Sierra Leone Company

Last updated

The Sierra Leone Company was the corporate body involved in founding the second British colony in Africa on 11 March 1792 through the resettlement of Black Loyalists who had initially been settled in Nova Scotia (the Nova Scotian Settlers) after the American Revolutionary War. The company came about because of the work of the ardent abolitionists Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, Henry Thornton, and Thomas's brother John Clarkson, who is considered one of the founding fathers of Sierra Leone. The company was the successor to the St. George Bay Company, a corporate body established in 1790 that re-established Granville Town in 1791 for the 60 remaining Old Settlers.

Contents

St. George's Bay Company

The Sierra Leone Company was the successor to the St. George's Bay Company that had been founded in 1790 following a mostly unsuccessful effort by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor in 1787 to establish a free settlement for the "Black Poor" of London, many of whom were Black Loyalists, who had escaped and fought for the British following Dunmore's Proclamation during the American War of Independence. The 1787 expedition was made up of 300 of London's Black Poor, 60 English Working-class Women, and an assortment of white officials, clergy and craftsmen to assist in building the colony – 411 men, women and children in all. Upon landing, they founded Granville Town as their base. This first colony only lasted about two and a half years, decimated by disease and later abandonment. The coup de grace occurred in 1789, when the neighbouring Temne people burned the settlement during a dispute between the Temne and slave traders. [1] Although Granville Town was re-founded in 1791 under the auspices of Alexander Falconbridge, this settlement was not the basis for the colony or settlement established by the company in March 1792.

Prime movers of the cause

Both ventures were promoted by the anti-slavery activist Granville Sharp, who published a prospectus for the proposed company in 1790 entitled Free English Territory in AFRICA. The prospectus made clear its abolitionist view and stated that several respectable gentlemen who had already subscribed had done so "not with a view of any present profit to themselves, but merely, through benevolence and public spirit, to promote a charitable measure, which may hereafter prove of great national importance to the Manufactories, and other Trading Interests of this Kingdom".

Among the early subscribers were many friends of Sharp involved in the Clapham Sect: Henry Thornton, William Wilberforce, Rev. Thomas Clarkson, Rev. Thomas Gisbourne and Samuel Whitbread.

Initial attempts to gain a royal charter for the company proved fruitless following opposition from the attorney general, Archibald Macdonald. [2] The company then proceeded to gain incorporation through act of parliament. However this too received opposition, particularly from the Committee of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, who called a meeting in March 1791. This led to three petitions being organised by slave trade merchants in London, Liverpool and Bristol. Slave traders in Lancaster also organised a petition as did the Africa Company. Further opposition was organised by the Standing Committee of West India Planters and Merchants, who arranged for two meetings with William Pitt, the Prime Minister. [3] Nevertheless, Henry Thornton was able to successfully guide the Sierra Leone settlement bill through parliament, despite the efforts of the Liverpool MP Bamber Gascoyne and other anti-abolitionists. On 30 May 1791, the bill was passed 87 votes to 9. [4]

Colonization: the colony of Freetown

Sierra Leone Company 20 cent coin 20 cent coin 1791.JPG
Sierra Leone Company 20 cent coin

In 1792, John Clarkson led over 1100 black settlers from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to establish a new colony and it was on this basis that the Nova Scotian Settlers founded Freetown, Sierra Leone. The majority of these settlers were former slaves of the American colonies, freed by the British during the American Revolution and forced to relocate after the British defeat. It was the determination of these settlers that caused Freetown to take shape and survive after they founded it in March 1792. [5] [6] The company issued decimal currency in the form of dollars and cents struck by Matthew Boulton at Soho Mint and issued in 1791 (although these coins did not circulate until the founding of the Colony in 1792) and 1796. [7]

When war broke out between Great Britain and France (one of the French Revolutionary Wars) the company lost supplies and a number of ships to privateers and the French navy. American merchantmen, as neutral traders, used the opportunity to establish trade. Trouble continued, though, for in September 1794 the French burned Freetown in a raid. The colonists rebuilt, and American merchants aided by selling the company vital supplies. [8]

During these years the colony's acting governor, Zachary Macaulay, and his council agreed to accept American blacks as settlers with a gift of free Sierra Leone land if they met four criteria: they must have letters of recommendation of their upright character from their clergy, they must agree to become British subjects and abide by British law, they must secure their own passage to the colony, and they must clear at least one third of the land given to them for agriculture within two years of arrival. [9]

