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115-458: The river separates Freetown , Sierra Leone's capital city, which is on the south side of the harbor, from the country's principal airport, Lungi International Airport , which is on the north side of the harbor in an area called the "Bullom Shore." The primary means of transportation from the airport to Freetown are by speed boat or ferry. Hovercraft and helicopter services are no longer running. The 2,950 square kilometres (1,140 sq mi) of

230-412: A debt or earn money due to poverty . In the course of human history , slavery was a typical feature of civilization , and was legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime . In chattel slavery , the slave is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes

345-440: A different conception of the uses of property. Disputes soon broke out. King Tom's successor, King Jimmy, burnt the settlement to the ground in 1789. Alexander Falconbridge was sent to Sierra Leone in 1791 to collect the remaining Black Poor settlers, and they re-established Granville Town around the area now known as Cline Town, Sierra Leone near Fourah Bay . These 1787 settlers did not formally establish Freetown, even though

460-525: A highly sophisticated masquerade, consisting of a costume built, in a fashionable sense, of various materials available: leather, sequins, sea shells, traditional cloths, etc. The masquerade, known as "Paddle", strategically takes to the streets of the eastern and central parts of the city, followed by members of the Eastern Paddle Hunting Society, traditional musical bands and a crowd of supporters. For years this event coincided with

575-719: A huge mudslide which drowned over 300 people in Regent town. Deforestation has been blamed for the landslide. On 5 November 2021, a fuel tank truck collided with another truck in Freetown, resulting in an explosion killing at least 99 and injuring around 100. Freetown borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Western Area Rural District . Freetown municipality is politically divided into three regions: East End, Central and West End of Freetown. The wards in

690-504: A kinship group and those related to the master. Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa. Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa. When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although

805-471: A leading role in the city, although they are a minority of the overall Sierra Leone population. In the 1890s, ethnic tension flared between Lebanese residents and traders and the various native ethnicities of Sierra Leone, which led to Lebanese shops being destroyed in cities including Freetown. During World War I Freetown became a base for operations of British forces in the Atlantic. Warships came into

920-517: A legal right to counsel, freedom from double jeopardy , a right to trial by jury in graver cases, and the right to grand jury indictment, but they lacked many other rights such as white adults' ability to control their own lives. Slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures. Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a substantial population density. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as

1035-580: A limited set of legal rights. For example, in the Province of New York , people who deliberately killed slaves were punishable under a 1686 statute. And, as already mentioned, certain legal rights attached to the nobi in Korea, to slaves in various African societies, and to black female slaves in the French colony of Louisiana . Giving slaves legal rights has sometimes been a matter of morality, but also sometimes

1150-548: A marriage where a girl, usually, is married off to a man to settle debts owed by her parents. The Chukri system is a debt bondage system found in parts of Bengal where a female can be coerced into prostitution in order to pay off debts. The word slavery has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else. For example, in Persia , the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens. Forced labour, or unfree labour,

1265-420: A matter of self-interest. For example, in ancient Athens , protecting slaves from mistreatment simultaneously protected people who might be mistaken for slaves, and giving slaves limited property rights incentivized slaves to work harder to get more property. In the southern United States prior to the extirpation of slavery in 1865 , a proslavery legal treatise reported that slaves accused of crimes typically had

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1380-413: A permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties. Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances. However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of

1495-453: A result of breaking the law, becoming indebted, suffering a military defeat, or exploitation for cheaper labor; other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race or sex . Slaves may be kept in bondage for life, or for a fixed period of time after which they would be granted freedom . Although slavery is usually involuntary and involves coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into slavery to pay

1610-534: Is ethnically , culturally , and religiously diverse. The city is home to a significant population of all of Sierra Leone's ethnic groups , with no single ethnic group forming more than 27% of the city's population. As in virtually all parts of Sierra Leone, the Krio language of the Sierra Leone Creole people is Freetown's primary language of communication and is by far the most widely spoken language in

