"Freedom but Nothing Else": The Legacies of Slavery and Abolition in Post-Slavery Sierra Leone, 1928-1956

Abstract

...In 1955, as the British government began preparations to transfer power to local elites in Sierra Leone, a series of strikes and riots swept across the country, originating in the unionized workforce of Freetown and culminating in mob violence in the southern regions of the Protectorate. Rioters targeted the railway, official colonial residences, and the farms and houses of chiefs and headmen, all symbols of the forced labor demands of the colonial government and rural elites and chiefs. Colonial investigators concluded that the unrest was the direct result of a failure to re-shape economic and social relations after the legal abolition of slavery in 1928. This paper traces two particular resonances of post-slavery history in Sierra Leone, from the abolition of slavery in 1928 to the riots around decolonization in 1955-56. The first was the state-led efforts to engineer a transition to freedom for ex-slaves that would keep them engaged as willing workers. The second was the ways...