Sierra Leone
Continent: AfricaCapital: Freetown
Abolition Date:Slavery was finally abolished in Sierra Leone on January 1 1928, nearly a century after the Abolition of Slavery Act.
Start Date: 1652
Currency: Leone
Languages Spoken: English (official), Mende (southern vernacular), Temne (northern vernacular), Krio (lingua franca)
Population: As estimated in late 2006, is 5,525,000.
National Anthem: "High We Exalt Thee, Realm Of The Free"
European contacts with Sierra Leone were among the first in West Africa. In 1652, the first slaves in North America were brought from Sierra Leone to the Sea Islands off the coast of the southern United States. During the 1700s there was a thriving trade bringing slaves from Sierra Leone to the plantations of South Carolina and Georgia where their rice-farming skills made them particularly valuable.
In 1787 the British helped 400 freed slaves from the United States, Nova Scotia, and Great Britain return to Sierra Leone to settle in what they called the "Province of Freedom." Disease and hostility from the indigenous people nearly eliminated the first group of returnees. This settlement was joined by other groups of freed slaves and soon became known as Freetown. In 1792, Freetown became one of Britain's first colonies in West Africa. Domestic slavery practised by the educated African coastal elites (as well as interior traditional rulers) in Sierra Leone was abolished in 1928. A study found practices of domestic slavery still widespread in rural areas in the 1970s.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.