Land and Settlement: Temne Responses to British Abolitionist Intervention in Sierra Leone in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

This article analyses how the Koya Temne on the Sierra Leone peninsula resisted attempts by British abolitionists to assume control over their land in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Following attacks on Freetown by neighboring leaders in 1801 and 1802, officials of the Sierra Leone Company (a chartered trading company formed in 1791) claimed that the Temne recourse to war was totally unjustified, as well as unexpected. This assessment was disingenuous, as Temne leaders had clearly asserted their rights to land around Freetown in a series of palavers held over the course of more than a decade. During these negotiations with British officials, the Temne attempted to protect areas of land they regarded as sacred by requesting modifications to boundary lines. Such requests were dismissed. Evidence drawn from reports of successive palavers indicates that the behavior of Company officials towards their Temne hosts created the conditions for conflict. As a result of the ongoing disagreements over land rights, the Temne were displaced from large areas of territory on the peninsula by the first decade of the nineteenth century.