THE BRITtSI WEST AFRICAN - SETTLEMENYS, 1760.4821. By EVeline C. Martin.,,'
(Longmans. Zs. 6.04— The Royal Colonial Institute is promoting,, under the,Jcom- petent editorship of Professor Newton, a series of " Imperial Studies" by historians under thirty. Miss Martin's very interesting essay on the Settlements in West Africa under George II. and George III. is the second of the series. She deals with the trading posts of the "Company of Merchants trading to Africa," especially on the Gold Coast and the Gambia, as well as with the colony of Sierra Leone, founded in 1787 as a settlement for negroes who fought for England in the American War and taken over, four years later, by the Sierra Leone Company of merchants and anti-slavery philan- thropists. Miss Martin's account of the troubles of Zachary Macaulay, Governor of Sierra Leone, is curious and pathetic. A typically English constitution had been promulgated for a mixed population of freed negroes and a few Europeans, and, naturally, it would not work. The British Government had to take over Sierra Leone in 1808, and the other settlements in 1821. Company rule had failed.
Previous page
