British Expansion Into The Interior
During most of the nineteenth century the British government sought to limit its burden of colonial administration by refusing to take over the rule of additional areas. Frequently this policy came into conflict with the desires of British mercantile and antislavery interests.
Such was the case in Sierra Leone. The home government generally refused to consider expanding the Colony or its responsibilities into the mainland (the coast and interior together as opposed to the Colony, which remained limited in extent to the peninsula and islands). In 1825, for example. Governor Charles Turner accepted a treaty at the request of local chiefs that gave Great Britain sovereignty over what became known as Turners Peninsula, south of Sherbro Island, but the British government refused to ratify the treaty for sixty years.
In the 1820s, in order to bring an end to a long-continuing war between the Temne and the Lokko, the governor negotiated treaties granting the British some limited control over the mainland adjacent to the Sierra Leone Peninsula, but these and a similar treaty involving Sherbro Island in 1840 granted little sovereignty or responsibility to Great Britain. Despite its very long association with England and an increasingly Afro-British and Creole population, even Sherbro Island was not subject to colonial control until 1861, and its annexation was quickly followed by new affirmations of Great Britain’s opposition to further annexations.
Nevertheless several factors led to almost constant British involvement in the coastal regions and later in the interior as well. The gradual ending of the transatlantic slave trade did not put an end to the slave trade itself. Slave caravans continued to carry their cargoes but in different directions. Until the 1870s slave ships operated from posts within the swampy coastal regions near Sierra Leone's borders. When these posts ceased operations, a market still existed for the shipment of slaves inland to the Fouta Djallon and the Niger valley. British opposition led to occasional attacks on the trade in the interior. The British also sought to lessen the frequent intertribal wars whenever they appeared likely to threaten the interests of the Colony’s traders and to keep friendly chiefs in office.
By the 1880s a new factor had emerged. Other countries, particularly Liberia and France, were consolidating their territories, excluding or taxing British and Colony merchants. The Creole merchants who traded up the rivers and far into the interior along trails to the Fouta Djallon, the upper Niger, and the hinterland of Liberia were a major prop of Freetown's economy. Largely at their behest the Colony constantly urged Great Britain to extend its control over the entire region, but their demands continued to be refused.
After the Conference of Berlin in 1884 and 1885, held to agree on the terms of the partition of Africa among the colonial powers, France began to expand its rule inland. The Colony almost succeeded in convincing the British government to sign a treaty with Samori Toure, the Madingo ruler in power in the upper Guinea area, but the colonial office refused, and the French, after a long struggle with Toure, took control of both the Fouta Djallon and the upper Niger, hemming in the British on the north and west.
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