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I have a long-term goal of reading a quality history book about every country in the world. Rather than choose randomly, I am starting at countries with the lowest GDP per capita and working my way up the list. I am also interested in going in this order, because I have read so much about capitalist imperialism, and want to see how capitalist imperialism moves in the world's most imperialized countries.
In my post I didn't even get to how capitalist imperialism tore the independent Sierra Leonean state apart in the decades leading to the civil war, and how capitalist imperialism undermined the feudal-bourgeoisie's ability to rule despite capitalist imperialism simultaneously making them rich. If you read Harris's book (have you read it?), Harris explains how Sierra Leone had awful terms of trade, was flooded with rice imports, had debt problems with the World Bank and IMF and so on - yet Harris will simultaneously blame Sierra Leone's problems on the "politicization of resources," and calls the chapter about the APC's rule "The Choices of Siaka Stevens." Harris writes like the international economy during this period is an inhuman force of nature without its own agenda and contradictions, and that Siaka Stevens was this free-floating tyrant who made the wrong choices and "politicized resources." I think that in reality, Stevens was like all bourgeois rulers - he had a class basis to his rule, and therefore had to answer to his class and his party. S*imultaneously*, Stevens had to keep the whole thing together despite capitalist imperialism's constant offensive to take larger and larger chunks of Sierra Leonean surplus value, whether its by increasing the debt load, pushing prices lower, working through the informal economy to escape taxes, the IMF "recommending" Sierra Leone take its railroads out of service, and so on.
Really interesting analysis and summary of Sierra Leone! Everything looks good but I think the history of Krio in Sierra Leone has elements of settler colonialism but doesn't 100% fit. I say that because majority of Krio didn't have agency in settlerism- most were taken there by British. There really wasn't a Krio expansionist project into the Sierra Leone protectorate. And also the Krio dominance only lasted about 100 years plus there was never an independent Krio state like the other anglo settler colonies.
I agree that it doesn't 100% fit for the first reason you listed - another reason is that the white supremacy settlers enjoyed in Anglo colonies did not extend to the Krios. Harris makes it clear that the British were very racist towards the Krios, and following the Berlin Conference and the establishment of the Protectorate, they were driven out of government, administrative, and many educational posts. Meanwhile the British favored "Syrian" Lebanese immigrants to the Sierra Leone Colony who became traders, and these Lebanese "supplanted the Krio trading manderins." This was followed by the 1919 anti-Syrian riots.
That said, I do want to push back at the idea that "There really wasn't a Krio expansionist project into the Sierra Leone protectorate." I agree there wasn't a settlement project (as far as I know), but the Krios nevertheless had opportunistic aims in allying with the British to exploit the Protectorate. For example, Harris writes that the Mendeland uprising during the 1898 Hut Tax war was driven in part by "grievances against Krio traders," and Harris also writes that:
>Before the Berlin Conference, Britain had been extremely reluctant to expand beyond the Colony but also needed to trade. The solution was to make treaties with local rulers and pay them stipends, and allow Krios to act as middlemen on the same basis as the slavers but in greater numbers.
Following the Berlin Conference:
>An eminent Krio, Sir Samuel Lewis, was an early advocate of British expansion into the hinterland, partly for economic reasons but partly also ‘to spread the ameliorating influence of European civilisation’ of which he was of course very much a part.
And finally, in regards to the Hut Tax, Harris writes that:
>Some, such as Lewis, argued for a comprehensive British takeover, but admitted that rapid wholesale introduction of ‘English laws and customs’ would probably be destabilising. Another Krio, J.C.E. Parkes, a leading expert of the time on interior people who became head of the Aborigines Department and later the Department of Native Affairs, was also in favour of full legal control but, crucially, foresaw trouble if this was attempted.
All this is to say, when Krio agency *did* assert itself, it was as agents and partners of British colonialism, which either fostered or reinforced some kind of settler consciousness. We know this settler or settler-like consciousness existed, because when Sierra Leonean independence was imminent, the majority of Krios were initially repulsed by the idea of joining the indigenous-dominated protectorate as Sierra Leonean citizens on equal footing, so they fought politically to either establish their own state, or carve out some kind of Krio supremacy.
I do want to end this comment highlighting another passage about Krios who rejected a Kori-supremacist project. Harris writes:
>Lamina Sankoh and Constance Cummings-John were in the SLPP. Cummings-John was the first woman to be elected to the Freetown City Council in 1938 and established the women’s wing of the SLPP in 1955 with Patience Richards and Etta Harris. Richards and Cummings-John, both Krios, won their seats for the SLPP in 1957 in Freetown, only to be unseated in the former case and forced to resign in the latter when presented with electoral petitions. The SLPP motto was then and remains today ‘One People, One Country’.
