to abduct Africans and sell them into slavery. However, they soon established economic alliances with local leaders, as many chiefs were willing to sell undesirable members of their tribe to Europeans. Other African chiefs launched raids on rival tribes in order to sell captives of such raids into slavery.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Sierra Leone {{!}} Slavery and Remembrance|url=http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0140|access-date=25 February 2022|website=slaveryandremembrance.org|archive-date=25 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220225091347/http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0140|url-status=dead}}</ref>

This early slaving was essentially an export business. The use of slaves as labourers by the local Africans appears to have developed only later. It may first have occurred under coastal chiefs in the late 18th century:
{{blockquote|The slave owners were originally white and foreigners, but the late eighteenth century saw the emergence of powerful slave-trading chiefs, who were said to own large numbers of 'domestic slaves'.<ref>Rodney, "Slavery", p 439.</ref>}}
For example, in the late 18th century, [[William Clevland (king)|William Cleveland]], a [[Scottish people|Scottish]] leader in Africa had a large "slave town" on the mainland opposite the [[Banana Islands]], whose inhabitants "were employed in cultivating extensive rice fields, described as being some of the largest in Africa at the time".<ref>Rodney,
 "Slavery", p 439. The ''rounde'' report which follows is from Major A.G. Laing, ''Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries''; London, 1825, p 221, cited in Rodney, "Slavery", p436.</ref>
The existence of an indigenous slave town was recorded by an English traveler in 1823. Known in the Fula language as a <EM id="rounde">''rounde''</EM>, it was connected with the Sulima Susu's capital city, [[Falaba]]. Its inhabitants worked at farming.

Rodney has postulated two means by which slaving for export could have caused a local practice of using slaves for labour to develop:
#Not all war captives offered for sale would have been bought by the Portuguese, so their captors had to find something else to do with them. Rodney believes that executing them was rare and that they would have been used for local labour.
#There is a time lag between the time a slave is captured and the time he or she is sold. Thus there would often have been a pool of slaves awaiting sale, who would have been put to work.<ref>Rodney, "Slavery", p 435.</ref>

There are possible additional reasons for the adoption of slavery by the locals to meet their labour requirements:
#The Europeans provided an example for imitation.
#Once slaving in any form is accepted, it may smash a moral barrier to exploitation and make its adoption in other forms seem a relatively minor matter.
#Export slaving entailed the construction of a coercive apparatus which could have been subsequently turned to other ends, such as policing a captive labour force.
#The sale of local produce (e.g., palm kernels) to Europeans opened a new sphere of economic activity. In particular, it created an increased demand for agricultural labour. Slavery was a way of mobilising an agricultural work force.<ref>On the fourth point: Abraham, ''Mende Government'', pp 24, 29, 30, and especially 20.</ref>

This local African slavery was much less harsh and brutal than the slavery practiced by Europeans on, for example, the plantations of the United States, the [[West Indies]], and Brazil. The local slavery has been described by [[anthropologist]] M. McCulloch:
{{blockquote|[S]laves were housed close to the fresh tracts of land they cleared for their masters. They were considered part of the household of their owner, and enjoyed limited rights. It was not customary to sell them except for a serious offense, such as adultery with the wife of a freeman. Small plots of land were given to them for their own use, and they might retain the proceeds of crops they grew on these plots; by this means it was possible for a slave to become the owner of another slave. Sometimes a slave married into the household of his master and rose to a position of trust; there is an instance of a slave taking charge of a chiefdom during the minority of the heir. Descendants of slaves were often practically indistinguishable from freemen.<ref>McCulloch, p 28.</ref>
}}
Slaves were sometimes sent on errands outside the kingdoms of their masters and returned voluntarily.<ref>Abraham, ''Mende Government'', p 24. He cites British ''Parliamentary Papers'', vol xlvii, 1983, p 15.</ref>
Speaking specifically of the era around 1700, historian Christopher Fyfe relates that, "Slaves not taken in war were usually criminals. In coastal areas, at least, it was rare for anyone to be sold without being charged with a crime."<ref>Fyfe, p 9.</ref>

Voluntary dependence reminiscent of that described in the early Portuguese documents mentioned at the beginning of this section was still present in the 19th century. It was called <EM id="pawning"  >pawning</EM>; Arthur Abraham describes a typical variety:
{{blockquote|A freeman heavily in debt, and facing the threat of the punishment of being sold, would approach a wealthier man or chief with a plea to pay of[f] his debts 'while I sit on your lap'. Or he could give a son or some other dependent of his 'to be for you', the wealthy man or chief. This in effect meant that the person so pawned was automatically reduced to a position of dependence, and if he was never redeemed, he or his children eventually became part of the master's extended family. By this time, the children were practically indistinguishable from the real children of the master, since they grew up regarding one another as brothers.<ref>Abraham, ''Mende Government'', pp 23,4.</ref>
}}
Some observers consider the term "slave" to be more misleading than informative when describing the local practice. Abraham says that in most cases, "subject, servant, client, serf, pawn, dependent, or retainer" would be more accurate.<ref>Abraham, ''Mende Government'', p 22.</ref>
Domestic slavery was abolished in Sierra Leone in 1928. McCulloch reports that at that time, amongst Sierra Leone's largest present-day ethnolinguistic group, the [[Mende people|Mende]], who then had about 560,000 people, about 15 per cent of the population (i.e., 84,000 people) were domestic slaves. He also says that "singularly little change followed the 1928 decree; a fair number of slaves returned to their original homes, but the great majority remained in the villages in which their former masters had placed them or their parents."<ref>McCulloch, p 29.</ref>

Export slavery remained a major business in Sierra Leone from the late 15th century to the mid-19th century. According to Fyfe, "it was estimated in 1789 that 74,000 slaves were exported annually from West Africa, about 38,000 by British firms." In 1788, a [[proslavery]] European named Matthews estimated the annual total exported from between the [[Nunez River]] (110&nbsp;km north of Sierra Leone) and the Sherbro as 3,000.<ref>Fyfe, pp 11, 12. The apologist is Matthews, ''A Voyage to the River Sierra Leone'', London, 1788.</ref> Participation in the [[Atlantic slave trade]] was gradually outlawed by various Western nations, beginning with the United States and Britain in 1808.{{citation needed|date=October 2021}}