1725-646: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to a river in Sierra Leone is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Freetown Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone . It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and political centre, as it

1840-497: Is a form of unfree labour in which a person works to pay off a debt by pledging himself or herself as collateral. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today. Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia. Money marriage refers to

1955-634: Is considered a swing city, as it has a large support base of both the All People's Congress and the Sierra Leone People's Party . However, the APC has won majority percent of the votes in Freetown in the 2007, 2012 and 2018 Sierra Leone Presidential election, including The APC winning more than 65% of the votes in Freetown in both The 2012 and 2018 Sierra Leone Presidential elections. The APC presidential candidate Ernest Bai Koroma received 69% of

2070-689: Is declared a free man", and it was this gate through which liberated Africans passed. Down by the Naval Wharf are slave steps carved out of stone. Before Freetown was established, this was where the Portuguese slave traders transported Africans as slaves to ships. Freetown is home to Fourah Bay College , the oldest university in West Africa, founded in 1827. The university played a key role in Sierra Leone's colonial history. The college's first student, Samuel Ajayi Crowther , went on to be named as

2185-597: Is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate . The use of slave labour was extensive, especially in agriculture." The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16 million. Slave labour in East Africa

2300-487: Is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery." Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery. "Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet

2415-479: Is one of Sierra Leone's six municipalities and is governed by a directly elected city council , headed by a mayor, in whom executive authority is vested. The current mayor is Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr . The mayor is responsible for the general management of the city. The mayor and members of the Freetown City Council are elected directly by the residents of Freetown every four years. The government of

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2530-534: Is similar to swing states in American politics . As the city is so ethnically diverse, no single ethnic group forms a majority of the population of the city. Historically, the APC and the SLPP, two of the country's major political parties, have had about equal support in the city. In the 2007 Sierra Leone Presidential election, the APC candidate and then main opposition leader, Ernest Bai Koroma , won just over 60% of

2645-517: Is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment. This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom , conscription and penal labour . As slavery has been legally outlawed in all countries, forced labour in the present day (frequently referred to as " modern slavery ") revolves around illegal control. Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and

2760-422: Is the ownership of a person as property , especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery, and the person is called a slave or an enslaved person (see § Terminology ). Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as

2875-463: Is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children . In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in then-current conflicts. More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labour, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty as with

2990-543: Is the seat of the Government of Sierra Leone . The population of Freetown was 1,347,559 as of the 2024 census. The city's economy revolves largely around its harbour , which occupies a part of the estuary of the Sierra Leone River in one of the world's largest natural deep water harbours. Although the city has traditionally been the homeland of the Sierra Leone Creole people , the population of Freetown

3105-607: The American Indian peoples of the salmon -rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago. Slavery was practiced in almost every ancient civilization. Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war , child abandonment , and

3220-547: The Congo Free State and French ruled Ubangi-Shari , labour was demanded as taxation; private companies were conceded areas within which they were allowed to use any measures to increase rubber production. Convict leasing was common in the Southern United States where the state would lease prisoners for their free labour to companies. Depending upon the era and the country, slaves sometimes had

3335-518: The Indian subcontinent , and later to the Americas. These traders captured Bantu peoples ( Zanj ) from the interior in present-day Kenya , Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast. There, the slaves gradually assimilated in rural areas, particularly on Unguja and Pemba islands. Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of

3450-563: The Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq". The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work. As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labour work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labour shortage led to an increased slave market. In Algiers ,

3565-730: The Sahara desert to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle eastern civilizations. During the Red Sea slave trade , slaves were transported from Africa across the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula. The Indian Ocean slave trade , sometimes known as the east African slave trade, was multi-directional. Africans were sent as slaves to the Arabian Peninsula , to Indian Ocean islands (including Madagascar ), to