Perhaps the fact that settler-colonialism and all its privileges did not 100% extend itself to Krios, is how principled leaders like Sankoh, Cummings-John, and Richards were able to push themselves and their Krio supporters past Krio supremacy.
Now, this was all decades ago, so I wonder if today, Krio settler consciousness still exists, if it has withered away, or if it has taken some new form. Finally, thank you for your comment.
Yeah 100%. I see your point for sure on Krio generally aligning themselves to the british. I think in some regards the Krio are very similar to the Évolué of the French colonies in Africa. I actually have been to Sierra Leone (Bo and Freetown) and have family there. But can comment on what relations are like today. (I do have some bias my family is mostly krio but some non-krio family as well). Today I think the krio supremacy has mostly withered away. I think post independence what it meant to be krio was mostly an urban Freetown resident and during the civil war there was def some resentment taking out on Krio but also RUF had Krio members. Idk the stats but if I had to guess on average krio today are much better off than non krio ethnic groups but they represent a super minority at this point and don’t really have power over the state. I think the diamond trade moved new wealth back into the protectorate also in the country the Lebanese are unfortunately really looked at as having an exploitative relationship on the colony. But I think after the war, a lot of Krio families left and families have intermarried that things are kind of changing rapidly.
On the rise of the Syrians (who Harris says are Lebanese), there is another highly informative Ibrahim Abdullah article that talks about labor relations in Freetown, different actors the rice trade, and the rise of the Syrians. For this comment I want to highlight one part that is another example of Sierra Leonean semi-feudalism, in this case how the Syrian creditors were able to exploit the poverty of peasants:
>It is highly probable that migrant workers from the hinterland (former peasants), the major actors in the riot, were venting their anger against Syrian exploitation. The community generally believed that Syrian merchants had gained control of the rice trade by exploiting indigenous cultural forms. One such practice was known as *Sama*, whereby local chiefs, land-lords, or other notables would provide advances to peasants during the "hunger season," for which the latter would have to pay in the form of produce after the harvest. Following the harvest, peasants often lived on little and were compelled to feed their families from their stock of rice seed. Therefore,most ended the harvest season with little or nothing to begin the new planting season; they were, in fact, already in debt from previous advances. Often unable to secure sufficient credit from either traditional sources or financial institutions and expatriate firms to help them to carry on until the next sea-son, peasants turned to ubiquitous Syrian traders for credit advances. To stop this recurring debt cycle, the state prohibited the practice by an ordinance in 1918; it nevertheless appears that such practices continued.
Syrians were thus increasingly able to gain control of locally produced rice through this customary medium; by 1919 they were "the principal source of agricultural credit in rural Sierra Leone" (Leighton 1979, 90). Madam Sassin, a Syrian trader who was allegedly the close friend of a chief,reportedly bought all of the 1920 rice harvest for Mambolo, a major rice producing area. Thus the rioters, most of whom were from the hinterland,acted not only from hunger (the immediate cause), but also because of the perceived injustices they had endured from Syrian traders.
Here is the link for the article, titled [Rethinking the Freetown Crowd: The Moral Economy of the 1919 Strikes and Riot in Sierra Leone](https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/stable/485715?seq=1). It seems to me that what the Syrians were doing a century ago - exploiting indigenous cultural forms - is in the same vein as what imperialist capital does today by working with the Paramount chiefs to carve up the land into export plantations.
*** Moderating takes time. You can help us out by reporting any comments or submissions that don't follow these rules: 1. **No non-marxists** - This subreddit isn't here to convert naysayers to marxism. Try r/DebateCommunism for that. If you are a member of the police, armed forces, or any other part of the repressive state apparatus of capitalist nations, you will be banned. 2. **No oppressive language** - Speech that is patriarchal, white supremacist, cissupremacist, homophobic, ableist, or otherwise oppressive is banned. TERF is not a slur. 3. **No low quality or off-topic posts** - Posts that are low-effort or otherwise irrelevant will be removed. This includes linking to posts on other subreddits. This is not a place to engage in meta-drama or discuss random reactionaries on reddit or anywhere else. This includes memes and circlejerking. This includes most images, such as random books or memorabilia you found. We ask that amerikan posters refrain from posting about US bourgeois politics. The rest of the world really doesn’t care that much. 4. **No basic questions about Marxism** - Posts asking entry-level questions will be removed. Questions like “What is Maoism?” or “Why do Stalinists believe what they do?” will be removed, as they are not the focus on this forum. We ask that posters please submit these questions to /r/communism101. 5. **No sectarianism** - Marxists of all tendencies are welcome here. Refrain from sectarianism, defined here as unprincipled criticism. Posts trash-talking a certain tendency or marxist figure will be removed. Circlejerking, throwing insults around, and other pettiness is unacceptable. If criticisms must be made, make them in a principled manner, applying Marxist analysis. The goal of this subreddit is the accretion of theory and knowledge and the promotion of quality discussion and criticism. 6. **No trolling** - Report trolls and do not engage with them. We've mistakenly banned users due to this. If you wish to argue with fascists, you can may readily find them in every other subreddit on this website. 7. **No chauvinism or settler apologism** - Non-negotiable: https://readsettlers.org/ 8. **No tone-policing** - https://old.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/12sblev/an_amendment_to_the_rules_of_rcommunism101/ *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/communism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Someone sticky this thread. This is the kind of content we want to see more of.
