An in-depth study examining the agency and influence of indigenous Temne-speakers in the making of the Sierra Leone Colony. It is ideal for students, researchers, and scholars interested in the foundations of colonial Sierra Leone and its social, political and economic history, and Colonial Studies and African history more widely.

A small group of people on the Caribbean island of Carriacou, in the state of Grenada, still identifies with the Temne people of Sierra Leone, West Africa. Although more than 200 years have passed since the last enslaved Africans were taken to Carriacou, the members of that group still call themselves "Temnes," and still remember their ancient homeland in Africa. This is the story of how the "Temne Nation" of Carriacou managed to preserve the memory of its origin in a small place in Africa. It describes the events that led to a "Temne Reunion" in 2016 when Sierra Leone Temnes and Carriacou Temnes will meet for the first time.

How is the slave trade remembered in West Africa? In a work that challenges recurring claims that Africans felt (and still feel) no sense of moral responsibility concerning the sale of slaves, Rosalind Shaw traces memories of the slave trade in Temne-speaking communities in Sierra Leone. While the slave-trading past is rarely remembered in explicit verbal accounts, it is often made vividly present in such forms as rogue spirits, ritual specialists' visions, and the imagery of divination techniques. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research, Shaw argues that memories of the slave trade have shaped (and been reshaped by) experiences of colonialism, postcolonialism, and the country's ten-year rebel war. Thus money and commodities, for instance, are often linked to an invisible city of witches whose affluence was built on the theft of human lives. These ritual and visionary memories make hitherto invisible realities manifest, forming a prism through which past and present mutually configure each other.

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.

A history of colonial Africa and of the African diaspora examining the experiences and identities of 'liberated' Africans in Sierra Leone.