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3680-725: The Sierra Leone Government Railway to Makeni to be assembled and flown to Egypt. The city was the scene of fierce fighting in the late 1990s during the Sierra Leone Civil War . It was captured by ECOWAS troops seeking to restore President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in 1998. Later it was unsuccessfully attacked by rebels of the Revolutionary United Front . In the early morning on 14 August 2017, after much heavy rain, part of Mount Sugar Loaf on an edge of Freetown collapsed in

3795-728: The State House , the principal workplace of the president of Sierra Leone , are on Tower Hill in central Freetown. The National Stadium , the home stadium of the Sierra Leone national football team (popularly known as the Leone Stars ) is in the Brookfield neighborhood. The three westernmost wards (West I, West II, and West III) of the city constitute the West End of Freetown. These wards are relatively affluent. Most of

3910-405: The bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816. Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port , with as many as 50,000 African slaves passing through every year during the 19th century. Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD. Eduard Rüppell described

4025-522: The separation of powers , or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith stated in the Lectures on Jurisprudence , "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of

4140-539: The 19th century. An alternative contemporary hypothesis states that Medieval Latin sclāvus via * scylāvus derives from Byzantine σκυλάω ( skūláō , skyláō ) or σκυλεύω ( skūleúō , skyleúō ) with the meaning "to strip the enemy (killed in a battle)" or "to make booty / extract spoils of war". This version has been criticized as well. There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as " unfree labourer " or "enslaved person", rather than "slave", should be used when describing

4255-581: The Americas to abolish slavery was Brazil, in 1888 . Chattel slavery survived longest in the Middle East . After the Trans-Atlantic slave trade had been suppressed, the ancient Trans-Saharan slave trade , the Indian Ocean slave trade and the Red Sea slave trade continued to traffic slaves from the African continent to the Middle East. During the 20th century, the issue of chattel slavery

4370-950: The Arabian Peninsula: in Oman , in Qatar , in Saudi Arabia , in the Trucial States and in Yemen . Legal chattel slavery was finally abolished in the Arabian Peninsula in the 1960s: Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1962, in Dubai in 1963, and Oman as the last in 1970. The last country to abolish slavery, Mauritania , did so in 1981 . The 1981 ban on slavery was not enforced in practice, as there were no legal mechanisms to prosecute those who used slaves, these only came in 2007. Indenture, also known as bonded labour or debt bondage,

4485-590: The Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M'bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique : The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from

4600-605: The Crown after the American Revolution . Land grants and assistance in starting the settlements had been intermittent and slow. During his visit, Peters met with the directors of the Sierra Leone Company and learned of proposals for a new settlement at Sierra Leone. Despite the collapse of the 1787 colony, the directors were eager to recruit settlers to Sierra Leone. Lieutenant John Clarkson, RN , who

4715-648: The East End of Freetown (East I, East II, and East III) contain the city's largest population centre and generally the poorest part of the city. The Queen Elizabeth II Quay is located within East End. The two central wards (Central I and Central II) make up Central Freetown, which includes Downtown Freetown and the central business district (Central II). Most of the tallest and most important national government building and foreign embassies are based in Central Freetown. Sierra Leone's House of Parliament and

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4830-627: The Freetown Cotton Tree, located in Central Freetown, a significant national monument and integral to the founding of the city; Bunce Island, which is a boat ride from the city, is home to the ruins of the slave fortress that was being used during the Transatlantic slave trade; the Sierra Leone Museum, which has a collection of both precolonial as well as colonial artifacts and other items of historical significance;

4945-505: The Freetown Municipality has been dominated by All People's Congress (APC) since 2004. Since 2004, the residents of Freetown have voted in municipal elections for members of the All People's Congress (APC) by an overwhelming majority. The APC won the city's mayorship and vast majority seats in the Freetown city council in the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2018 local elections by more than 67% each. In Presidential elections Freetown

5060-549: The Haitian restaveks . Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West. Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a 2003 study finding a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction. The word slavery

5175-509: The Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert between 1500 and 1900. The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year. The Indian Ocean slave trade

