ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the context for settlement on the Sierra Leone peninsula and related settlements at Rio Pongo and elsewhere. It examines the colony on the upper Guinea coast in the period down to 1808, when the administration of the Sierra Leone Company was formally transferred to the British government and the Colony of Sierra Leone was founded. The chapter outlines the history of the settlement and the relationship of the settlement to the states and societies that dominated the coast and the interior of the region stretching from roughly Cape Mount in the south to Rio Pongo in the north. Prominent along the Rio Pongo, a community of European and Afro-European trading families and kinsmen controlled much of the trade in the region. Following upon the success of the Afro-Portuguese lancados, British, French and American traders were welcomed into local families, marrying and fathering children who became natural middlemen.
