Mendeland is a region in southern Sierra Leone whose history in the account turns on two linked forms of connection: British efforts to reach and govern the hinterland, and the railway that later carried its agricultural exports to the coast. The railway was rerouted through the region after the 1898 Hut Tax Rebellion, but decades later President Siaka Stevens dismantled it, damaging Mendeland’s economy as he sought to weaken a political rival’s support base.

Rebellion and the railway’s route

British rule extended into Sierra Leone’s interior through treaties with African rulers. After the British declared a protectorate in 1896, they designated rulers such as Suluku as paramount chiefs and organized chieftaincies as administrative units. The arrangements did not mean that the rulers understood their treaties as permission for Britain to impose colonial rule. When the administration tried to collect a hut tax of five shillings from every house in January 1898, chiefs rebelled. The Hut Tax Rebellion began in the north, but it was strongest and lasted longest in the south, particularly in Mendeland, where the Mende were the dominant ethnic group.

The uprising disrupted construction of the railway from Freetown into the interior. Work had begun in March 1896, and the line reached Songo Town in December 1898, during the rebellion. The rebels’ advance forced railway staff to withdraw to Freetown, and Rotifunk came under rebel control. The route had not originally been planned to pass through Rotifunk. After the rebellion began, the British changed it: instead of heading northeast, the line went south through Rotifunk toward Bo and into Mendeland. The revised route gave the colonial government quicker access to the rebellion’s heartland and to other parts of the interior where resistance might arise.

From colonial access to export lifeline

The railway’s purpose changed over time. Built under British rule partly to improve access to the interior, by 1967 it transported most of Sierra Leone’s exports, including coffee, cocoa, and diamonds. Mende farmers grew the coffee and cocoa, and the line gave Mendeland a vital connection to wider markets. Its function had shifted from a means of colonial administration to infrastructure on which regional livelihoods and trade depended.

That economic role made the railway politically consequential. Mendeland had voted overwhelmingly for Albert Margai in the contested 1967 election, which his Sierra Leone People’s Party narrowly lost to the All People’s Congress led by Siaka Stevens. Stevens, a Limba from the north, saw the region’s export success as strengthening the party that had opposed him. In his calculation, what benefited the Mende benefited the Sierra Leone People’s Party and therefore threatened his own position.

Dismantling and its consequences

After taking power, Stevens ordered the railway to Mendeland pulled up and sold the track and rolling stock, making restoration more difficult. The decision cut off the rail service to Bo. The dilapidated stations at Hastings and Waterloo remained visible on the route east from Freetown, but trains no longer ran to the southern town. Removing the railway was not merely a transport change: it crippled some of Sierra Leone’s most vibrant economic sectors by disrupting the infrastructure that carried agricultural exports.

The account presents this choice as part of Stevens’s wider effort to consolidate power at the expense of economic growth. He ruled through a violent dictatorship, harassing and killing political opponents, especially members of the Sierra Leone People’s Party; he made himself president in 1971, and after 1978 the country had only his party. The dismantling of the railway exemplified the continuity between colonial and postcolonial extractive rule: in both cases, political authority shaped the region’s access to resources and markets, while the costs fell on its people and economy. Mendeland’s story thus makes a railway’s double meaning plain: first a route into a rebellious hinterland, later its window to the world, and finally an asset destroyed to blunt an electoral rival.