5290-660: The Lamb." In March 1792, Nathaniel Gilbert, a white preacher, prayed and preached a sermon under the large Cotton Tree , and Reverend David George , from South Carolina, preached the first recorded Baptist service in Africa. The land was dedicated and christened 'Free Town,' as ordered by the Sierra Leone Company Directors. This was the first thanksgiving service. John Clarkson was sworn in as first governor of Sierra Leone. Small huts were erected before

5405-580: The Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha until recently, as critics said such an event should not be held on the same day as Muslims celebrate Eid, as Islam is against the practices of secret societies and masquerades. The "Tangays" Festival is usually held in November, with a traditional theme that involves virtually every aspect of Sierra Leonean culture. It takes place at the National Stadium. Towards

5520-589: The National Railway Museum; or you can take a journey around the city's coastline with the popular Seacoach Express. The Aberdeen-Lumley area is a favourite destination for those venturing into the city's nightlife. There are nightclubs, restaurants and hotels located close by the beach along the road linking Aberdeen and Lumley. Nearby is the King's Yard Gate built in stone with a statement inscribed which reads "any slave who passes through this gate

5635-576: The Nazis and the Soviet Union placed increasing importance on the labor provided in those camps, leading to a growing tendency among historians to designate such systems as slavery. A combination of these include the encomienda where the Spanish Crown granted private individuals the right to the free labour of a specified number of natives in a given area. In the "Red Rubber System" of both

5750-525: The Nova Scotian rebels, they were granted their land. Eventually the Maroons had their own district, which came to be known as Maroon Town . Indigenous Africans attacked the colony in 1801 and were repulsed. The British eventually took control of Freetown, making it a Crown Colony in 1808. This act accompanied expansion that led to the creation of Sierra Leone. From 1808 to 1874, the city served as

5865-555: The Sierra Leone River estuary is classified as a wetland of international importance Ramsar Convention in the west of Sierra Leone . The area is mainly mangrove swamps but also includes tidal freshwater swamp forests. The site has also been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports significant populations of Eurasian oystercatchers , curlew sandpipers and hooded vultures . This Africa protected areas related article

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5980-781: The Umayyad Caliphate in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion , a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), against the slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa . It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across

6095-472: The aristocracy. In the 2020s, in North Korea , Kippumjo ("Pleasure Brigades") are made up of women selected from the general population to serve as entertainers and as concubines to the rulers of North Korea. "Tribute labor" is compulsory labor for the state and has been used in various iterations such as corvée , mit'a and repartimiento . The internment camps of totalitarian regimes such as

6210-405: The bicentennial of Freetown was celebrated in 1987; formally, Freetown was founded in 1792. In 1791, Thomas Peters , an African American who had served in the Black Pioneers , went to England to report the grievances of the black population in Nova Scotia . Some of these African Americans were ex-slaves who had escaped to the British forces who had been given their freedom and resettled there by

6325-521: The capital of British West Africa . It also served as the base for the Royal Navy 's West Africa Squadron , which was charged with enforcing the ban on the slave trade. When the squadron liberated slaves on trading ships, they brought most to Sierra Leone, and Freetown in particular; thus, the population grew to include descendants of many different peoples from all over the west coast of Africa. The British also situated three of their Mixed Commission Courts in Freetown. The liberated Africans established

6440-441: The capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers. By one estimate, raids by Barbary slave traders on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries. However, this estimate is the result of an extrapolation which assumes that

6555-401: The century from 1580 to 1680. By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000. Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe. In addition, the number of slaves traded

6670-428: The christening of Freetown in March 1792. In downtown Freetown is the Connaught Hospital , the first hospital constructed in West Africa that incorporated Western medical practices. Freetown has a long-held tradition of organized cultural events taking place on specific dates to coincide with specific holidays or seasons within the calendar year. One such event is the Eastern Paddle Hunting Society's annual exhibition of

