How Politics Changes the Past
Christopher Fyfe (1920 - 2008) is the
acknowledged authority on Sierra Leonean history. His books have served
as a
reference for generations of historians, writers and
students. In his work as Sierra Leone government archivist (1950 -
1952) and, later, researcher and university lecturer, he uncovered
countless details about Sierra Leone's early history and brought to
light much information that would doubtless have remained
well and truly hidden without his intervention. His
major work, A History of Sierra Leone,
covers the period from the founding of the Colony to the end of the
nineteenth century, making full use of the unparalleled access he had
to the primary sources of that era. And yet even the Great
Fyfe has been influenced over the years by a dose of political
revisionism...
Granville Town, Province of Freedom
...While Smeathman busied himself with physical arrangements and
recruitment, it fell to Granville Sharp to write a plan of
government...Captain Thompson’s final embarkation list shows that 411
persons sailed from Plymouth ...Sierra Leone chronicles usually
relate that among
them were 60 to 70 white women prostitutes collected as companions for
unmarried blacks. This is based entirely on the story told to Anna
Maria Falconbridge in 1791...Mrs.
Falconbridge could scarcely believe it58 and time has not
made it more credible. Nothing can be found in the records...Regrettably,
the spirit of high adventure which seemed to permeate the enterprise in
the early summer of 1786 had changed by April, 1787, to a sour welter
of charges and countercharges. With the deaths of Smeathman and Hanway,
the project had lost its visionaries...The relief expedition was a
partial success...Captain Taylor, though not in the navy, negotiated an
agreement, once more securing the land to the settlers for another £85
worth of goods. This was signed on August 22, 1788, by Naimbana and
King Jimmy...
Direct_Taxation_in_the_Early_History_of_Sierra_Leone_Part_2
By the time the grant certificates were issued, the quit rent
issue had become the rallying ground of discontent and general
opposition to the government...By the second half of 1797 the country
was in a state little short of anarchy... But for the almost accidental
arrival of the Maroons, a successful political revolution might have
been effected...The quit rent was a yearly payment - a relic of the
feudal system...Under the proprietorship of Sharp the land belonged to
the settlers...administration and abuse of these fiscal devices showed
that a commercial company (as the experiences with the East India
Company so well confirms) cannot be trusted to carry out its commercial
functions simultaneously with the functions of government...
Sickness_and_Death_in_the_Early_Sierra_Leone_Colony
...In seven months the colony had had four acting governors...the
doctors proved largely incapable in the face of almost incessant
attacks from the two major killers, malaria and yellow fever...Dr.
William Boyle, the Colonial Surgeon, pointed to the unusually early
beginning of the rains, the tornadoes and the hot sun, and the fact
that this created a miasmic ‘bad air’ condition which hung over the
town...Leeches were kept in constant supply and would be placed on the
malaria patient’s shaved head in the hope that the fever would be
literally sucked out. The cures were, of course, very hard on the
already weakened sufferer and often proved fatal in their own right.
Doctors felt that if the patient salivated, the fever would reduce, so
they administered large doses of calomel through the mouth to effect
salivation. But this often only caused a loss of teeth, if and when the
patient recovered on his own. Another means of stimulating the saliva
flow was by the use of mercury or quicksilver...If given in the correct
amounts, cinchona bark itself could have been effective both as a
treatment and as a prophylaxis against an expected attack.
Direct_Taxation_in_the_Early_History_of_Sierra_Leone_Part_1
...This tax...was a very significant factor in the
promotion of economic development during the nineteenth century, in
particular the development of road communications for the greater part
of the period...Of
equally basic significance but with exactly opposite effects was the
other outstanding device of direct taxation in this early period,
namely, the quit rent...The quit rent was one of those relics of
medievalism which, in the peculiar circumstances of the foundation of
the settlement found its unhappy way to it and from the first was
attended with difficulties. In West Africa it is peculiar to Sierra
Leone. And it is an expedient brimful with lessons on fiscal policy and
fiscal administration for underdeveloped countries in general.
Financially, the quit rent was not a very profitable tax; but the
experiment left a deep influence on the course of economic development
in the country...Between 1794 and 1801 the quit rent proved to be one
of the most difficult problems with which the government had to
contend...Consequently, by that time, the quit rent issue became fused
with a much wider issue, namely, what amounted to a denial of the
sovereignty of the Company government and the asserting of the
settlers’ right of self-government which, to all intents and purposes,
they had enjoyed under Granville Sharp.
Sierra Leone Studies June 1918, Governor's Foreword
An administrative officer ought to
know something of the language and customs of the people over whom he
is set in authority. On this point we are all agreed. But it is
difficult to press for it in Sierra Leone, where some fifteen tongues
are met with among as many different tribes. The impossibility of
learning fifteen languages has served us in the past as an excuse for
dispensing with a knowledge of any of them. It is to be
otherwise in the future. Newly appointed
officers are to pass in either Temne or Mende...
