Sierra Leone was founded, albeit under British control, with the highest hopes of being a refuge for liberated Africans and freed slaves. When the country received its independence, hopes for the future grew even stronger. Alas, its expectations came crashing down when the country's situation grew steadily worse after repeated military interventions and a devastating ten-year civil war that raged throughout the 1990s. Now that the war is over, there is once again renewed cause for optimism about the country's future, as Sierra Leone becomes an active participant in African and world affairs. This new edition is based primarily on recent research on the country, but covers the earliest known inhabitants, the colonial era, and the period of independence including the very confusing turmoil of the recent past. The chronology briefly traces its history and the introduction provides an essential overview of all the recent developments in the country. Hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries describe significant leaders, events, political parties and movements, ethnic groups, and related political, economic, and social aspects. A bibliography is included to facilitate further research.

"This monumental history of Sierra Leone, the first to be published on such a scale, is written with particular emphasis on liberated Africans and their descendants, the Sierra Leone Creoles, and their contribution to the history of West Africa"--Jacket.

The ex-slave, Krio population of Freetown, Sierra Leone - an amalgam of ethnicities drawn from several parts of the African continent - is a fascinating study in hybridity, creolization, European cultural penetration, the retention of African cultural values, and the interface between New World returnees and autochthonous populations of West Africa. Although its Nigerian connections are often acknowledged, insufficient attention has been paid to the indigenous Sierra Leonean roots of this community. This anthology addresses this problem, while celebrating the complexities of Krio identity and Krio interaction with other ethnic groups and nationalities in the British colonial experience.

Sierra Leone came to world attention in the 1990s when a catastrophic civil war linked to the diamond trade was reported globally. This fleeting and particular interest, however, obscured two crucial processes in this small West African state. On the one hand, while the civil war was momentous, brutal and affected all Sierra Leoneans, it was also just one element in the long and faltering attempt to build a nation and state given the country's immensely problematic pre-colonial and British colonial legacies. On the other, the aftermath of the war precipitated a huge international effort to construct a 'liberal peace', with mixed results, and thus made Sierra Leone a laboratory for post-Cold War interventions. Sierra Leone examines 225 years of its history and fifty years of independence, placing state- society relations at the centre of an original and revealing investigation of those who have tried to rule or change Sierra Leone and its inhabitants and the responses engendered. It interweaves the historical narrative with sketches of politicians, anecdotes, the landscape and environment and key turning-points, alongside theoretical and other comparisons with the rest of Africa. It is a new contribution to the debate for those who already know Sierra Leone and a solid point of entry for those who wish to know.

From the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, playwrights, novelists, filmmakers, visual artists, and prison writers from Sierra Leone and the United States brought a new attention to the events of the 1839 Amistad shipboard slave rebellion. As a testament of the human will to freedom, the story of the Amistad mutineers also describes the wide arc of the international circuits of capital, commerce, juridical power, and diplomacy that structured and reproduced the Atlantic slave trade for nearly four centuries. In Rebellious Histories, Matthew J. Christensen argues that for creative artists struggling to comprehend—and survive—pernicious manifestations of globalization like Sierra Leone's civil war, the Amistad rebellion's narrative of exploitative resource extraction, transatlantic migrations, armed rebellion, and American judicial intervention offers both a historical antecedent and allegory for contemporary global capitalism's reconfiguration of culture and subjectivity. At the same time, he shows how the mutineers' example provides a model for imagining utopian forms of transnationalism. With its wide-ranging comparative approach, Rebellious Histories brings a unique perspective to the study of the cultural histories of both slave resistance and globalization.

The small, underdeveloped countries of Africa, seem to harbour all the flammable elements necessary to ignite civil wars and revolutions. Since 1991, the small West African country of Sierra Leone has been besieged by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a guerrilla group-cum-political party, that implored a radical-populist political agenda. The cause of this conflict was the growth of systemic government corruption in the decades following the 1961 independence, which ultimately led to a severe deterioration of the state governing capacity. The contention over the control of the country's vast mineral wealth, which includes diamonds, as well as foreign interference -- notably from the Liberian government, with which the RUF reportedly traded diamonds for arms -- further fuelled the struggle. The 1999 Lomé Peace Accord brought about an end to the conflict. RUF leadership changes and a cease-fire agreement in 2000 followed by conflict resolution meetings between government, RUF and UN officials also contributed to a more peaceful situation in Sierra Leone. This book explores the struggle facing the people of Sierra Leone in adopting to these new changes as well as the UN's sponsored disarmament efforts and electoral support for the new government. The hand that the United States has had in delivering humanitarian assistance to this country will be examined as well as the efforts made to try those guilty of crimes against humanity.

By examining the history of the Potts-Johnsons (an immigrant Saro (emigrant Krio people) family from Sierra Leone) living in the Port Harcourt region of Nigeria from roughly 1912-1984, this study reviews the migration history of the Saro in the Niger River delta. The work also touches on many important issues to consider when researching African history: intra-African migration, status of and dominance by elites (both indigenous and immigrant), women's roles in social relationships, and the preservation of family and cultural values under extreme socio-economic stress. Mac Dixon-Fyle is an Associate Professor of History at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.