6785-420: The city's luxury hotels, a number of casinos, and Lumley Beach are in the west end of the city. The West End neighbourhood of Hill Station is home to the State Lodge , the official residence of the president of Sierra Leone. Like the rest of Sierra Leone, Freetown has a tropical climate with a rainy season from May through November; the balance of the year represents the dry season . The beginning and end of

6900-408: The city's population and is spoken as a lingua franca by a large number of the population in the city. English (the country's official language) is also widely spoken, particularly by the well-educated. Themne is the second most spoken language in Freetown after Krio. The Themne people also make up the largest members of the population of Freetown and the Western Area Region. The city of Freetown

7015-444: The city. The city of Freetown was founded on March 11, 1792, by 1,196 African Americans under the guidance of abolitionist Lieutenant John Clarkson on March 11, 1792, and the city became a settlement for free and freed African American , Afro-Caribbean and Liberated African slaves. Their descendants are known as the Creole people . Before the arrival of Europeans, the local Temne and Loko people were living in villages on

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7130-426: The company was not treating them as freemen, but as slaves and requested that Lt. Clarkson return as governor. Freetown survived being pillaged by the French in 1794, and was rebuilt by the settlers. By 1798, Freetown had between 300 and 400 houses with architecture resembling that of the United States – stone foundations with wooden superstructures. Eventually this style of housing, built by the Nova Scotians, would be

7245-400: The condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves. The labour market, as institutionalized under contemporary capitalist systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists , who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour . Socialists draw parallels between

7360-458: The conditions of unfree labour and forced labour that most slaves endure. Mauritania was the last country in the world to officially ban slavery, in 1981, with legal prosecution of slaveholders established in 2007. However, in 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26% were children, were still enslaved throughout the world despite slavery being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50% of slaves provide forced labour , usually in

7475-421: The end of the festival, a couple of musical concerts are usually held in the main bowl of the stadium, with performances from local and international musical artists (especially contemporary artists from Nigeria and other African countries or the African diaspora). Freetown has its own tradition of Christmas street parades, organised in neighbourhoods across the city. The month-long celebration gathers residents in

7590-493: The enslavement of slaves' offspring. Slavery was widespread in Africa, which pursued both internal and external slave trade. In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel , including Ghana , Mali , Segou , and Songhai , about a third of the population were enslaved. In European courtly society, and European aristocracy, black African slaves and their children became visible in

7705-548: The factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy. In industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in non-industrialised countries, people in debt bondage are common, others include captive domestic servants , people in forced marriages , and child soldiers . The word slave was borrowed into Middle English through the Old French esclave which ultimately derives from Byzantine Greek σκλάβος ( sklábos ) or εσκλαβήνος ( ésklabḗnos ). According to

7820-425: The first indigenous Bishop of West Africa. National Railway Museum has a coach car built for the state visit of Elizabeth II in 1961. The Big Market on Wallace Johnson Street is the showcase for local artisans' work. The Freetown peninsula is ringed by long stretches of white sand. Lumley Beach, on the western side of the peninsula, is a popular location for local parties and festivals. Slavery Slavery

7935-402: The focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading their efficiency. For example, it is sometimes argued that, because of this narrow focus, technology in Greece – and later in Rome – was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing. Scottish economist Adam Smith stated that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it

8050-444: The gang to a task and made each worker's performance dependent on the actions of the others. The slaves chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excess sprouts. Plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line . Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery hinders technological advancement because

8165-419: The inhumanity of slavery, with person implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow. As a social institution, chattel slavery classes slaves as chattels ( personal property ) owned by the enslaver; like livestock, they can be bought and sold at will. Chattel slavery was historically the normal form of slavery and was practiced in places such as the Roman Empire and classical Greece , where it

8280-597: The interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms , such as the Oyo Empire ( Yoruba ), the Ashanti Empire , the kingdom of Dahomey , and the Aro Confederacy . It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage , with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to

8395-415: The king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..." Even after slavery became a criminal offense, slave owners could get high returns. According to researcher Siddharth Kara , the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $ 91.2 billion. That was second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. At