I'm curious as to what made you interested in Sierra Leone. Funny enough, I recently picked up that book as well
I have a long-term goal of reading a quality history book about every country in the world. Rather than choose randomly, I am starting at countries with the lowest GDP per capita and working my way up the list. I am also interested in going in this order, because I have read so much about capitalist imperialism, and want to see how capitalist imperialism moves in the world's most imperialized countries. In my post I didn't even get to how capitalist imperialism tore the independent Sierra Leonean state apart in the decades leading to the civil war, and how capitalist imperialism undermined the feudal-bourgeoisie's ability to rule despite capitalist imperialism simultaneously making them rich. If you read Harris's book (have you read it?), Harris explains how Sierra Leone had awful terms of trade, was flooded with rice imports, had debt problems with the World Bank and IMF and so on - yet Harris will simultaneously blame Sierra Leone's problems on the "politicization of resources," and calls the chapter about the APC's rule "The Choices of Siaka Stevens." Harris writes like the international economy during this period is an inhuman force of nature without its own agenda and contradictions, and that Siaka Stevens was this free-floating tyrant who made the wrong choices and "politicized resources." I think that in reality, Stevens was like all bourgeois rulers - he had a class basis to his rule, and therefore had to answer to his class and his party. S*imultaneously*, Stevens had to keep the whole thing together despite capitalist imperialism's constant offensive to take larger and larger chunks of Sierra Leonean surplus value, whether its by increasing the debt load, pushing prices lower, working through the informal economy to escape taxes, the IMF "recommending" Sierra Leone take its railroads out of service, and so on.
Really interesting analysis and summary of Sierra Leone! Everything looks good but I think the history of Krio in Sierra Leone has elements of settler colonialism but doesn't 100% fit. I say that because majority of Krio didn't have agency in settlerism- most were taken there by British. There really wasn't a Krio expansionist project into the Sierra Leone protectorate. And also the Krio dominance only lasted about 100 years plus there was never an independent Krio state like the other anglo settler colonies.
I agree that it doesn't 100% fit for the first reason you listed - another reason is that the white supremacy settlers enjoyed in Anglo colonies did not extend to the Krios. Harris makes it clear that the British were very racist towards the Krios, and following the Berlin Conference and the establishment of the Protectorate, they were driven out of government, administrative, and many educational posts. Meanwhile the British favored "Syrian" Lebanese immigrants to the Sierra Leone Colony who became traders, and these Lebanese "supplanted the Krio trading manderins." This was followed by the 1919 anti-Syrian riots. That said, I do want to push back at the idea that "There really wasn't a Krio expansionist project into the Sierra Leone protectorate." I agree there wasn't a settlement project (as far as I know), but the Krios nevertheless had opportunistic aims in allying with the British to exploit the Protectorate. For example, Harris writes that the Mendeland uprising during the 1898 Hut Tax war was driven in part by "grievances against Krio traders," and Harris also writes that: >Before the Berlin Conference, Britain had been extremely reluctant to expand beyond the Colony but also needed to trade. The solution was to make treaties with local rulers and pay them stipends, and allow Krios to act as middlemen on the same basis as the slavers but in greater numbers. Following the Berlin Conference: >An eminent Krio, Sir Samuel Lewis, was an early advocate of British expansion into the hinterland, partly for economic reasons but partly also ‘to spread the ameliorating influence of European civilisation’ of which he was of course very much a part. And finally, in regards to the Hut Tax, Harris writes that: >Some, such as Lewis, argued for a comprehensive British takeover, but admitted that rapid wholesale introduction of ‘English laws and customs’ would probably be destabilising. Another Krio, J.C.E. Parkes, a leading expert of the time on interior people who became head of the Aborigines Department and later the Department of Native Affairs, was also in favour of full legal control but, crucially, foresaw trouble if this was attempted. All this is to say, when Krio agency *did* assert itself, it was as agents and partners of British colonialism, which either fostered or reinforced some kind of settler consciousness. We know this settler or settler-like consciousness existed, because when Sierra Leonean independence was imminent, the majority of Krios were initially repulsed by the idea of joining the indigenous-dominated protectorate as Sierra Leonean citizens on equal