The Sierra Leone Company was succeeded in 1807 by the African Institution. [10]

Ships of the Sierra Leone company

Citations

  1. ↑ Brooks (1974), pp. 187–188.
  2. ↑ Braidwood, p. 231.
  3. ↑ Braidwood, p. 235.
  4. ↑ Braidwood, p. 248.
  5. ↑ Thomas (1988), p. 59.
  6. ↑ Brooks (1974), pp. 190–191.
  7. ↑ Notes on Colonial Coin: The Coins of the Sierra Leone Company 1791-1807
  8. ↑ Brooks (1974), pp. 192–93.
  9. ↑ Brooks (1974), pp. 196–97.
  10. ↑ Thomas (1988), p. 32..
  11. ↑ Lloyd's Register (1793), Seq.no.A653.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Scanlan (2017), p. 42.
  13. ↑ Lloyd's Register (1796), "C" supple. pages.
  14. ↑ "The Marine List". Lloyd's List. No. 3011. 15 June 1798. hdl:2027/mdp.39015073721238.

Related Research Articles

Sierra Leone first became inhabited by indigenous African peoples at least 2,500 years ago. The Limba were the first tribe known to inhabit Sierra Leone. The dense tropical rainforest partially isolated the region from other West African cultures, and it became a refuge for peoples escaping violence and jihads. Sierra Leone was named by Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra, who mapped the region in 1462. The Freetown estuary provided a good natural harbour for ships to shelter and replenish drinking water, and gained more international attention as coastal and trans-Atlantic trade supplanted trans-Saharan trade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freetown</span> Capital, chief port, and the largest city of Sierra Leone

Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and political centre, as it is the seat of the Government of Sierra Leone. The population of Freetown was 1,055,964 at the 2015 census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sherbro Island</span> Place in Southern Province, Sierra Leone

Sherbro Island is in the Atlantic Ocean, and is included within Bonthe District, Southern Province, Sierra Leone. The island is separated from the African mainland by the Sherbro River in the north and Sherbro Strait in the east. It is 32 miles (51 km) long and up to 15 miles (24 km) wide, covering an area of approximately 230 square miles (600 km2). The western extremity is Cape St. Ann. Bonthe, on the eastern end, is the chief port and commercial centre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Cuffe</span> American businessman

Paul Cuffe, also known as Paul Cuffee was an African American businessman, whaler and abolitionist. Born free into a multiracial family on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, Cuffe became a successful merchant and sea captain. His mother, Ruth Moses, was a Wampanoag from Harwich, Cape Cod and his father an Ashanti captured as a child in West Africa and sold into slavery in Newport about 1720. In the mid-1740s, his father was manumitted by his Quaker owner, John Slocum. His parents married in 1747 in Dartmouth.

Alexander Falconbridge was a British surgeon who took part in four voyages in slave ships between 1782 and 1787. In time he became an abolitionist and in 1788 published An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. In 1791 he was sent by the Anti-Slavery Society to Granville Town, Sierra Leone, a community of freed slaves, where he died a year later in 1792.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Back-to-Africa movement</span> Political movement in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries

The back-to-Africa movement was a political movement in the 19th and 20th centuries advocating for a return of the descendants of African American slaves to the African continent. The movement originated from a widespread belief among some European Americans in the 18th and 19th century United States that African Americans would want to return to the continent of Africa. In general, the political movement was an overwhelming failure; very few former slaves wanted to move to Africa. The small number of freed slaves who did settle in Africa—some under duress—initially faced brutal conditions, due to diseases to which they no longer had biological resistance. As the failure became known in the United States in the 1820s, it spawned and energized the radical abolitionist movement. In the 20th century, the Jamaican political activist and black nationalist Marcus Garvey, members of the Rastafari movement, and other African Americans supported the concept, but few actually left the United States.

