Granville Sharp - The Province of Freedom

The Province of Freedom

Although no reliable figures exist, it is thought that in the early 1780s there were around 15,000 black people in Britain, most of them without employment. Ideas were formulated for a settlement in Africa where they could return "home". Henry Smeathman, a plant collector and entomologist who had visited Sierra Leone, propounded to the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor that the country would be an excellent location. Worried black people came to see Sharp, concerned that they might be re-enslaved in such a place.

Sharp took to the idea with alacrity: he saw it as a perfect opportunity to create a new model society from scratch. He drew up plans and regulations, and persuaded the Treasury to finance the ships and pay £12 a head to each embarking settler. He named the new, egalitarian, peaceful Christian society-to-be "The Province of Freedom".

The utopian ideal quickly went sour. Fire broke out before the ships had left London; 411 sailed for Africa, including some 60 white prostitutes who had been married off to the male settlers hastily (and certainly without Sharp's knowledge). The settlers arrived in May 1787, at the onset of the five-month rainy season, and a settlement of sorts was built, named Granville Town. The commander of the naval escort that had brought the settlers concluded that they were unfit for the complex challenge of founding a new settlement in a hostile environment. One of the settlers whom Granville had rescued from a slave ship left the settlement to work in the slave trade, much to Sharp's despair. By the end of 1788 Sharp had poured £1,735 18s 8d of his own money into the settlement. In 1789 Granville Town was burned to the ground by a disgruntled local chief.

Through The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in 1790 Granville came into contact with Thomas Peters, a former American slave who fought with the British during revolution in return for freedom. Sharp was instrumental in helping Peters to establish Freetown, Sierra Leone. Sharp is considered to be one of the founders of Sierra Leone alongside Thomas Peters and the Clarkson brothers (Thomas Clarkson and John Clarkson).