8510-461: The land near the area that later became known as Freetown. Freetown is locally governed by a directly elected Freetown City Council , headed by a mayor, who also is directly elected; elections are held every four years. The mayor of Freetown is Yvonne Aki Sawyerr, who was sworn in on May 11, 2018, after her victory in the 2018 mayoral election; she was re-elected in 2022. The Freetown city council has its own municipal police force. The area

8625-572: The late 1300s and 1400s. Starting with Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor , black Africans were included in the retinue . In 1402 an Ethiopian embassy reached Venice . In the 1470s black Africans were painted as court attendants in wall paintings that were displayed in Mantua and Ferrara . In the 1490s black Africans were included on the emblem of the Duke of Milan . During the trans-Saharan slave trade , slaves from West Africa were transported across

8740-577: The late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy. This eventually led to

8855-476: The losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt." W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal , an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on

8970-516: The model for the 'bod oses' of their Creole descendants. In 1800, the Nova Scotians rebelled. The colonial authorities used the arrival of about 550 Jamaican Maroons to suppress the insurrection. Thirty-four Nova Scotians were banished and sent to either the Sherbro or a penal colony at Gore. Some of the Nova Scotians were eventually allowed back into Freetown. After the Maroons captured

9085-510: The ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea , another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean. The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into

9200-502: The number of European slaves captured by Barbary pirates was constant for a 250-year period: There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives over

9315-522: The opposite holds true, then it is more costly for landowners to guard the slaves than to employ paid workers who can demand only low wages because of the degree of competition. Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew. They were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of land with few inhabitants became available. Slavery is more common when

9430-488: The port to resupply and German merchant vessels captured in the region were also sent there. During World War II , Britain maintained a naval base at Freetown. The base was a staging post for Allied traffic in the South Atlantic and the assembly point for SL convoys to Britain. An RAF base was maintained at nearby Lungi airfield . British fighter aircraft which were shipped into Freetown port, were carried on

9545-406: The psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind. Drapetomania was a pseudoscientific psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who desired freedom; "symptoms" included laziness and the tendency to flee captivity. Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to

9660-532: The rainy season is marked by strong thunderstorms . Under the Köppen climate classification , Freetown has a tropical monsoon climate ( Am ) primarily due to the heavy amount of precipitation it receives during the rainy season. Freetown's high humidity is somewhat relieved December through February by the famous Harmattan , a wind blowing from the Sahara Desert , affording Freetown its coolest period of

9775-635: The rainy season. The Sierra Leone Company surveyors and the settlers built Freetown on the American grid pattern, with parallel streets and wide roads, with the largest being Water Street. On August 24, 1792, the Black Poor or Old Settlers of the second Granville Town were incorporated into the new Sierra Leone Colony, but remained at Granville Town. In 1793, the settlers sent a petition to the Sierra Leone Company expressing concerns about

9890-483: The rest of Sierra Leone, Freetown is a religiously tolerant city, with Muslims and Christians living side by side peacefully. As in many parts of Sierra Leone, the Krio language (the English-based creole language of the Sierra Leone Creole people who make up 5% of the country's population) is by far the most widely spoken language in the city. The language is spoken at home as a first language by over 20% of

10005-524: The settlement of Granville Town on land purchased from local Koya Temne subchief King Tom and regent Naimbana. The British understood the purchase meant that their new settlers had the land "for ever." Although the established arrangement between Europeans and the Koya Temne included provisions for permanent settlement, some historians question how well the Koya leaders understood the agreement, as they had

10120-412: The slaves were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections. This made slaves

10235-536: The streets with a variety of food and traditional music . Freetown's tourism sector is an integral part of the city. Although the sector was seriously affected during the Civil War , there has been a steady improvement in recent years. The city has a lot to offer to tourists. There is a vast expanse of white sand beaches stretching along the Freetown Peninsula. The Lumley-Aberdeen beach stretches all

