Sierra Leone – from the Province of Freedom to peace after civil war
Long before Europeans arrived, the region was home to peoples such as the Temne, Mende and Limba, who lived in farming communities and chiefdoms linked by trade routes into the interior. Portuguese sailors reached the coast in the 15th century and named the mountainous peninsula "Serra Leoa" – lion mountains. In the following centuries the coast was drawn into the Atlantic slave trade, and many people were taken from here to the Americas.
In 1787 British abolitionists founded a settlement for freed Black people, the so-called Province of Freedom, which gave rise to Freetown. It was joined by Black Loyalists from Nova Scotia, Jamaican Maroons and, after Britain outlawed the slave trade, tens of thousands of Africans liberated from slave ships. Their descendants formed the Krio community. Freetown became a British crown colony in 1808, and in 1896 Britain declared a protectorate over the hinterland. Fourah Bay College made Freetown an important centre of education in West Africa.
Sierra Leone became independent in 1961. The following decades saw coups, one-party rule and economic decline. From 1991 to 2002 a brutal civil war, fuelled in part by the trade in diamonds, caused enormous suffering; it ended with international support and a peace process that included a special court for war crimes. The country later also had to cope with the Ebola epidemic of 2014–2016.
Today Sierra Leone is shaped by its rich natural resources, its many peoples and a strong will to rebuild.
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