scholarly journals Colonialism and rural inequality in Sierra Leone: an egalitarian experiment

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 468-501
Author(s):  
Stefania Galli ◽  
Klas Rönnbäck

Abstract We analyze the level of inequality in rural Sierra Leone in the early colonial period. Previous research has suggested that the colony was established under highly egalitarian ideals. We examine whether these ideals also are reflected in the real distribution of wealth in the colony. We employ a newly assembled dataset extracted from census data in the colony in 1831. The results show that rural Sierra Leone exhibited one of the most equal distributions of wealth so far estimated for any preindustrial rural society.

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Carmen Fernández-Salvador

This article explores the role played by images of the Virgin Mary in the ordering of space during the colonial period, as well as in the disruption of such order as a gesture of resistance by subordinate groups. In the Real Audiencia de Quito of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, civil and religious authorities used miraculous images of the Virgin Mary as aids in the founding of reducciones, which assured the imposition of Christian civility upon the Native population. Legal records suggest that in the second half of the eighteenth century Indigenous communities deployed similar strategies as a means of asserting their own concerns. Native actors physically manipulated Marian images in times of conflict, moving them around or apprehending them either to legitimize their desertion of colonial settlements or to resist forced relocation. In both the early colonial period and in the eighteenth century, the key strategy of shaping sacred landscapes was implemented in both Andean and Christian traditions.


Africa ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 558-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Fanthorpe

The chiefdoms of Sierra Leone are institutions of colonial origin but nevertheless continue to serve as local government units in the post-colonial state. The prevailing view among scholars is that these institutions have little basis in indigenous political culture, and have furthermore become breeding grounds of political corruption. This view has tended to elide anthropological analysis of internal chiefdom politics. However, it is argued in this article that such conclusions are premature. With reference to the Biriwa Limba chiefdom of northern Sierra Leone, it is shown that historical precedent, in many cases relating to prominent political figures of the late nineteenth century, continues to serve as a primary means of ordering local rights in land, settlement and political representation. This phenomenon is not a product of innate conservatism but emerges rather as a pragmatic response to the persistent failure of successive Sierra Leone administrations to extend modern measures of citizenship to the bulk of the rural populace. Rights and properties have become progressively localised in villages originally registered for tax collection in the early colonial era. Here one finds one of the most telling legacies of the British policy of indirect rule in post-colonial Sierra Leone.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-73
Author(s):  
Harry Bloch

A great deal has been written about the life, struggles, and accomplishments of pioneer men and women who crossed the ocean to build a new world in the wilderness; but infant and child life during early colonial days is largely hidden in obscurity. Little has been recorded.1 It is known that few children under the age of 7 survived in the crowded immigrant ships: falling into the sea, accidents, hunger, thirst, and sickness took its sad toll. Nevertheless, there were many young2-5: a third of the founders of Plymouth were children; Puritan youth were evident in the great migration to the Massachusetts Bay Colony; several cargoes of poor children and orphans from Dutch almshouses were "bound out" to the burghers of New Netherlands; children were frequently dispatched from England as indentured servants and apprentices; the London Company sent 100 children to Virginia in 1619, and 1,500, kidnapped from Ireland and England, in 1627; African slave children were shipped to the colonies after 1620; and the colonial mother6 bore many children, buried many, and often followed them to the grave at an early age. Fecundity,5 characteristic of early colonists, served to people a continent (the population was 2.5 million in 1776), and provided needed child labor. Over 50% of Plymouth colony consisted of children.7 Colonial children were viewed as miniature adults; and boys and girls were dressed alike until the age of 7.1,7,8 The infant1,7 wore a long linen smock; was covered with a woolen blanket; and a wooden or wicker cradle, hooded to protect from cold draughts, much like those in which Indian babies slept, was its bed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Abu Bakarr TARAWALIE

This paper estimates the equilibrium real effective exchange rate and determine the level of exchange rate misalignment in Sierra Leone, for the period 1980 to 2018. The paper utilizes the behavioral equilibrium exchange rate methodology within the Johansen maximum likelihood framework to estimate the long run equilibrium real effective exchange rate. The unit root test result shows that all the variables are integrated of order one, whilst the cointegration test establishes the existence of one cointegrating vector as evidenced by both the Trace and Maximum Eigen Statistics. The normalized long run results reveal that openness, government expenditure and money supply were the most significant determinants of the real effective exchange rate in the long run. Furthermore, the findings reveal that the real effective exchange rate experienced sustained deviation from the long run equilibrium real effective exchange rate during the study period, with episodes of overvaluation and undervaluation. Specifically, the real effective exchange rate was overvalued by 3.69 percent during the period between 1980-1985; undervalued by 1.8 percent between 1986-1997, and overvalued by 0.9 percent between 1998-2004, Thus, the paper reveals episodes of misalignment of the real effective exchange rate. Based on these findings, the study recommends that, the monetary authorities should ensure stability of the exchange rate and maintain price stability, through sterilization of capital flows as well as contain money growth within the statutory limit.


Art Journal ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Marcia Allentuck ◽  
Donald Robertson

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