10350-596: The suburbs of Freetown Peninsula. They were the largest group of immigrants to make up the Creole people of Freetown. The city expanded rapidly. The freed slaves were joined by West Indian and African soldiers, who had fought for Britain in the Napoleonic Wars and settled here afterwards. Descendants of the freed slaves who settled in Sierra Leone between 1787 and around 1885, are called the Creoles . The Creoles play

10465-508: The tasks are relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale monocrops such as sugarcane and cotton , in which output depended on economies of scale . This enables systems of labour, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands toiled with factory-like precision. Then, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of

10580-524: The time the weighted average global sales price of a slave was estimated to be approximately $ 340, with a high of $ 1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $ 40 to $ 50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa. The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $ 3,175, with a low of an average $ 950 for bonded labour and $ 29,210 for a trafficked sex slave. Approximately 40% of slave profits each year were generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of

10695-419: The trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels. Economists have modeled the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom ) appear and disappear. One theoretical model is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant, but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If

10810-468: The treatment that they were enduring. The settlers in particular objected to being issued currency that was only redeemable at a company owned store. They also claimed that the governor, a Mr. Dawes, ruled in an almost tyrannical fashion, favoring certain people over others when ruling the settlement. The writers then argued that they had not received the amount of land that Lt. Clarkson had promised them on leaving Nova Scotia. The letter expressed anxiety that

10925-399: The victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were" (see also People-first language ). Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects

11040-456: The votes in Freetown in the 2012 Sierra Leone Presidential election; compared to the SLPP presidential candidate Julius Maada Bio who received 30%. In the 2018 Sierra Leone Presidential election, The APC presidential candidate Samura Kamara received 65% compared to the SLPP presidential candidate Julius Maada Bio who received 34%, though Maada Bio won the presidential election nationally. In November 2011, Freetown Mayor Herbert George-Williams

11155-614: The votes in the Western Area Urban District , including the city of Freetown, where almost the entire District population reside. The city has the Sierra Leone National Museum and Sierra Leone National Railway Museum . There are also various historical landmarks connected to its founding by African Americans , Liberated Africans , and Afro-Caribbeans whose descendants are the Sierra Leone Creole people. The Cotton Tree represents

11270-430: The way from Cape Sierra Leone down to Lumley. There are also other popular beaches like the world renowned River Number 2 Beach, Laka Beach, Tokeh Beach, Bureh Beach, and Mama Beach. The Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, which is located within the peninsula's vast rainforest reserve, just a few miles from the centre of Freetown, has a collection of rare and endangered chimpanzees. Other popular destinations for tourists include

11385-408: The way ... Keltie ( The Partition of Africa , London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one." Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world . In many African societies where slavery was prevalent,

11500-480: The widespread view, which has been known since the 18th century, the Byzantine Σκλάβινοι ( Sklábinoi ), Έσκλαβηνοί ( Ésklabēnoí ), borrowed from a Slavic tribe self-name *Slověne, turned into σκλάβος , εσκλαβήνος ( Late Latin sclāvus) in the meaning 'prisoner of war slave', 'slave' in the 8th/9th century, because they often became captured and enslaved. However this version has been disputed since

11615-404: The women remained in the ships while the men worked to clear the land. Lt. Clarkson told the men to clear the land until they reached a large cotton tree. After the work had been done and the land cleared, all the Nova Scotians, men and women, disembarked and marched towards the thick forest and to the cotton tree, and their preachers (all African Americans) began singing "Awake and Sing of Moses and

11730-433: The world's 29 million slaves. A widespread practice was branding , either to explicitly mark slaves as property or as punishment. Slaves have been owned privately by individuals but have also been under state ownership. For example, the kisaeng were women from low castes in pre modern Korea, who were owned by the state under government officials known as hojang and were required to provide entertainment to

