Crowning the work of Wilberforce? The Settlers Descendants’ Union and the
CHALLENGES OF SIERRA LEONE’S INDEPENDENCE
Mélanie Torrent *
On 27 April 1961, Sierra Leone emerged as an independent state, uniting within its borders the two territories that had until then been under British authority: the Colony of Sierra Leone, the small settlement in and around Freetown, first secured through the 1788 Treaty with King Naimbana to settle the Black Poor and other liberated slaves in Africa; and the Protectorate of Sierra Leone, the much wider expanse of land that had been given its official status in 1896 and pro¬ gressively united politically to the Colony. Independence as it was achieved between the British and Milton Margai’s government was strongly opposed by a small group of around 400 Krio Sierra Leoneans, the Settlers Descendants’ Union (SDU).1 Emphasising their connection with the early days of British abolitionism, the SDU claimed to represent the des¬ cendants of the successive waves of liberated Africans brought to Sierra Leone by the British -the Black Poor in the late 1780s, the Nova Scotians in 1792, some Jamaican Maroons in
*
Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, LARCA
1 Following the practice of post-independence historians of Sierra Leone, and Christopher Fyfe particularly, the term Krio will be used throughout the article and the term Creole will only be used when quoting primary sources, from the British administration or the Settlers Descendants’ Union itself. As O. Goerg (1995) underlines, Creole was essentially a colonially-imposed and culturally-connoted category, criticised as early as the 1931 census which challenged its suitability and acceptability.
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