Sierra Leone Studies June 1918 - Index of articles
A Closer Look
at Kailondo of Kailahun
One of the best-known of the late
19th-century warrior-chiefs of the
former Protectorate is Kailondo, the founder of Kailahun, present
District Headquarters of Kailahun District, Eastern Province...Fyfe
draws heavily on the writings of Alldridge...Alldridge's laudatory
descriptions of Kailondo...In this
account, Kailondo emerges the gallant young knight who ‘...rid the
country of the freebooter...’ . Hollins gives a brief account of
Kailondo’s subsequent plundering of the countryside, mentioning that he
took ‘...much spoil of wives, slaves, cattle, many cloths and a
carronade...’ Nowhere does Hollins mention human carnage or
human sacrifice, which we believe played a prominent role in Kailondo’s
administration of Luawa. What Hollins does note is that although some
of Kailondo’s Kpelle slaves ‘...sighed for human flesh... they were not
allowed this horrid diet within the Kailahun warfence’...the terror
that Kailondo inspired and the ruthlessness with which he dealt with
all opponents and personal
enemies.
Kabala-The
Northern Frontier Town
THE northern section of Sierra
Leone was until recently a region of
conflict between the different ethnic groups of the area. In spite of
this, there was an appreciable amount of trade between the upper Niger
basin and the north-western coast of present day Sierra Leone.
Actually, in the middle of the nineteenth century, "trading caravans
travelled from Timbuktu, Bamako, Segou, Kankan and other centres
bringing local produce (and collecting more on the way) with which to
trade and barter at the coastal towns and factories". The
intermediate collecting centres were Falaba, Musaia, Samaia and Bumban;
whereas the coastal towns and factories included Kambia, Mange, Port
Loko, and Magbile. At that time, there was either no settlement called
Kabala, or it was a small unimportant village not worth visiting by
traders...
A Preliminary
Political History of the Kenema Area
Most histories of the Mende people treat them as a whole,
describing
general patterns which occur throughout the Southern and Eastern
Provinces...Other than such general information, our knowledge of Mende
history is restricted to scattered events such as the Hut Tax War and
to biographical data on a few famous chiefs and warriors...As with the
rest of Mendeland the history of the Kenema area begins with the
isolated villages described by Kenneth Little. Early in the nineteenth
century a Mende or Mandingo people immigrated from the Futa Jallon to
the eastern border of the country and across to Kenema.
"Africanus
Horton" by Christopher Fyfe - A Review
Horton graduated
with an MD from
Edinburgh in 1859 and in that same year he was commissioned, together
with his colleague and fellow Krio, William Broughton-Davies, into the
British Army. Writing about the prejudice and
resentment Horton faced during his career in the army, Fyfe is fearless
in his
criticism of the white British establishment...
Review of "H.
C. Bankole Bright and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1919 - 1958",
Akintola Wyse
This
book perhaps would have been more appropriately titled, “How the Krio
Lost
Power in
Sierra Leone's Conection with Royalty
How did the death of a German Prince come to be recorded in a
Mission
House in Freetown? The following account throws some interesting light
on a page of Sierra Leone and West African history. The name Prempeh is
well known to West Africans and those interested in
West African history. He was the Asantehene or ruler of the great
Ashanti Confederacy and was taken prisoner in the last but one Ashanti
War, that of 1896, and exiled to the Seychelles but spent the first
four years of his thirty year long exile in Freetown. In command of
this 1896 Expedition was Sir Francis Scott, and he had with him as his
Military Secretary, Prince Henry of Battenburg.
Sierra Leone's Role in the Development
of Ghana (Part 2)
...The debt of Ghana to Sierra Leone cannot possibly
be repaid...Nor that of Nigeria...Nor that of Gambia with her Forsters,
Oldfields, Njais, Mahoneys, Joneses and the rest...nor that of
Liberia...the Howards, the Robertses, Coopers, Johnsons, Shearmans, and
many more...
The Syrians Arrive in Sierra Leone
The success of Syrians in Sierra Leone had long been an extremely
sensitive issue with Creoles....Syrians found up-country Africans,
especially the chiefs, enthusiastic customers for the coral
beads.....By the middle of 1919 the colony was in a state of incipient
famine. The anti-Syrian riots began....An amount totaling £36,635 was
sought in damages from Freetown ratepayers...collective responsibility
Sierra Leone's Role in the Development
of Ghana
It cannot be denied, though it does
often get forgotten, that Sierra Leone has played a great part in the
history of evolving Ghana, in many ways as significant a part as any.
Madam Yoko - Ruler of the Mendi
Confederacy
...Madam Yoko of Gpa Mendi. By sheer ability and force of character
this resolute little woman had built up in the formative years of the
country the biggest chiefdom in the whole Protectorate....
The Creation of Hill Station
...Hill Station nevertheless continued to exist as a
limited white preserve - the most visible manifestation of Britain's
rejection of the Creoles...
Freetown in 1794
THE
following description of
The Origins of Tribal Administration
in Freetown (part 2)
...If they were without employment for three weeks or more the Tribal
Ruler could bring them before the Police Magistrate....
The Origins of Tribal Administration in
Freetown
At the end of the nineteenth century the government relied
almost entirely upon the Mende for the provision of carriers and
labourers. They often had difficulty...
