Impact of British Expansion
By the second half of the century the Colony’s indirect impact on the peoples of the interior had become significant. The changes in the slave caravan route and the appearance of a demand for the raw materials produced in the country led to major alterations in the economic order that had existed since the beginning of the slave trade and petty wars more than two centuries earlier. The major products in the new trade were the country’s then seemingly endless supply of tropical hardwoods and the widely growing oil palms, which provided ma- terials in demand by the developing chemical industries of Europe.
The advance of traders and missionaries bringing new values and ideas was just as significant. The Creole traders became an alternate source of the trade goods that earlier had been supplied only through the chief, who alone could exchange slaves for goods. Paid labor on timber crews working along the rivers and the sale of palm nuts began to supply at least a minority of the people — particularly in the south — with some cash income and thus a degree of independence from the chief’s control.
Freetown also played a major role. As early as the 1790s a small number of Africans had begun coming from the mainland to sell their food crops and to work for short periods. Their number in the city had grown slowly but steadily over the cen- tury, many settling there permanently. A significant number were absorbed into the Creole community. Some African chiefs along the coast had begun to follow the educational examples of the Sherbro Afro-European chiefs as early as the late eighteenth century by sending a son to be educated in Freetown or England: more than twenty were students in Freetown in 1799.
This practice continued and increased as the years passed. By mid- century many chiefs employed a Western-educated African or a Creole as scribe. In some cases such scribes became virtual prime ministers of the chiefs, or at least their foreign ministers, representing their interests to the British — the most powerful people with whom they had to contend. In this the chiefs followed a tradition set much earlier, when they had employed Magingo who were literate in Arabic as their advisers, scribes, and go-betweens with the more powerful Muslim kingdoms to the north.
Relations with the British Colony became much more important as British involvement grew. Great Britain's forces had demonstrated on several occasions that they could intervene militarily in tribal and interethnic affairs. The Colony also represented a source of arms and wealth; therefore the chiefs turned more and more to the British for support and legitimation.
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