Editing Freetown (section)

=== Freetown as a Crown Colony (1808–1961) ===
[[File:A view of Freetown, 1803.jpg|thumb|Freetown in 1803]]

[[Temne people|Themne people]] attacked the colony in 1801 and were repulsed. The British eventually took control of Freetown, making it a [[Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate|Crown Colony]] in 1808. This act accompanied expansion that led to the creation of Sierra Leone.

From 1808 to 1874, the city served as the capital of [[British West Africa]]. It also served as the base for the [[Royal Navy]]'s [[West Africa Squadron]], which was charged with enforcing the ban on the slave trade. When the squadron liberated slaves on trading ships, they brought most to Sierra Leone, and Freetown in particular; thus, the population grew to include descendants of many different peoples from all over the west coast of Africa. The British also situated three of their [[Mixed Commission Court]]s in Freetown.<ref name=Adderley>{{cite book|last1=Adderley|first1=Rosanne Marion|title="New negroes from Africa" slave trade abolition and free African settlement in the nineteenth-century Caribbean|date=2006|publisher=Indiana University Press|location=Bloomington|isbn=978-0-253-21827-8}}<!--|access-date=September 6, 2014--></ref>

[[File:Freetown, Sierra Leone ca 1856.jpg|thumb|Freetown in 1856]]
The liberated Africans established the suburbs of Freetown Peninsula. They were the largest group of immigrants to make up the Creole people of Freetown. The city expanded rapidly. The freed slaves were joined by West Indian and African soldiers, who had fought for Britain in the [[Napoleonic Wars]] and settled here afterwards. Descendants of the freed slaves who settled in Sierra Leone between 1787 and around 1885, are called the [[Sierra Leone Creole people|Creoles]]. The Creoles play a leading role in the city, although they are a minority of the overall Sierra Leone population.

In the 1890s, ethnic tension flared between [[Lebanese people|Lebanese]] residents and traders and the various native ethnicities of Sierra Leone, which led to Lebanese shops being destroyed in cities<ref name=":0" /> including Freetown.

During World War I Freetown became a base for operations of British forces in the Atlantic. Warships came into the port to resupply and German merchant vessels captured in the region were also sent there.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://livelb.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/a-global-view/africa/sierra-leone/|title=The National Archives - Homepage|first=The National|last=Archives|access-date=April 22, 2018|archive-date=October 24, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191024020856/http://livelb.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/a-global-view/africa/sierra-leone/|url-status=dead}}</ref>

During [[World War II]], Britain maintained a naval base at Freetown. The base was a staging post for [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] traffic in the South Atlantic and the assembly point for [[SL convoys]] to Britain. An [[RAF]] base was maintained at nearby [[Lungi International Airport|Lungi airfield]]. British fighter aircraft which were shipped into Freetown port, were carried on the [[Sierra Leone Government Railway]] to Makeni to be assembled and flown to Egypt.