Sierra Leone Black Poor

Sierra Leone was built as a colony for freed slaves of the British Empire. London’s black poor, Jamaican Maroons, and black Nova Scotians were all sent to Sierra Leone in an attempt to establish it as a place for the black ex-slaves to be freed from British rule. However, poverty and racism still prospered in Sierra Leone. Even though the reason for the foundation of Sierra Leone was based on the reconciliation between white philanthropist and the black poor, the colony still reinforced racial disparities and did more harm than good.

Jamaican Maroons and black loyalists were all congregated in Nova Scotia by the British Empire. The black loyalists were promised land if they fought for British rule in the American colonies. This promise was kept by the British Empire, but the loyalists were given

False advertisements lured the black poor to Sierra Leone and the conditions of the ships that they traveled on were very bad. In London, the deportation of the black poor back to Africa served as a mean to solve the problem of black poverty in Great Britain. Rather than fixing the problem at home, the black poor were simply sent to Sierra Leone. Additionally, white prostitutes were sent to live in Sierra Leone, putting the black poor on the same socioeconomic platform as prostitutes. The evangelical Church of England wanted to integrate European culture and Christianity into African and Indian culture in order to make them “civil.” This, just like the white man’s burden, served as a justification for the settlement of lands that weren’t theirs. Sierra Leone would serve as a model for the assimilation of European culture into non-Western places. Granville Sharp, who had previously supported James Somerset’s case to free the black slaves, obtained a grant from Britain to send 400 settlers, both black and white, to a theoretically self-governing colony of Sierra