11845-409: The year. Temperature extremes recorded in Freetown are from 15 °C (59 °F) to 38 °C (100 °F) all year. The average annual temperature is around 28 °C (82 °F). Freetown is home to a large population of both Muslims and Christians, though Muslims make up the majority of the population. In the youth populations of both faiths can be found a significant liberal influence. Like

11960-521: Was acquitted of seventeen of the nineteen charges against him. He was convicted of two less serious charges by the Freetown High Court judge Jon Bosco Katutsi and sentenced to pay a fine . Acting Mayor Kanu lost the APC nomination for the mayor of Freetown in the 2012 Mayoral elections by 56 votes; council member Sam Franklyn Bode Gibson won 106 in a landslide victory. In the national presidential and parliamentary elections, Freetown

12075-795: Was addressed and investigated globally by international bodies created by the League of Nations and the United Nations, such as the Temporary Slavery Commission in 1924–1926, the Committee of Experts on Slavery in 1932, and the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery in 1934–1939. By the time of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery in 1950–1951, legal chattel slavery still existed only in

12190-415: Was among those taken ill during the voyage. Upon reaching Sierra Leone, Clarkson and some of the Nova Scotian 'captains' "dispatched on shore to clear or make roadway for their landing". The Nova Scotians were to build Freetown on the former site of the first Granville Town, where jungle had taken over since its destruction in 1789. Its surviving Old Settlers had relocated to Fourah Bay in 1791. At Freetown,

12305-628: Was an abolitionist, was sent to Nova Scotia in British North America to register immigrants to take to Sierra Leone for a new settlement. Tired of the harsh weather and racial discrimination in Nova Scotia, more than 1,100 former American slaves chose to go to Sierra Leone. They sailed in 15 ships and arrived in St. George Bay between February 26 – March 9, 1792. Sixty-four settlers died en route to Sierra Leone, and Lieutenant Clarkson

12420-588: Was considered a keystone of society. Other places where it was extensively practiced include Medieval Egypt , Subsaharan Africa, Brazil, the United States, and parts of the Caribbean such as Cuba and Haiti. The Iroquois enslaved others in ways that "looked very like chattel slavery." Beginning in the 18th century, a series of abolitionist movements saw slavery as a violation of the slaves' rights as people (" all men are created equal "), and sought to abolish it. Abolitionism encountered extreme resistance but

12535-578: Was drawn from the Zanj , Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast. The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean during the Indian Ocean slave trade . The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers during their slavery in

12650-604: Was eventually successful. Several of the states of the United States began abolishing slavery during the American Revolutionary War. The French Revolution tried to abolish slavery in 1794, but a permanent abolition did not occur until 1848. In much of the British Empire, slavery was subject to abolition in 1833, throughout the United States it was abolished in 1865 and in Cuba in 1886. The last country in

12765-598: Was first settled in 1787 by 400 formerly enslaved black people sent from London, England, under the auspices of the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor , an organisation set up by Jonah Hanway and the British abolitionist Granville Sharp . These black people were African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Africans, Southeast Asians, and black people born in Great Britain. They established the 'Province of Freedom' and

12880-469: Was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia. Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records. Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation. Such observations, across

12995-646: Was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labour, Bantu slaves bought by east African slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands , Ethiopia and Somalia. According to the Encyclopedia of African History , "It

13110-446: Was nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners and would not punish themselves. He further stated that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom under centralized government, or a central authority like a king or church. Similar arguments appeared later in the works of Auguste Comte , especially given Smith's belief in

13225-696: Was removed from office and replaced by council member Alhaji Gibril Kanu as acting mayor. Mayor Herbert George-Williams and eight others, including the Chief Administrator of the Freetown city council Bowenson Fredrick Philips; and the Freetown city council Treasurer Sylvester Momoh Konnehi, were arrested and indicted by the Sierra Leone Anti-corruption Commission on twenty-five counts on graft charges, ranging from conspiracy to commit corruption to misappropriation of public funds . Mayor Herbert George-Williams

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