Black Loyalist Hunger Prevention in Sierra Leone

Abstract

This chapter describes how, from 1792 to 1800, black colonists in Freetown, Sierra Leone—also referred to hereafter as “black Loyalists” and “Nova Scotians”—won several battles in the fight against black hunger. The Nova Scotians arrived in Africa in 1792 imbued with a sense of how to use food laws to exert dominance, and within half a decade, they had learned to behave as British subjects entitled to enforce that power. Whereas in Nova Scotia white Loyalists' food laws had controlled former bondpeople's access to food, in Sierra Leone, black colonists gained the right to enact their own antihunger rules, which white colonists uniformly approved, beginning in 1793. These Nova Scotians fought famine first by regulating their trade in alcohol, bread, fish, and meat. Later, the black Loyalists tried to regulate the trade of Africans, particularly Susu and Temne. These laws enabled former victual warriors to try to become victual imperialists by altering African food sales while occupying African land. This attempt failed because violent Temne and Susu reactions to colonists' price-fixing encouraged white councilmen in Sierra Leone to curtail black Loyalist lawmaking; those councilmen would later try to interfere with Africans' trade.