The Evolution of the Native Affairs
Department (Parts 2 & 3)
...From
the first, too, Parkes had his doubts about the wisdom of the Hut Tax,
and these doubts grew as more
and more chiefs turned...
The Evolution of the Native Affairs
Department (Part 1)
This paper, which was originally read to a meeting of the Sierra
Leone
Society on 8th June, 1954, is based on the records of the Aborigines
and Native Affairs Departments in the Sierra Leone archives....
Review of "A History
of Sierra Leone" by Christopher Fyfe, Part 2
...Mr.
Fyfe paints it as almost a tragedy--the shabby desertion
by the inflated Imperialists of their faithful Creole servants...
Review of "A History
of Sierra Leone" by Christopher Fyfe, Part 1
...mark, above all, the contribution of Freetown to the
advancement of Africa...
Trade Routes of the
Early Sierra Leone Protectorate
In the middle years of the nineteenth
century the hinterland of the Sierra Leone Colony stretched far into
the interior of the continent...
An
Account of the Liberian Hinterland c. 1780
If his story be
accepted, Harrison was probably the first white
traveller in this part of the Guinea hinterland and certainly the first
person to have his travel recorded.
African
Colonization in the Nineteenth Century: Liberia and Sierra Leone
...illuminate the history of Sierra Leonean Creoles and
Americo-Liberians...and some possible reasons for the divergence of
their experience.
The
New Burial Ground - A History of Circular Rd. Cemetery
...So a walk through this New Burial Ground reveals much of the history
of Sierra Leone to the observant eye...
West Indians in West Africa
The West India Regiment was one of the chief links between the West
Indies and Africa...served in every war in West Africa in which
the British were engaged.
How
we Lost Guinea (part 2) - New light on the origin of the Waiima Affair,
1893
In 1893, a French expedition was sent into French Guinea in order to
survey...Sierra Leone, Liberia and... French Soudan...
Sir
Samuel Lewis and the Legislative Council
,,,Cardew had little confidence in the Creoles as a people (though
there were important exceptions to his dislike), and did not think them
ready for self-government. And Lewis, most distinguished of these, soon
became the chief target of Cardew's dislike.
How
we Lost Guinea (part 1) - The French Occupation of the Mellacourie,
1865-67
...The events I have described thus
decisively determined the territorial extent of
modern Sierra Leone.
The
Foundation of the Luawa Chiefdom
The origins of Kailahun district...The story of Kailondo and Ndawa. Mr
Aldridge, the first Englishman...wrote this of him (The Sherbro and
its Hinterland)...Kailondo was a man of small stature but large
intelligence
Prince
Niambanna in England, 1791
Niambanna...consigned his son into the hands of
Mr. Falconbridge, he charged him at the same time with a letter
addressed to Granville Sharp,
entreating him that he would in all things direct the education of the
young prince.
Notes
on Bai Bureh, of 1898 fame
I
have collected the following extracts and notes relating to the Temne
warrior, Bai Bureh, chief of the Kasse chiefdom. His fame as a leader
in war, during the 1898 Rising in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone,
attained such a high level that...I remember clearly the first occasion
on which I heard of Bai Bureh...
Edward
Fenton's Visit to Sierra Leone, 1582
The Earl of Leicester had selected as Admiral, Edward Fenton, who,
after public service in Ireland, had sailed in command of the Gabriel
in 1577, in Frobisher's second expedition to discover the North-West
Passage. Ostensibly, a voyage of discovery, but actually fitted out for
trade, the expedition of 1582 proved a failue; nonetheless, it serves
as an interesting link between Drake's circumnavigation 1577-80 and the
voyage of Cavendish in 1586...On the following day, nearly all the rest
agreed that it was indeed Sierra Leone which they had reached...
The
Sierra Leone Administration in 1885
This photograph of what would today be called the "Senior Service" was
taken
seventy years ago, in February, 1885. Governor Sir Samuel Rowe was
expected shortly from England, and it may be that the Chief Justice,
enthroned in the middle of the group (in the basket chair) wanted to
immortalize the last days of his acting governorship...
Port Loko
Port Loko was
one of many towns where Portuguese traders settled in the 16th and 17th
centuries: as late as 1821 Dr. O’Beirne found their descendants...As it
was a Portuguese settlement, “Alagoas” is presumably a variant of the
Portuguese word “lagoa”, a swamp, from which the English word “lagoon”
derives – and the name Lagos in Nigeria...
The
Life and Times of John Ezzidio
There must be
many who have never heard the name of John Ezzidio, the
first African to sit on the Legislative Council in Sierra Leone. Even
those who have, may be glad to know more of him, and. of the
astonishing development of the Creole community during his lifetime.
Ezzidio was born in the Nupe Country of what is now Nigeria...
Freetown and Romarong…and Christopher Fyfe
A review of Arthur Porter’s Creoledom
Slaves, Slave Owners and Slave Dealers: Sherbro Coast and Hinterland
How the British cheated the Black Poor!
Two Voyages to Sierra Leone, 1791-3
WHO OWNS FREETOWN – Temne or Krio?
Voyage to Sierra Leone 1785-1787
John Bankole Jones reviews “Okrafo…A Liberated African Family”