Thomas Peters, born Thomas Potters, was a veteran of the Black Pioneers, fighting for the British in the American Revolutionary War. A Black Loyalist, he was resettled in Nova Scotia, where he became a politician and one of the "Founding Fathers" of the nation of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Peters was among a group of influential Black Canadians who pressed the Crown to fulfill its commitment for land grants in Nova Scotia. Later they recruited African-American settlers in Nova Scotia for the colonisation of Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Clarkson (abolitionist)</span> English abolitionist

Lieutenant John Clarkson was a Royal Navy officer and abolitionist, the younger brother of Thomas Clarkson, one of the central figures in the abolition of slavery in England and the British Empire at the close of the 18th century. As agent for the Sierra Leone Company, Lieutenant Clarkson was instrumental in the founding of Freetown, today Sierra Leone's capital city, as a haven for chiefly formerly enslaved African-Americans first relocated to Nova Scotia by the British military authorities following the American Revolutionary War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor</span> Charitable organization founded in London

The Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor was a charitable organisation founded in London in 1786 to provide sustenance for distressed people of African and Asian origin. It played a crucial role in the proposal to form a colony for black refugees in Sierra Leone. The work of the Committee overlapped to some extent with the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire.

Maroon Town, Sierra Leone, is a district in the settlement of Freetown, a colony founded in West Africa by Great Britain.

Settler Town is the oldest part of the city of Freetown, now the capital of Sierra Leone, and was the first home of the Nova Scotian Settlers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cline Town</span>

Cline Town is an area in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The area is named for Emmanuel Kline, a Hausa Liberated African who bought substantial property in the area. The neighborhood is in the vicinity of Granville Town, a settlement established in 1787 and re-established in 1789 prior to the founding of the Freetown settlement on 11 March 1792.

Moses "Daddy Moses" Wilkinson or "Old Moses" was an American Wesleyan Methodist preacher and Black Loyalist. His ministry combined Old Testament divination with African religious traditions such as conjuring and sorcery. He gained freedom from slavery in Virginia during the American Revolutionary War and was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher in New York and Nova Scotia. In 1791, he migrated to Sierra Leone, preaching alongside ministers Boston King and Henry Beverhout. There, he established the first Methodist church in Settler Town and survived a rebellion in 1800.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birchtown, Nova Scotia</span> Community in Nova Scotia, Canada

Birchtown is a community and National Historic Site in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located near Shelburne in the Municipal District of Shelburne County. Founded in 1783, the village was the largest settlement of Black Loyalists and the largest free settlement of ethnic Africans in North America in the eighteenth century. The two other significant Black Loyalist communities established in Nova Scotia were Brindley town and Tracadie. Birchtown was named after British Brigadier General Samuel Birch, an official who helped lead the evacuation of Black Loyalists from New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nova Scotian Settlers</span> Historical ethnic group that settled Sierra Leone

The Nova Scotian Settlers, or Sierra Leone Settlers, were African Americans who founded the settlement of Freetown, Sierra Leone and the Colony of Sierra Leone, on March 11, 1792. The majority of these black American immigrants were among 3,000 African Americans, mostly former slaves, who had sought freedom and refuge with the British during the American Revolutionary War, leaving rebel masters. They became known as the Black Loyalists. The Nova Scotian settlers were jointly led by African American Thomas Peters, a former soldier, and English abolitionist John Clarkson. For most of the 19th century, the Settlers resided in Settler Town and remained a distinct ethnic group within the Freetown territory, tending to marry among themselves and with Europeans in the colony.

The history of African-American settlement in Africa extends to the beginnings of ex-slave repatriation to Africa from European colonies in the Americas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sierra Leone Creole people</span> Ethnic group of Sierra Leone

The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.

<i>The Book of Negroes</i> (miniseries) Television series

The Book of Negroes is a 2015 television miniseries based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Canadian writer Lawrence Hill. The book was inspired by the British freeing and evacuation of former slaves, known as Black Loyalists, who had left rebel masters during the American Revolutionary War. The British transported some 3,000 Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia for resettlement, documenting their names in what was called the Book of Negroes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate</span> British colony (1808–1861) and protectorate (1896–1961)

The Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone was the British colonial administration in Sierra Leone from 1808 to 1961, part of the British Empire from the abolitionism era until the decolonisation era. The Crown colony, which included the area surrounding Freetown, was established in 1808. The protectorate was established in 1896 and included the interior of what is today known as Sierra Leone.

Thornton was a cutter launched in 1793 at Southampton that the Sierra Leone Company purchased to assist in their activities. A French squadron destroyed her at Sierra Leone in September 1794.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.