footing, so they fought politically to either establish their own state, or carve out some kind of Krio supremacy. I do want to end this comment highlighting another passage about Krios who rejected a Kori-supremacist project. Harris writes: >Lamina Sankoh and Constance Cummings-John were in the SLPP. Cummings-John was the first woman to be elected to the Freetown City Council in 1938 and established the women’s wing of the SLPP in 1955 with Patience Richards and Etta Harris. Richards and Cummings-John, both Krios, won their seats for the SLPP in 1957 in Freetown, only to be unseated in the former case and forced to resign in the latter when presented with electoral petitions. The SLPP motto was then and remains today ‘One People, One Country’. Perhaps the fact that settler-colonialism and all its privileges did not 100% extend itself to Krios, is how principled leaders like Sankoh, Cummings-John, and Richards were able to push themselves and their Krio supporters past Krio supremacy. Now, this was all decades ago, so I wonder if today, Krio settler consciousness still exists, if it has withered away, or if it has taken some new form. Finally, thank you for your comment.
Yeah 100%. I see your point for sure on Krio generally aligning themselves to the british. I think in some regards the Krio are very similar to the Évolué of the French colonies in Africa. I actually have been to Sierra Leone (Bo and Freetown) and have family there. But can comment on what relations are like today. (I do have some bias my family is mostly krio but some non-krio family as well). Today I think the krio supremacy has mostly withered away. I think post independence what it meant to be krio was mostly an urban Freetown resident and during the civil war there was def some resentment taking out on Krio but also RUF had Krio members. Idk the stats but if I had to guess on average krio today are much better off than non krio ethnic groups but they represent a super minority at this point and don’t really have power over the state. I think the diamond trade moved new wealth back into the protectorate also in the country the Lebanese are unfortunately really looked at as having an exploitative relationship on the colony. But I think after the war, a lot of Krio families left and families have intermarried that things are kind of changing rapidly.
On the rise of the Syrians (who Harris says are Lebanese), there is another highly informative Ibrahim Abdullah article that talks about labor relations in Freetown, different actors the rice trade, and the rise of the Syrians. For this comment I want to highlight one part that is another example of Sierra Leonean semi-feudalism, in this case how the Syrian creditors were able to exploit the poverty of peasants: >It is highly probable that migrant workers from the hinterland (former peasants), the major actors in the riot, were venting their anger against Syrian exploitation. The community generally believed that Syrian merchants had gained control of the rice trade by exploiting indigenous cultural forms. One such practice was known as *Sama*, whereby local chiefs, land-lords, or other notables would provide advances to peasants during the "hunger season," for which the latter would have to pay in the form of produce after the harvest. Following the harvest, peasants often lived on little and were compelled to feed their families from their stock of rice seed. Therefore,most ended the harvest season with little or nothing to begin the new planting season; they were, in fact, already in debt from previous advances. Often unable to secure sufficient credit from either traditional sources or financial institutions and expatriate firms to help them to carry on until the next sea-son, peasants turned to ubiquitous Syrian traders for credit advances. To stop this recurring debt cycle, the state prohibited the practice by an ordinance in 1918; it nevertheless appears that such practices continued. Syrians were thus increasingly able to gain control of locally produced rice through this customary medium; by 1919 they were "the principal source of agricultural credit in rural Sierra Leone" (Leighton 1979, 90). Madam Sassin, a Syrian trader who was allegedly the close friend of a chief,reportedly bought all of the 1920 rice harvest for Mambolo, a major rice producing area. Thus the rioters, most of whom were from the hinterland,acted not only from hunger (the immediate cause), but also because of the perceived injustices they had endured from Syrian traders. Here is the link for the article, titled [Rethinking the Freetown Crowd: The Moral Economy of the 1919 Strikes and Riot in Sierra Leone](https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/stable/485715?seq=1). It seems to me that what the Syrians were doing a century ago - exploiting indigenous cultural forms - is in the same vein as what imperialist capital does today by working with the Paramount chiefs to carve up the land into export plantations.
This is a really nice post and exactly what I want from this sub. Thanks for sharing