Freetown, founded in the late eighteenth century as a home for repatriated and freed slaves, became the capital of British Sierra Leone and the starting point of a railway into the interior. The city’s changing relationship with that railway captures a wider political reversal: infrastructure built to extend colonial authority later carried the exports of the southern hinterland, until Siaka Stevens removed it to undermine a region aligned with his rivals.

Foundation and Colonial Rule

When Sierra Leone became a British colony in 1896, Freetown was already established as a settlement for repatriated and freed slaves. The interior remained divided among small African kingdoms. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Britain extended its influence there through treaties with African rulers; on August 31, 1896, the British government declared the colony a protectorate on the basis of those agreements.

British administrators designated influential rulers as paramount chiefs and incorporated their territories into the protectorate’s administration. In the east, the warrior king Suluku became Paramount Chief Suluku, and Sandor was established as an administrative unit. The new colonial framework thus worked through existing rulers while placing their authority within a system directed from the coast and its capital, Freetown.

Tax, Rebellion, and the Railway

A railway from Freetown toward the interior was under construction from March 1896. When the British attempted to levy a hut tax of five shillings on every house in January 1898, chiefs revolted. The Hut Tax Rebellion began in the north but became strongest and lasted longest in Mendeland, in the south. The rebellion was defeated, but it exposed the difficulties of controlling the hinterland.

The uprising directly disrupted railway construction. A contemporary parliamentary account recorded that the rebellion stopped the work and disorganized staff; railway workers had to withdraw to Freetown, while Rotifunk came under rebel control. The route was then changed: rather than continuing northeast, the railway was redirected south through Rotifunk toward Bo, into Mendeland. The British wanted faster access to the rebellion’s heartland and to other areas where resistance might arise. The railway’s original purpose was therefore strategic as well as administrative: it connected the coastal capital to territory the colonial government sought to control.

Independence and the Line’s Political Reversal

When Sierra Leone became independent in 1961, Britain handed power to Sir Milton Margai and the Sierra Leone People’s Party, whose support was concentrated in the south, especially Mendeland, and the east. His brother Sir Albert Margai succeeded him as prime minister in 1964. In 1967, the party narrowly lost a contested election to the All People’s Congress Party, led by Siaka Stevens, whose strongest support came from northern groups, including the Limba, Temne, and Loko.

By then, the railway’s function had changed. It carried much of Sierra Leone’s coffee, cocoa, and diamond exports, and it served as Mendeland’s connection to the wider world. Mende farmers produced the coffee and cocoa, and Mendeland had voted overwhelmingly for Sir Albert Margai in the 1967 election. Stevens regarded the region’s economic strength as a political advantage for his opponents. He pulled up the line to Mendeland and sold the track and rolling stock, making the closure harder to reverse.

Freetown as a Measure of Political Power

The consequences extended beyond transport. Removing the railway fatally damaged some of Sierra Leone’s most vibrant economic sectors. The decision made the line an instrument of political exclusion: infrastructure that had once helped Britain reach and govern the south was destroyed when an independent ruler feared that its benefits would strengthen rival political forces. The choice was not between economic growth and stagnation in the abstract, but between sustaining export activity in a region associated with the opposition and consolidating power at the center.

The physical aftermath was visible on the journey east from Freetown, past the dilapidated stations at Hastings and Waterloo. There were no longer trains to Bo. Stevens remained in power through dictatorship rather than popular reelection: he made himself president in 1971, and from 1978 Sierra Leone had only one political party, his All People’s Congress. The railway’s disappearance thus marks the continuity between colonial and postcolonial rule described in the account: political authorities used control over institutions and resources to secure their position, even when the cost was economic damage and the impoverishment of the hinterland.